Collection of games

Level: elementary and intermediate

Age: any

Group size: whole class

Use: to practise prepositional phrases. (Variant B: also the ‘may’ of possibility.)

Learners turn round and close their eyes while a small object (or several objects) such as a coin, a ring, a sweet, or a small doll is hidden. Questions: Is it behind the cupboard/in X’s pocket/in Y’s desk/in your shoe/under those books? Etc. Each learner should make at least one guess. Statements can be made instead of questions: It’s behind the cupboard/in X’s pocket, etc.

Variants

1. 
   Using tag-questions: It’s behind the cupboard, isn’t it? etc.
   
2. 
   A small object is hidden. Where can it possibly be? Everybody suggests a place: It may be in your pocket/on top of the cupboard/in Tom’s desk/behind that picture/in the waste-paper-basket, etc. A team point for the first to guess correctly, using may. Might or could are also possible. It might/could be in your pocket. Could it be in your pocket?
   
3. 
   Using the past: I’ve just found this button, etc. Guess where it was. It was behind the cupboard/in the drawer of your table/under the vase, etc. No, it wasn’t there or Yes, that’s right.
   
4. 
   Several learners go out of the room while a small object is hidden. They know what the object is. On re-entering the room, each in turn asks a question, naming someone to answer it. This is done three times. Thus if there are six questioners, eighteen different learners are asked a question. The six in front listen carefully to each other’s questions, which they may have planned together before they came in, and especially to the answers. They try to guess where the object is before they finish asking all their questions. Only yes-no questions are permitted, e. g. Is it on anybody’s finger? Is it on the floor? Is it near us? Is it in the teacher’s pocket? It’s in your desk, Peter, isn’t it? and so on. As soon as a successful guess is made, another group (which should include learners who have not had a chance of speaking) goes outside and another object is hidden.
   
5. 
   Hide a puppet, or a cut-out of an animal (e. g.), before the lesson. Say I’ve lost…(naming a puppet), or I’ve lost my cat. Where is he? The learners guess. It’s in your bag outside the room/behind those big books, etc. (For young children.)
   

Whose is it?