Last Letter First Letter

Sometimes when my classes finish a few minutes early, and the students are lining up at the door, I have them do the "last letter first letter"game.

I say, for example, "The category is food, and my food is banana."

So the next person has to name a food that starts with "a".

Or, I say, "The category is animals, and my animal is cat."

So the next person has to name an animal that starts with the letter "t".

Those are perhaps the two easiest categories for elementary students.

Sometimes for middle school students I do verbs or adjectives.

Today, however, with an elementary school class, I wanted to do something different, so I said,
"The category is countries, and my country is Australia."

They were lined up at the door, but had a wall map to look at.

The third grade students didn't know it, but almost every country that begins in "a" also ends in "a".

"Australia", "America", "Algeria", "Argentina" . . . we were most of the way through the line of students before I suggested "Afganistan".

The next student--after consulting the map--said "Nigeria".

I knew what was going to happen, yet it was still quite interesting to watch their amused reactions.