Games: Wordshark: a variation of Hangman

Instead of a man being hung, you can draw a man dangling from a cliff, with the ocean, complete with one ravenous shark, underneath him. When the first incorrect letter is guessed, the man begins his descent toward the shark, who, five or six wrong guesses later, will eat him.

Graphically, I find Word Shark to be more interesting than Hangman. These days, I'm doing full sentences, not just single words. It is a good way for beginning classes to review grammatical models, one letter at a time, while still having fun. And, it gives the teacher an incentive to challenge the students, because it's fun to draw the stick figure being eaten by the shark.

Plus, from a psychologist's point of view, games like Word Shark and Hangman help little children deal with the inevitability of death. I mean, c'mon kids, wake up and smell the coffee. Some day you're gonna be worm chow. There are many ways to die, whether in prison or in Jaws. Imagine this as an ESL dialogue topic: How would you prefer to die?

Name: Roger Fusselman
Email: [email protected]
Location: Taejon, Korea