Latinum Bellum

This card game, unlike the others in this blog uses actual playing cards.  Also unlike the others,  it is a relatively new addition to my card game repertoire.  I learned it from Jill Jackson,  the resourceful Spanish teacher at my school who also told me about Latin basketball and several other great activities on this site.  It worked very well in my class; rules and play are such that I see no reason why it won't continue to work well for many levels. 

This game, like Stercus works well to help students learn small chunks of material,  - vocabulary or phrases of any level.  It is best played in small groups of two or three students. 

What you need:
You need one deck of regular playing cards for each group of students.  Collect up all the old decks of playing cards you have lying around your house and then go to the Dollar Store or the local Job Lot for more. You also need a worksheet divided into four columns - hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs.  List each of the cards along the left-hand column and square it off to create a grid.  In each square, there should be a word or phrase that you want students to translate or say in Latin. Below is a picture of one that I created. The full size version of this is also in the Card and Board Game Google drive folder.

For words written in English, students must say the Latin and vice versa.  I wrote this worksheet to help students practice prepositions and ablative endings but just about any small chunk of information can be placed in the grid.  

Pre-Game Preparation:
Divide your class into groups of two or three.  Give each group a deck of cards and each person one of these worksheets. You may also want to create and hand out a key - one per group.  It's not always necessary to create a key because often the students can come up with the correct answer by discussing it among themselves.

How to Play:
One student deals out all the cards to the players in their group.  Then, simultaneously, like the card game, War, all the players turn over a card.  The student with the highest card has to find the question on the grid that corresponds to their card and say the correct answer.  The worksheet in the drive was used for preposition practice.  If the phrase is in English, then students needed to say the Latin and vice versa. If he or she answer correctly, then they get all the cards.  If he or she gets the answer wrong, then the person with the next highest card gets to answer and subsequently gets all the cards if they get it correct.  If this person gets it wrong , then the person with the third highest card has a shot. If no one in the group gets the answer right, then  everyone turns over another card on top of the one that they played.  Again, the person who turned over the highest card answers the question.  If he or she gets it right, then they take all the cards. Play continues until one player is out of cards.  The winner is the player with the most cards. 

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