Bridge Builder Vong Lor and Natsumi Motoyoshi JHS—Reading, writing, speaking, listening Ohara Junior High School, Isumi

Grade Level and Number of Students: Junior High School, 2nd and 3rd years with at least 4 students per group with several groups (lunch groups work well) Materials: Scrap paper to make numbered cards, blackboard/whiteboard, and chalk/markers Objective: To get the students to make sentences under pressure and have fun doing it. They’ll be making sentences, giving instructions, listening to instructions, and writing said sentences.

Summary: The goal of the activity is to create structurally sound bridges by making grammatically correct sentences under strict time limits. Guidelines for making the bridge will be specified by the ALT and the JTE i.e. a 5 word sentence that contains the word “game,” or a sentence with as many words as possible.

 Each group will have a name, engineers, and a builder. The engineers are responsible for designing the bridge (sentence) and the builder is responsible for building said bridge. The builder will rotate out with an engineer every round so that everyone gets a chance at being a builder.

 Have either the ALT or JTE draw the bridge outline on the blackboard with the construction guidelines in place. Builders are not a part of the designing process; please remove them from the engineers via whatever method you choose to do so with. Once removed, have the person not setting up the bridge get the builders to draw one numbered card to determine the pecking order.

 Once the guidelines are set and the order determined, the engineers have 1 minute to design their bridge. After the 1 minute is up, the first builder has 30 seconds to construct their bridge, relying only on the oral instructions given by the engineers. Continue one by one until all the bridges have been built. Have everyone sit down and both the ALT and JTE will judge the quality of the bridges.

 Rinse and repeat. With each new round, change up the construction guidelines for an added challenge i.e. increasing the word count, using specific grammar patterns, or not using any prompts at all. Keeping track of points and rewarding the winning group is encouraged but not necessary. *Feel free to adapt it to your needs. 3rd and 2nd year middle school students will probably have an easier time with this but with the right students and prompts, this can be done with 1st years.