ESL Games: Wheel Of Fortune!

Materials Needed:

• Deck of specially labeled playing cards
• Blackboard (to keep score)

Instructions: (I play the game with cards because I’ve not been able to make a wheel durable enough to withstand my students; unfortunately, CARDS OF FORTUNE! is a stupid name for a game.)

Teacher prepares a deck of cards, some given monetary values, some labeled as “Bankrupt!” cards, and the rest marked as whatever special cards you want. I’ve found the most success using a deck of 14 cards broken down like this: 4 $100 cards, 3 $150 cards, 2 $250 cards, 1 $500 card, 2 Bankrupt! cards, 1 Pick Again! card, 1 Lose a Turn! card.The game follows the rules of Wheel of Fortune. Student picks a card from the deck and, if she picked a money card, guesses a letter. If the letter occurs in the sentence, the student gets the amount of money on the card for each instance of the letter in the sentence. So if the previous sentence was written on the board (poor students!), a student drawing a $100 card and guessing the letter “e” would get $2100 for her team.

Helpful Hints:Remember that the number 250 can mean “You’re stupid” in Chinese. Here in Northeast it does, I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere. My students all seem to enjoy geting a big laugh at the expense of whoever drew the $250 card, and no one seems to get their feelings hurt, but it’s just something you might want to be aware of.Additionally, my students get a really big kick out of the idea that the value of the cards is in American Dollars, so you might want to play up the foreign currency aspect of the game.