TEFLChina Teahouse: Teaching: Speaking:
Hot Seat
The class is divided into teams 4 to 8 students per team is ideal. 2 or more teams. Students sit in their teams in a U-shaped formation, but one student has his/her back to the front of the class and the white/blackboard. That student is in the hot seat.
The teacher writes something on the board -- a single word, phrase, sentence, movie or song title, etc.
The teams of students then try to communicate this information to the person in the hot seat without using their L1 or hand signals. The object of the game is to race to see which team will be the first to have their hot seat person stand up, without looking at the board and repeat exactly what has been written on the board. Points are awarded to the first to correctly stand up and answer.
Naturally accuracy takes a back seat. It is amazing to see how creatively fluent these people can be when the monitors are off and the element of competition is at play.
Hot seat people should be rotated every 3 or 4 new phrases. A good way to introduce the game is to have a trial round with a simple phrase, e.g "An empty house." and let them have a go. The first game goes R-e-a-l-ly slowly. But once someone has it then as a group discuss how you communicated these ideas to the Hotseat person.
Suggestions that you could make in summary of the first trial round might be,
- use parts of speech i.e. article = an
- use opposites i.e. not full = empty..(or use synonyms)
- descriptions, this calls for elaboration, a phrase or question..ie. what do
you live in? = house
It's good for Hotseat people to have a pen and paper in case they have to write. Also, words should be communicated in order. On this note people in the Hot seat should also be encouraged to use deductive reasoning to predict what language might come next. The Hot seat phrases should be familiar language and concepts that you, the teacher knows will help the students....from previous, or future lessons. Single words can be an interesting challenge.....Try "if" or concepts such as "compassion"......"anger" with related words or their parts, in this case, 'angry' being taboo.
Please try this one. It works for me, but more importantly, it works for them.....that is: gets them communicating. It's a great warmer for days when you hope for a lot of communication and interaction in the main part of your class.
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