An Interesting Word Game

by SreePriya
(Coimbatore,TamilNadu, India)

I was working in a school for sometime. A week before the exams the kids were all very tired of revision.

So being a language teacher and having to work under a strict Principal who kept doing random rounds, I decided to play a game that was enjoyable as well as educative.

So I divided the class into two groups A and B.

The idea was if Group A gives a verb say “Walk” Group B has to give a verb that starts with the letter “k”, the ending letter of “Walk”, say “Knit” and Group A has to give a verb that starts with the letter “t”, the ending letter of “Knit”, say “Tackle” and so on – inspired by “Anthakshari”, an all age favorite game with cine songs.

So we just made up rules like the verbs should not be repeated, only the pure form of the verb should be used i.e. no “ed” or “ing” forms.

I gave 5 points for each right verb and a star if the verb was a rare one or beyond their age, or if the letter they have to start with is a difficult one like “Y”.

I tried this in all the classes I went to, with verbs alone in lower classes and with “Adjectives” and even “Adverbs” in upper classes like 8th and 9th.

It was very interesting, with some words I myself had to use a dictionary to find out which category they belonged to.

It was fun and I was surprised by the response I got.

I understood the impact only when standard 6 students gave me, as their teacher’s day gift, a list of verbs starting with A, B, C and D.

There were about 50 verbs in each group. It was a combined effort of the entire class.

Later whenever there was a power cut this became the favorite pass time for me, I started playing this with my neighbours irrespective of their age.

The group included two housewives, one middle aged, one above 50, a college student and a school kid.

This can be quiet engaging and interesting with everyone trying to give a verb that ends with difficult letters like “y” and “z”.

It can be used to engage children of all ages especially when there is a group of them, as an alternative for T.V., Video Games and Computer Games.