Pokemon Extravaganza!

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Group Profile

This class comprises 20 students aged between 8 and 10 years learning English as a foreign language. The instructor found out that all students enjoy playing Pokémon Go, so s/he decided to design an instructional activity in which students can both play the game and use their knowledge of it to increase their communicative competence in the target language. The instructor made sure all students have access to the materials necessary to carry out the task. (See list of materials below.) Per CEFR, students' overall communicative competence level is B1. (See page 174 of CEFR.)

Syllabus Fit

In previous lessons of this unit--whose topic is family, friends, and home--students learned adjectives used to describe people and objects physically and people personality-wise. For the past two lessons, students have been learning how to form the comparative and superlative of short and long adjectives.

Learning Objectives

After this activity, students will be able to

• use the comparative and superlative forms of short and long adjectives to describe people and things orally and in writing,

• work collaboratively to write a story, and

• save a Word file as PDF, upload it to Google Drive, and share it with others.

Materials

• Internet-able cell phones

• Pokémon Go app installed on cell phones

• Worksheets

• Computers

• Microsoft Word 

• Adobe PDF

• Google Drive

Activity

This activity will be completed over the span of four to five nonconsecutive class periods.

Pre-task 1

Working individually, students prepare an oral presentation for the whole class on their favorite Pokémon character. The instructor walks around in the classroom, answers questions, and makes suggestions as s/he sees fit. Without saying the name of their favorite characters, students describe them both physically and personality-wise and explain why they are their favorite ones. The class try to guess the Pokémon character each student presents. Each student will have about 2 minutes to present their favorite Pokémon character to the class.

Pre-task 2

Working individually, students do the exercises in this worksheet and this worksheet. After students are done, the instructor asks students to volunteer to read their answers. If they don't, the instructor will call them out.

Task

In groups of four, students play the game on the school campus. Students then write a story in which some (or all) of the Pokémon characters they captured play a role. The instructor walks around in the classroom, answers questions, and makes suggestions as s/he sees fit

Guidelines for story writing

• The final version of the story should be 

  • typed in Word,

  • double spaced,

  • in Arial font, size 12, and

  • 4 to 5 pages long.

• Students should leverage the skills and weaknesses of the Pokémon characters caught. With the help of the instructor, students can consult this list for assistance with the skills or weaknesses, as needed.

• Students should incorporate comparative and superlative structures three times each into the story.

• Students should use transition words--such as then, next, so, however, and therefore--which they had learned in a previous unit.

• Each student should add to the file they submit a picture of themselves with a Pokémon they caught and that plays a role in the story . 

• Thematically, students have freedom to come up with any story they want to. 

• Each group prints out the final version of the story and turns it in.

Post-task 1

Five other groups with four members each are formed, but this time around each group member comes from one of the initial groups.  Then each group member tells (not reads to) the others the story they had created in their initial group. 

Post-task 2

Using the projector in the classroom, the instructor shows students how to (a) save a Word document as PDF, (b) upload it to Google Drive, and (c) share it. Each group will then save the story as PDF, upload it to Google Drive, and share it with the instructor and the other students in the class.

This activity was created by Ivan and Bianca.