APPLYING DOMINO IN CLASS

How many of you know how to play domino? It’s everybody’s childhood game, I guess. It doesn’t need special skills to play this game as far as I know. What you have to do is match the dots here and there. Well, that’s the simplest way I know. There might be other more advanced ways to play domino out there. What I’d like to share here is applying domino game in class.

Actually, you can use domino to teach any levels and any language target. What I did in class was teaching preference. What I did was teaching some expressions:

I prefer ____ to ____

I like _____ better than ____

I would rather _____ than ______

Make sure you have taught the above pattern before you assign the students to play domino. Oya, there are also some target vocabulary that the students must use from the lesson. Such as: interesting, clumsy, informative, horrible, fantastic, etc.

Then, follow the following instructions:

1. Distribute sets of domino cards with words on them to students of two or three.
2. Distribute all cards equally to participants and put one card on the table.
3. First student will produce a sentence saying the preference. For example: I prefer reading newspaper to tabloid because it’s informative.
4. The next student will do the same thing with the next word in the card, and say: I like reading fantasy novels better than watching horror movies.
5. All procedures repeated until the last card. Don’t forget to check students’s use of prefer ___ to since some of them still use prefer _____ than. Or ask the other friends in the group to check and recheck their friends’ sentence.

 

 

Note:

You can modify this domino game into other uses of grammar practice such as comparisons. 

Good luck