I have recently been writing about activities that encourage students to make decisions and choices. In this post, I want to continue that theme and talk about mazes.
Svetlana Kandybovich from ELT-cation and Miguel Míguez from On the same page ELT have both written about mazes in the last few months. Svetlana wrote the post the a-maze-ing game, in which she describes using a maze as a low-prep activity to practice speaking and vocabulary. Miguel wrote pathways to accuracy, where he uses a maze to map out the lyrics of a song. As the students navigate through the maze, they learn lyrics and grammar structures related to a song.
Both very interesting activities. They had me thinking what I could do with mazes, but I left the thought in the back of my mind as a project for another day.
Then I saw this tweet.
Excellent activity! Would be great to have a maze generator for such activities:)@onthesamepagelt @tekhnologicblog https://t.co/gIhIsQDFUG — Svetlana Kandybovich (@ELT_CATION) January 21, 2017
Well, there are several online resources that can be used to generate mazes and if you do a quick google search you will find sites such as mazegenerator.net.
Useful links for Mazes: The Spending Maze on the Teaching English – British Council website. The Holiday Maze on the Teaching English – British Council website. Maze Craze on ESL Café’s Idea Cookbook
I decided not to create a maze generator, but to return to the idea that I had put aside a few months ago. I decided to create a Maze Game.
This is what I came up with.
Screenshot of the Maze Game. Click on the image to download the file or click on the link below.
Download the Maze Game PowerPoint
I created a 25-question quiz game. Each question is represented by a numbered-square that block a path or doorway in the maze. In order to navigate the maze the students need to answer a question or complete a challenge.
How to play the Maze Game
Divide the class into groups of no more than six students.
Ask the students to choose team names and determine which team go first.
The red arrow is the starting position of the game.
View of the Maze Game as it is seen projected on a surface.
Ask the first team to choose which way they want to go. If they choose number 1, they will walk down the corridor. If they choose number 2, they will turn right through the doorway.
Click on the numbered-block the team has chosen and a question will appear on the screen.
Once the question has been chosen, any team can buzz in to answer.
If the team answers correctly, click on the question to reveal the answer.
If the team answers incorrectly, allow the other teams to answer.
You can click on the answer or the return arrow to go back to the maze.
If the correct path was chosen, the numbered-block will disappear. If an incorrect path was chosen, the numbered-block will shake but remain.
The team the answered the question gains control of the maze and can choose the next block. Will they choose number 3 or number 4?
The goal is to reach the star in the top-right hand corner of the maze. The team that answers the last question and collects the star can be awarded bonus points for being the team to finish the maze.
This PDF shows the Maze Game solution.
Editing the Maze Game
Screenshot of the unedited question slides. Write your question and answer on each of the 25 slides.
There are 26 slides in total. The first slide shows the maze for the students to navigate. The following 25 slides are question slides. Each question slide is linked to one of the numbered blocks from the maze.
Write a question and answer on each slide. If you have written a challenge instead of a question e.g. ‘Introduce yourself,’ there won’t be an answer. You can write a grammar structure in the answer box as a hint or you can leave the answer box blank, because you can navigate back to the maze using the return arrows.
Do you have any suggestions for using Mazes?
Please leave a comment if you have any ideas you would like to share or if you have any questions about the template.
Thanks for reading and take care!
You may also like to read:
Two recent PowerPoint games that also present choices to the class.
The Mystery Door Game is a fun way to get students involved in their own education by providing opportunities to make choices about what they are going to learn or do. This activity can be used to choose topics of discussion, choose activities, choose a challenge, or choosing a reward.
I recently wrote a post called A or B – Can you guess correctly? This game encourages students to explain the reasons behind their ideas and if there is disagreement in their groups, they have to learn to persuade their peers.
The Maze Game was designed with Microsoft PowerPoint 2016. Animations and sounds may differ when opened in other presentation software.
Microsoft® Office® is a copyrighted product of the Microsoft® corporation. All images are for educational purposes only.
The template is free to download and it is intended for educational purposes only.
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