Last Saturday I held my first ever virtual gaming night in English.
I got the idea a few months ago when a few of my students had mentioned Among Us in classes. I decided to check it out, and the game can be used as a way of practicing English in a way that students get excited about.
If you’d like an explanation of how to play Among Us, you can read my previous blog post on the topic by clicking here.
I knew that students were going to need a lot of practice with the vocabulary and speaking spontaneously, so I created a playing guide. In addition, we practiced individually in classes for 3 weeks leading up to the gaming night. If you’d like to access the playing guide, you can do so here.
Despite preparing my students, I was still a bit nervous for the event. What if my students couldn’t speak in English? What if they had trouble connecting using Discord? What if they switched to Spanish because it was easier? I heard those thoughts run through my head, but I put them to rest and decided to just see how things go.
In the end, only two students were able to play. (I had invited six.) I had also invited a friend who is a former English teacher that knows how to play too, so in the end there were four of us.
How did I set it up?
First off, we all connected on Discord so we could video chat and audio chat. It ended up working out, but afterwards I realized that I probably could have done the same thing using Zoom.
After that, I created a private room in Among Us that I shared with the others, and then they joined. Playing with four people isn’t ideal, so I then made the room public and let others join. This also worked out well because as the host of the room you can kick out and ban players in your room. (I do this from time to time when people have an inappropriate user name or are not being respectful or good sports.)
Once it was set up and we had enough people in the room, we started playing! During the actual gameplay of completing tasks or killing people, we kept ourselves on mute to prevent any sounds or comments to ourselves from giving away any clues. When we went to voting, we all unmuted and talked to try to determine the impostor. Once a person was killed, they were not allowed to talk or give any clues about the impostor.
After each game, we were then back in the original room. As people left I made it public again to invite a few more people. For most games we had between 6 and 8 people, and we played for about an hour and a half.
How did it go?
Overall I’m satisfied with how it went. Despite my students having a low level of English, they were still able to play and participate. They did tell me that they weren’t able to say everything that they wanted to in the exact way they wanted to, but they were able to express their ideas in a basic way.
It was interesting seeing everyone’s personalities when playing. When one of my students was accused of being the impostor, he admitted to it right away and didn’t try to deny it or blame anyone else. I think that he’s a very honest person, but unfortunately that doesn’t work well in Among Us. My friend has only played a few times, so sometimes she wasn’t sure how to do her tasks. I feel like she used that to her advantage when she was the impostor. The other student was very sly, and he tried to blame others when he was the impostor. He also was convinced that other people were the impostor when it was really me, and it was funny seeing how hard he fought to get someone voted out incorrectly. As for me, I tried to maintain my personality the same each time I was a crewmate and impostor. Each time that I was the impostor no one suspected me, and I ended up winning.
One idea that I had didn’t work out the way I had expected. I had created a class with ClassDojo with the purpose of keeping track of each time each student spoke in English or asked a question in English. I was even toying with the idea of giving a prize to the student who spoke the most English since I had found Among Us plushes on Amazon, but I ultimately decided against it. In the end I got so into the game that I completely forgot about keeping track of English; if my students spoke in Spanish I just echoed the comment or question in English for them to repeat.
I’m planning on having another gaming night in the future, possibly with other teachers and their students. In that way my students will need to use English as the common language without being able to rely on Spanish.
Have you used Among Us or any other games like this in your classes? How did it work out? If so leave a comment below and share your experience!
