This is my latest addition to my remote / online teaching game repertoire: a game for practicing irregular verbs. It is, like many games I’m working on at the moment based on something I used to do way back in the day with an OHP (overhead projector – younger teachers ask your parents) and which you can do in a pinch by drawing a square grid on the board and having different coloured board pens, but I find this more satisfying – and obviously it works better online than board pens and a whiteboard!

Click the link to try it out: Crossboard

You can play it with two or three teams and the objective is for each team to get from one side of the board to the other by connecting tiles. Obviously only one team can achieve this, and whoever does manage it gets a 100 point bonus and automatically wins the game. However, the other team(s) can block them off and cause a stalemate, in which case the winning team is the one with the most points. Points are won for winning a square but you also get bonus points for each connection one of your tiles has to another one of your tiles. In theory therefore, if you have one tile that is surrounded by six of your other tiles, the one in the middle is worth 17 points.

There three end points – either a team successfully crosses the board; or all the tiles are won; or the teacher clicks the “end game” button. If you are short of time or the students are getting a bit bored of it, this is the escape button!

There are three levels – Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced. Each level has a range of irregular verbs appropriate to that level – I don’t think there is anything too esoteric in the Advanced section! You also have the option of choosing whether to practice only Past Simple forms, or only Past Participle Forms, or both. Your choice will obviously depend on what you are teaching.

One note – currently the game does not display the answers. This is because at the moment if a team gives an incorrect answer the question goes back into the deck and could potentially come back up again later. If however I get feedback asking for the answers to display I can easily change that, so let me know.

I have tried it with a couple of classes so far in what I will call “limited alpha testing” – it’s done well enough for me to be confident sending it out there – but I welcome feedback, so do comment below if you think anything needs changing!

Have fun!