One activity my student teacher Ali (葛淑瑄) did in class was a word guessing game. Having finished Unit 7 this morning, she had the class play this game. The students were divided into groups of 5 to 6 to have a group discussion about how to say a word in another way or its association .
Five minutes later, two students were invited to the front one after another. The teacher projected a word on the screen, which the guesser couldn't see. His/her group members began to offer hints to help him/her figure out what the "mystery word" was. For example, for the word "creativity." the students gave "new ideas" as a clue.
I used this game in Unit 5 with Class 214 to familiarize the students with some baseball terms. But I did it differently. A student was asked to come to the front, see a word on a card, and gave the other students hints. Anyone guessing the right word won two points for his/her team. I still remember the hints Vicky gave when she saw the word "strike": good ball. Though she just literally decoded the word, and "good ball" cannot be used to define the word "strike," the whole class immediately knew what the baseball term was because they are Chinese. I don't think this would work for the Americans.
By projecting the word on the screen for the whole class but the guesser to see, Ali successfully made more students speak more English. Instead of a single vocabulary word, they shouted a chunk of words and even sentences. Technology do help in teaching and learning.