Baamboozle - it's motivating, provides instant feedback and can work on all 4 language skills!

 Hi, everyone!

I'm back with another great resource and example activity for you! This time, we'll be looking at the resource Baamboozle and how you can create awesomely motivating games for your students! This does require an account but it's free and easy to set up. While you can always search for pre-made Baamboozles, I prefer to make my own question sets, as I can ensure that these align 100% with the vocabulary and grammar my students are working on in their textbooks. I also create pictures to go with each question so that it's highly visual and there's no room for confusion. Here's what the questions look like:

When you finish making a question set, you're ready to play! Just click on play, then decide how many teams you want, if you want power ups or not (similar to quizzizz) and then begin! The following game board will come up:

You can choose to display more questions so that there are more numbers to pick. I like to have students work in their teams and have each team, when it's their turn, pick a number. They then have 1 minute to talk in their teams about the answer and (in the case of 3rd grade or higher) write down their answer on a mini whiteboard. The question initially looks like this: 

I include the picture of strawberries to reinforce the vocabulary and the boy with the thumbs up indicates that we're looking for an affirmative answer. Once the time's up, I spin a spinner to pick which team will answer. Once they do, we check: 

If they have the answer correct, they get a "point". If not, we correct the answer together on the board. Then we go back to the numbers screen and that team gets to pick the next number. Rinse and repeat. 

I cannot understate how much my students LOVE THIS GAME. I said "points" in quotes above because, inevitably, when we finish the game, they never even ask who won! They just love it intrinsically because they're having so much fun! 

On a personal note, I'm quite proud of coming up with such a simple yet effective game: it's so easy to make and it works on reading, listening, writing AND speaking! Below, I've shared the link to this particular game but I have many more made! Let me know if you like the idea and if you'd like to have more links!

Baamboozle: Foods (Do you like... Yes. I like. No. I don't like.)