For outreach this month I was curious to find more of the books my teens had read. I found an idea on One Stop English for an A-Z Race. I tested their knowledge with an A-Z Title Race. Each student got a sheet of paper with A through Z listed down the page and a line for the title. The rules are extremely flexible but this is how we played. We broke into groups of 2-3. Everyone had 10-15 minutes to think of book titles and list a book per line of the alphabet. The word could be anywhere in the book title so you could use Fault in Our Stars for the F, O or S. I suggested they not use words like a, and, the and so forth because they are too easy. I encouraged the students to think of books in a series (they could use Diary of a Wimpy Kid and all of its volume titles), titles they read for school and books that had been made into movies; anything to jog their memories. When the students started to run out of ideas we did a lightning round where they were allowed to use the teacher's classroom collection for ideas. This was supposed to last one minute but I usually gave them them more time. Once the time was up we went around the room a bit randomly reading our A title and B titles and so on. Going over the titles took longer than expected. I allotted about 10 minutes it was never enough. You could easily fill 30-45 with this race. The students and teachers enjoyed themselves and it gave me a better idea of the types of books to share with the classes next month.Other ways to play might be to have teams run up the black board or wipe board to write their answers instead of printing so as many copies as I needed. You could have them write titles on an projector or large paper on an easel. A brain storming session ahead of the game might help. Since you can use this format for nearly any information I plan to use this game in Anime and Manga Club with series and character names.
Laura
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