To enrich the learning of adjectives and adjective agreements, students engage in a good game of 'Whodunnit' or 'Qui l'a fait?'!
The Whodunnit game is organised in 3 parts:
1. Students complete a suspect profile
2. The class plays a Whodunnit game
3. Individual feedback collected by students
The whole activity covers 2 lessons, as you will need to collect the criminal profiles to create the Whodunnit game for the following class.
Students listing details from each 'recherché' profile hung around the classroom.
- The suspect profiles
To practise physical and personality descriptions, get the students to draw a criminal and give a description. Depending on the level of the class, you can organise the profiles in different levels based on what you wish to test for.
For my Year 8's, I would provide space for dot-points against different categories, e.g. hair, eyes, personality. For Year 10's, I would ask students to write a paragraph describing their criminal.
You can access some examples here:
Collect the profiles from students at the end of class. Provide written feedback to students on the profiles, and decide on the "criminals" for the game. For a class of 25-30 students, choose about 5-6 student profiles as the criminals. Make sure the descriptions are varied and creative or targeted to vocab you want students to focus on. You will use these descriptions to create the 'dossier de police', the police suspect file, which you will give students to complete the game and work out the criminals during game play.
2. 'Qui l'a fait?' game setup and play
Hang each profile on the walls. Begin the lesson by playing the 'Pink Panther' tune as students are walking in to the class - creates the investigator tone!
Go through the game instructions with students, either in French or English depending on how immersive your lessons are. The instructions for students are:
- You are a private detective (individual work) / Tu es detective privé (travail individu)
- Write down the details found on each profile (be precise) / Écrire les détails de chaque profil (sois précis)
- Once the details sheet is filled, collect the police witness file from your teacher / Quand la feuille de détails est remplie, prendre le dossier de police de ton prof
- Use the clues/statements to find out the criminals / Utiliser les indices pour trouver les criminels
- When you have the criminal names, go see your teacher! / Quand tu as les noms des criminels, aller voir ton prof!
Here is an example of the details sheet and police witness file. Change the detail boxes and descriptions based on the level of your students.
3. Student feedback
At the end of the game, ensure that students collect their original profiles to ensure they receive individual feedback. You will also need to create an extension task for those students who complete the game quickly! Some students love these types of game a lot, and they are not always your top performing students. There is also lots of laughs and chatter as students ask each other questions about the profiles.
Have you tried this Whodunnit game? Let me know how it goes in the comment section!
I like the idea! However I don't understand to first step of the game: students write down the details found on each profile on the details sheet? Do you display the 25 profiles on the wall (given you have 25 students) and ask your students to copy the description of each of everyone of them? That would take for ever... or do you choose about a dozen to display - but then the students whose profile have not been used might feel let down ? Thanks :)
ReplyDeleteThat's correct! It takes about 30 minutes for students to collect the information they need, but they have to recognise the select information. For example, the details sheet will have categories such as 'eyes', 'hair', 'other adjectives' etc. depending on the lexical items you wish to focus on. It's a focused reading comprehension, in a sense.
DeleteThe collection of info + deciphering the police witness file takes approx. 40-50 minutes for students to complete. It is a rich task.
Thanks, Katerina, this is great! I'm going to try it with my year 10s by giving structured sentences to integrate relative pronouns "qui" & "que". Merci!
ReplyDeleteSuper idée!
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