Movie Review: Racing Stripes PowerPoint Game

Movie Review: Racing Stripes
The deal with my kids, is one movie a semester. This semester I went back a few years and pulled out Racing Stripes, a cool "Warner Bros" flick about a Zebra who grows up thinking he is a race horse.

If you want to see if the movie is suitable for your students, you can watch the following movie preview link

Preview of Racing Stripes Movie

After viewing a movie, I'm always desperately trying to think of interesting ways to review what we have watched. For this movie I came up with a game called "Stampede". Based on a scene in the movie in which the horses hold an event (that the humans don't know about) called The Blue Moon Races. The idea of this game is to give students a horse in the race, that they help to finish the race, by putting up their hands to answer the review questions about the movie. If correct their horse moves through the field towards the finish line. Here's a preview video of the PPT in action.

Get This Game

It's interesting that...I think I know my students pretty well...but I wasn't ready for them to show such excitement at the running of the horses...especially when some of the horses took an unexpected route rearing up and backwards. The Racing Stripes Movie - Quiz Game Review brought about much more cheering and laughter than I had imagined.

Because of this, I have also produced two completely editable templates of the Stampede Game as I feel the game is a very successful way to review questions for any subject, any age and any level.

Stampede Basic Question and Answer Template is a basic question and answer model, which is great if you haven’t got time to think of 4 alternative answers for every question and need a quick fire review game in a hurry. Just fill in the question and answer into the easy edit slides that I have set up (now takes up to 30 questions ) and away you go. Please watch the video preview to see how easy it is to set up and run.

Stampede Premium Multi Choice Format is the multiple choice format of the game, so you can add a question, 3 incorrect answers and 1 correct answer (just the same as Racing Stripes version)
There are 30 question slides all easily labelled with the very basic instructions of where to write your questions and answers,just add your questions and answers and play.

Please watch the preview to see how easy it is to set up and use.

So three versions

1) Ready to use...just watch the film and review it with the game

2) Easy Question and Answer Template

3)Premium Multi Choice Template

All designed to make your classes even more fun and most importantly free up some time and make your prep a little easier.

Thanks for reading and viewing. Have a great day!

Animal Sounds: Circle Game Fun

You may think that teaching animal sounds to your class is just too easy. We learn those things before we go to school right? But for kids in countries like China, they have never heard the descriptive words we use for the noises that particular animals make. In fact in China the kids don't even know the names of half the animal sound in their own language of Chinese. A lesson in animal sounds is informative and fun. Having spent a lot of my childhood mimicking and perfecting the sounds of animals such as the roosters, ducks and dogs, the kids love it when I also give an imitation of the animals. Anyway lets get to the game.

Animal Sounds Circle Game

Step 1 : Have the chairs all set up in a circle and when the kids arrive get them to sit down

Step 2 : Run through the vocabulary you will teach them. I have just recently done this activity and used these 10 animals (but you can choose your own)

• Dog - Woof Woof


• Cat -  Meow


• Rooster - Cock-a-doodle-doo


• Pig - Oink Oink


• Cow - Moo


• Monkey - Chitter Chatter


• Duck - Quack Quack


• Bird - Twitter/Tweet


• Wolf - Howl


• Mouse - Squeak Squeak

Don't rush through the learning section, make sure they write down the words and get them to repeat the animals sounds. If you can, do some of your own imitations of the animal sounds, the kids love this!

Step 3 : Get the kids to hold on to their books and pens (if they have them on hand) and stand up. Tell them to walk around in a circle in an orderly fashion. As they do this count down from 10 to 1, say STOP and then say SIT DOWN. This has made the kids all move around to new positions within the circle. To make sure they do this correctly, do it again. Tell them to walk in a circle, count down from 10, then tell them STOP and SIT DOWN. If they do this correctly move on to the next step

Step 4 : Tell them that one person will come and stand in the middle of the circle, blindfolded. This person will spin around and stop, pointing their finger at someone in the circle (demonstrate as you explain).

Tell them the person that is being pointed at, must make one of the animal sounds they have just learned and the person who is blindfolded in the middle must guess two things -

•  What animal sound they can hear


•  who is making that sound.

Step 5 : Give the person a few guesses and a few chances to listen to the sound, after they guess or time out,

get the person who was making the animal sound to now step up and be the person in the middle and start again.

Animal Sounds Circle Game Video

Have a look at the game in action -

Your class may end up sounding a little like a zoo, but it's great fun, little preparation and teaches the students animal sounds in a super fun way adding some new describing words to their vocabulary. This is an awesome activity for little and big kids alike!