Two games where every team answers every item. In ‘El Picu’, four teams write a verb-tense answer within 30 seconds and hold it up together; in the name acrostic duel, teams turn a classmate’s name into past-tense verbs or adjectives against the clock.
El Picu (B2–C1)
- A Gemini-built board (or paper): teams climb a mountain with each correct answer.
- 4 teams, paper and pen; 30 seconds per sentence; all papers up on the signal (no copying).
- Several teams can score per round; a skip button for items that are too hard.
Name acrostic duel (post, B1–C1)
- Word cloud of each team’s names; a spinning wheel sets the category (past-tense verb, adjective…).
- LUCAS → Learned, Understood, Called, Asked, Saw. First to buzz with a correct acrostic crosses a name off the other team’s cloud.
- Doubles as a name-learning game at the start of a course.
Design note (Claude)
The key feature is simultaneous response: everyone retrieves every item, unlike hands-up quizzes where one student answers. That’s what makes a game retrieval practice rather than entertainment (contrast Gamification as pointsification).
Connections
Spaced retrieval is the best-supported technique · Familiarity is not mastery - retrieve, explain, contrast, transfer