Stone, Scissors, and Paper in Teaching English

Everybody must be familiar with “stone, scissors, and paper game¸ or it is well known as ant, elephant, and human game in Indonesia. This game is mostly played to determine whether somebody gets punishment or not. This game actually can be applied in teaching activity, particularly in teaching English. This game is very appropriate applied for teaching reading in English classroom. Why teaching reading? Many students feel bored when they are involving in learning reading in English classroom. The teacher uses conventional teaching strategy in teaching reading, it is the teacher asks every student to read every sentence of paragraph then translate the sentence together. Most students tend to feel discouragement toward this learning activity. Consequently, they do not understand the information of the text comprehensively. Therefore, they need fun activity which can encourage their motivation in reading class. “stone, scissors, and paper” will be creative solution for this problem.

The objective: The objective of this game is making students enthusiastic to read English text so that they can easily comprehend the content of the text.

Materials:

1.   Four piles of paper (every pile of paper contains of twenty pieces of paper in which every paper contains one question related to the text the students read)
2. Score and answer sheet.

Group:..............

No	Score	Answer
1.
2.
. . .
20
Total

The steps:

1. The teacher divides the class into four groups
2.  The teacher prepare four piles of paper on his table. (one pile for one group)
3. Ask a one of representatives from four groups to come forward
4. Before take away the top (first) paper from pile, every representative plays stone, scissors, and stone with the teacher. The group gets 15 points if the representative wins the game, 10 points for draw, 5 points for lose.
5. After having play the game, the representative runs back to the group then discuss and answer the question in each group. (the score for every question depends on the result of the representative gets when play “stone, scissors, and paper with the teacher)
6. The group who has answered the first question on the first paper should run back to the teacher, do game, and take second paper.
7.  The fastest group who can answer the questions get bonus 30 score, the second 20, the third 10, the last 5.
8.  After all groups answer all questions, The teacher with the students then count how many scores they get during the game.
9. The group who gets the highest score will get reward, the lowest score, on the other hand will get punishment.

I applied this game in Senior High School students in 2013. The students were enthusiastic involving the whole activities in this game.