General knowledge

Richard Osman’s House of (ELT) Games, part 4: General Knowledge Quizzes

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General Knowledge Quizzes

Introduction

It’s been a while! No excuses – but here’s my latest celebration of my love of TV Quiz show Richard Osman’s House of Games.

Who doesn’t love a good trivia quiz? Even better if we can give it a language twist (revision of lexical fields or past tenses). Here are two games adapted from the ROHoG format. For those of you who don’t know, this is a popular teatime quiz show broadcast five evenings a week on BBC2, in which four guests compete in four games per episode. The final game is always the same, but all the other games are different, and many of them are just calling out to be adapted to ELT classrooms.

The host himself has gone from strength to strength recently, meeting his new wife on the show, and seeing his series of detective novels top bestseller lists worldwide. He’s still fronting his eponymous show, now into its 6th season and past its 100th episode, although I don’t know how much longer we’ll have the pleasure of his company. The show maintains some of its classic game formats, but has also added some new ones – including my current favourite ‘There’s no ‘I’ in Osman’, included here.

I’ve prepared a couple of powerpoint presentations as examples, but the questions could just as easily be written on a whiteboard or read out loud. Feel free to use my examples (please credit me!), but obviously if you want to create your own, it requires a little internet research.


These games can be played by individuals. If you want to play as teams, groups of 3-4 work best, with one individual representing the team in each round. You decide if the ‘reps’ can consult their teams – depending on liveliness and noise levels!

Summary

These are both individual or team quizzes, based on general knowledge topics, and/or vocabulary knowledge.

There’s no ‘I’ in Osman – players try to name as many examples of a given category as possible, without using the ‘forbidden’ letter.

Blast from the past – tense – players answer a trivia question, but have to convert it into the past tense. Exercising both general and language knowledge at the same time – quite cognitively challenging.

Materials

A pdf with instructions for both games can be downloaded, as well as an example of each game, which I’ve left in an editable format, so you can adapt and add to them as you please. Hope you – and your students – enjoy them and let me know how it goes!

quizzes-teachers-instructionsDownload
theres-no-i-in-osmanDownload
blast-from-the-past-tenseDownload

Links

If you want to see how the games are played on the show, you’ll find There’s no ‘I’ in Osman at minute 16’51 here

and Blast from the Past – Tense at minute 2’47 in this episode

Richard Osman’s House of (ELT) Games, part 3: Classroom Whiteboards

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Games for classroom whiteboards

Introduction

This is the third in an occasional series sharing the potential (I hope) of the games in the BBC2 quiz show ‘Richard Osman’s House of Games‘ for EFL classes. In this instalment I share two games which make use of the main classroom whiteboard. In a physical classroom, you need access to a whiteboard or screen and a projector. I’ve only ever played these games with F2F groups, but it should be possible to adapt these to a videoconferencing format using the whiteboard and stickers functions available in platforms such as Zoom. 

As usual, I’ve uploaded an example of each game in an editable ppt format. This means the games can be used as they are, or can be downloaded and adapted to fit the vocabulary and themes that you are presenting or recycling.

Summary

Both activities are ‘pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey’ style games, which involve associating vocabulary and cultural knowledge with images. While the basic premise is very simple, this format allows different variations which can expand the language use beyond a simple test of what students know.

Put your finger on it is a game where students identify the correct option from an image projected on the screen.

Where is Kazakhstan? is a geography-based general knowledge game, played in teams.

I’ve provided instructions for both games on one downloadable document and a link to an example of each game in ppt format. I’ve chosen vocabulary and lexical sets that correspond to the context I was teaching, but you can use the ppt as a template to adapt to your own teaching situation and the needs of your learners.

Materials

Whiteboard games: Teacher’s instructionsDownload
Put your finger on it pptDownload
Where is Kazakhstan? pptDownload