Category board

Objective & content

Category board is a projected team board game for one game of 20 to 30 minutes. The board has five categories (Food, Animals, Colours, In my school bag, Sport) and five values from 100 to 500, so 25 squares. Teams take turns to choose a square, answer its question and win its points. In each category, 100 and 200 are photo questions, 300 is a clue, 400 is a sentence to complete and 500 is "Name three ...". Pupils revise everyday words from five topics and answer short questions in English.

Pedagogical guide

The PDF is clickable: on the board slide, every square opens its question; Show the answer opens the answer slide; Back to the board returns to the board. The teacher does not need to search through the slides, so the class chooses the order of the game. The values rise with the difficulty: a photo to name, then a clue to read ("It's black and white. It looks like a horse."), a sentence to complete ("A spider has eight ___."), and three words to find. Some answer slides add a note, for example that a rubber is an eraser in American English and that both are right. The game stays at A1+ level, in British English. Useful language for the teams: "Animals 300, please!", "I think it's a ...", "Is it ...?", "Our turn!".

Suggested procedure

1. (3 min) Make 2 to 4 teams. Draw the 25 numbers on the whiteboard, like the board on the screen, and a score table next to it.
2. (2 min) Show the How to play slide, then the board.
3. (15 to 20 min) Teams take turns. A team chooses a square, for example "Animals 300", and the teacher clicks it. The team answers; a right answer wins the points of the square (for a "Name three ..." square, three right words). Click Show the answer, cross the square off on the whiteboard and click Back to the board. The next team chooses.
4. (2 min) When the board is empty, or at the end of the time, add up the points and show the last slide, "Who won?".

Adaptations

[S] Let a team ask its classmates for help once in the game, or give 30 seconds to talk before it answers. Start with the 100 and 200 squares.

[A] If a team gives a wrong answer, let the next team try to answer for half the points. For the 500 squares, ask for four or five words.

Materials & prerequisites

A computer and a projector or screen for game.pdf (53 slides in 16:9), opened in a PDF reader that follows links (Acrobat, Edge or Chrome), and a whiteboard for the 25 numbers and the scores. Pupils should already know basic words for food, animals, colours, school things and sport. The game works well as a revision game at the end of a term or as a reward at the end of a lesson.