Some time ago I made a concentration game using PowerPoint and put the template here on this blog. The template doesn’t have any content, but you are welcome to take it and add your own content. You can download it at: Concentration Template.
From time to time, I check the stats for this blog and not long after creating the Concentration game, I did just that. When I check the stats, I can see several things: how many hits there have been, the referrers, the links that have been clicked, and the search engine terms people have used. One day, I noticed that someone found this blog by using the terms “cause and effect concentration.” I thought this was a great idea and since one of the rhetorical patterns we work on in my writing class is cause and effect, I have made just such a game.
I use it to do two things:
- help students clarify their understanding of what cause means and what effect means
- practice writing logical sentences (with correct punctuation) that use the following words and phrases:
- as a result
- that is why
- for this reason
I chose seven words and phrases because this is the number of pairs in the game. I did not use therefore and thus because these words are usually only used when writing about logical conclusions in math and law and would not fit any of the sentences in the game.
The game worked very well. I wrote the above words and phrases on the board and broke the class into teams. I then explained the game and told the class that the teams needed to do two things.
- First, they had to match two cards. One card would be a picture that represented a cause and the other would be a picture that represented the effect. They were not allowed to take notes on the location of the cards. This is a concentration game after all!
- After matching two cards, one team member would come to the board and use the information on the cards and one of the words on the board to write a sentence of cause and effect. The team could help them, but I would not look at the sentence until it was finished. If the sentence was correct, the team would get a point and another turn. If the sentence was not correct, the next team would have a shot at writing a correct sentence. Once one of the words or phrases on the board was used, I would cross it off to ensure that all of them were used for practice.
Students enjoyed the game and had to work hard to make sure their team’s sentences were logical and correct. The whole class appeared to find mistakes in logic particularly interesting.
Please note that there is one picture that represents surprised and another that represents frightened or terrified. Surprised is intended to match up with the mouse and frightened or terrified is intended to match up with the ghost. Students thought it was funny when I acted out surprised versus frightened and were fine when I explained that I was looking for something very strong for the ghost and not so strong for the mouse.
To open or download the game go to Cause and Effect Concentration Game.
The source for most of the images was My English Images.