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!

Fun IQ PPTX Quiz Game-Detective Dan

Critical Thinking: Power Point Game
Looking for a mystery lesson that gets the kids to try out their powers of deduction and get that grey matter working?Meet... Detective Dan.
Detective Dan in The Musicians of Abbey Road Mystery is the first of a series of Einstein style quizzes that work by gathering information to deduce a number of factors about the characters involved in the mystery and eventually come up with a filled answer sheet to help Detective Dan solve the case.

In the first release of the series you will meet 5 characters...Jazzy Jeff, Salsa Sally, Bluesy Bill, Hip- Hop Henry and Rockin' Ray.

Jazzy Jeff has lost his wallet. Detective Dan has found it and wants to return it to him, however, he only knows that Jazzy Jeff lives in Abbey road among many other musicians, he doesn't know in which house, so he(the students) go about gathering crucial information that will finally lead him to Jazzy Jeff's door.

RECOMMENDED AGE GUIDE :For an ESL CLASSROOM, the vocabulary is not difficult for primary school age, but the critical thinking process may be. I play this successfully with middle school students and up. For Regular Classrooms I recommend from grade 5 and up to adults (seriously... my friends and family have had as much of a challenge as my students have had). Only you know your class capabilities, please review all the information on this page to access if suitable for the age you are teaching.

Behind each number is a picture and sometimes slightly cryptic clue about the 5 residence of Abbey road including their names, information about their hobbies, nationalities, pets and the instruments they play. Student's must write down (on the provided information sheet) all the facts as they gather them, and piece the whole thing together.

This activity works great as a team building exercise (getting brains to work together) or as a singular student exercise. Either way it's heaps of fun and like all puzzles, the challenge brings about satisfying results upon completion.

The PPT itself has been designed for easy navigation with super cool transition effects and cruisy original Detective Dan theme music running in the background (with an easy access on/off button if you need to talk to the class) to add to a relaxing and fun class atmosphere. Here is a quick preview for you to get an idea of what's involved.

Student's will write the gathered notes, information and answers as they work them out, on to the accompanying answer sheet which is provided as part of the download.

Click this link to download Detective Dan in The Musicians of Abbey Road Mystery.



If you are a teacher like myself who has multiple classes, I like to print and laminate the worksheet and provide the students with a slim whiteboard marker (plain texters also work) and an old rag to clean the boards at the end of class.

The vocabulary covered in this activity is shown in the below picture taken of the question slide with all numbers revealed. Here you can see the different pets owned, hobbies, instruments, nationalities ( flag knowledge not necessarily required  as the are revealed with in the clues)

Detective Dan Mysteries can be purchased at my TpT store  Clever Fox Lesson Box  along with many other class ppt's and activities. Thanks for viewing.

Human Bingo: I Know What You Did During The Holiday

It's not always easy going back to class after a nice relaxing summer or winter vacation but "Human Bingo: I Know What You Did During The Holiday", is a great way to ease back into the classroom for both teachers and students. Personally I have trouble getting Chinese students to act excited about anything they may have done during their holidays. Even for the lucky ones that have gone overseas, I'm still faced with blank looks and replies of..."I did nothing except homework".

Why?
This could be because they don't want to brag in front of their friends, or that nothing really is that appreciated or exciting for them or there's a good chance that they don't think they have the vocabulary to pull off such a conversation.

What We Can Do

Human Bingo that includes vocabulary to remind the students of the words and things they may or may not have done throughout their holiday, is a very effective and relaxing class to start the new semester with and this is what it looks like.

Human Bingo “I know what you did during the holiday”.

Find someone in your class who has done these things during their summer holiday. Write their NAME on the square. When you get a line of 5 people, shout BINGO! You can only use a person's name once (one time).

You spent some of the summer holiday in Beijing or Shanghai	You played     Badminton but didn’t play basketball	You read a book in English. (Not your textbook)	You used an iPhone or iPad	You ate at     McDonald’s
You traveled abroad	You spent a lot of time with your school friend/friends	You missed school and have been waiting to return to your classes	You gave someone a hug	You visited your family that live in a different province
You ate grapes	You watched an English movie at the cinema.	You DIDN’T read a single book during the holiday (Not your textbooks)	You drank some coffee	You visited one of these places -The Oriental Pearl Tower, The Great Wall, Niagara Falls or The Eiffel Tower
You DIDN'T play a computer game	You spoke English with a foreigner	You swam in the sea, ocean, river or a lake.	You cooked a meal (not instant noodles	You woke up later     than 11am
You DIDN’T miss school at all	You patted a dog	You were bitten by mosquitoes	You bought some new shoes	You got sunburnt

Useful words: ,mosquitoes - 蚊子, abroad – 国外,grapes - 葡萄,sunburnt – 晒伤 Oriental Pearl Tower - 东方明珠电视塔, hug – 拥抱 province – 省

Google Docs link here.
Human Bingo Activity Sheet

NOTE - Another one of my lessons that I'm offering for free (from my TpT store Clever Fox Lesson Box) that is very similar to this but includes an interactive PPT game, 16 different bingo card printables and two worksheet printables can be downloaded here. Or if you want to read about it first and see some pictures here. YES it really is totally free for all that. Reviews appreciated but not compulsory :-)

Class  Lesson Plan

• I usually fill a 45 minute class by beginning with a short PPT showing photos from my summer vacation.


• Short discussion about what they think I did during the vacation, based on what they saw from my photos.


• Tell them that to find out what everyone else in the class did for the holiday, we will play human bingo and explain how to play. I begin by seeing which student can get one complete line of 5 squares (with different students names....definitely cant stand and talk to one person putting their names in all the squares) and then just let them try to fill the whole grid.


• Obviously they must spend the class walking around and mingling to find the information they need.


• With the last 10 minutes of the class I like to get the students to sit back down and we will call out some of the activities and call out the names of students who DID those particular things.

Hints: Depending on the size of your classes and the amount of students you teach, you may wish to use the bingo sheet in different ways. If printing is not an option as you've too many students, you could write the grid on the board or project it on a smart board....then get the students to copy the grid on their own paper. Another option is if you can get enough bingo boards printed and laminated for one class, use whiteboard markers and re-use them for all of your classes.

Good luck, welcome back and most of all....have fun!

Photo Credit: Robert Couse-Baker via Compfight cc