Revising the Middle Ages: speaking game

Shared by Isabel Santos: 

The activity I’ve prepared is about oral communication to revise the unit about the Middle Ages concepts. It’s like playing Taboo game. It’s necessary to prepare and print different cards (click here to get the cards) and here are the instructions:

The goal is to get your teammates to guess the word you are describing, but there’s a list of words you can’t say. You’ll want to divide teams evenly, get the cards ready, and have a timer. Each card you get right is a point for your team, and all of the cards your skip, or cards on which you said words that were taboo are a point for the other team.

1.      Divide the group into two teams. Do your best to have an even number of people on each team.

2.      Take one card at a time. You cannot look ahead at any of the other cards in the deck. You can only look at each card as you take it to begin giving clues for it. If you catch someone looking ahead, you need to call them out on it as this is cheating.

3.      Start the timer. Each player has a certain amount of time to get their teammates to guess as many words as they can. It might be good to designate someone on each turn who is going to pay attention to the timer. You can also switch to a timer that makes noise when it runs out.

4.      Give your teammates clues about the guess-word. If the guess-word is “book,” you might give clues like “something you use to study in school,” and “a large collection of words that has a main plot.” You score points when your teammates guess the word. You can’t use any part of the word or any of the taboo words that are listed.