Free Blockbusters Powerpoint Template.

Blockbusters was a game show made for children in the United kingdom. It was incredibly popular as was its host Bob Holness. It was both educational and fun, and its gameplay translates very well to use on a PowerPoint for all manner of subjects. With Making English Fun being an English Site, we have our Blockbusters PowerPoint game to help teach students English.

Blockbusters on PowerPoint is a great way to test knowledge across a wide range of subjects, we love using it in out English Classrooms to both as a teaching aid for phonics and vocabulary, and also as a consolidation tool for higher level students of English.

However, the blockbusters template is fully editable and free to use for educational purposes so you can, relatively easily, change it to make your own questions and answers and you can access the download from links under the images below.

The game is immensely popular in our classrooms, and is often requested. However, we do STRONGLY suggest that you play through a couple of times on your own PC before unleashing it in a lesson to make absolutely sure you know how it works.

While we have written instructions on this below, often pictures speak louder than words, and videos are thousands of pictures. So we made a youTube video of instructions for the Blockbusters PowerPoint template for you to take a quick look at and learn how to use.

The instructions for students are actually in the game at the beginning ( requires teacher to click of course) so you can go through them with the students so they get the idea of the game before hand.

However let’s put all that in writing in next three sections.

these will cover the following ( its simple we promise you)

• How to play Blockbusters
• Teacher Instructions
• Student Instructions

How to Play BlockBusters

The game is pretty straightforward and is a quiz game where players have to choose a letter on the game board (see the images below) and answer the question under neath.

• This question is started with “What B(or whatever letter) is ……
• The answer to the question will start with the letter. ( this is what makes it such a great game for ESL and Native English Students.
• If the layer gets the question correct the letter block will turn their color.
• Their aim is to form a complete colored line either left to right ( Bue team) or vertically (Red team) and join up the colors along the top and bottom.
• Whoever is the first to do so will be the winner.
• It is possible to choose letters and try to block the other team

there is a cool hand dance at the end to copy ( we will link the YouTube of that – but it was the 80s so excuse both the quality of the video, and the the hairstyles!) We do try to get our students to do this if they win, with varying levels of success.

Teacher Instructions

Now the Blockbusters PowerPoint game is not your general point and click PowerPoint so we do suggest watch the video above if you are in anyway unsure of how it works, but we will attempt to explain here as well.

• When launching it it will show a screen of letters, this is the opening screen and you will need to manually click to get to the instructions (editable by the way)
• it will also play the theme tune once these have been completed ( so watch volume levels)
• Then students can start to play, so split into teams and ask one team member to choose a letter, it is better if you control the actual clicking as double clicking may revel the answer to quickly.
• Once you click on the letter it will display the question slide. The student can then answer / confer with team etc.
• You then click on the centre area of the screen to reveal the answer to the question. (remember they all start with the letter that was chosen.
• TOnce the answer has been revealed their is a block with a house on it in the bottom right of the screen.
• When you click this it takes you back to the game board, but not the letter is half blue and half red.
• If the answer was correct you can turn it to the color of the answerign team.
• NOTE: the trick here is to make sure you get a correct answer. you can do this by giving them three chances / clues / offering ot to the other team or any other trick form a teachers tool kit.
• Then you can offer the other team to pick a letter – answer a question and color their block.
• the game completes when one team has linked their colors from the side of the board completely.
• When ther eis a winner you there is a music clip and a message that says RED / blue Wins but you have to start it
• On the main letter board there are two colored (red and Blue) blocks with stars. Whichever team wins you can click the color and it will display the winning message.
• If ANY of this is not clear please watch the Blockbusters PowerPoint video above.

Student Instructions

Students often forget the aim of the game, so we have a few points to highlight when you are introducing it. The great thing about this being a template for the blockBusters game is you can duplicate it and make multiple versions (it takes about 20 mins to go through all the questions if you already have them ready.)

• Make sure students remember what color they are ( you may forget)
• make sure they know the aim is to join their colors up from one end of the board to the other( this is OFTEN forgotten)
• Really push and help for correct answers, while this is a competition its also a lesson, and students can be hit hard when getting something incorrect in a group setting.
• Remember which are the easier questions to give to the less able students, it is a great confidence booster to get something correct in a team.
• it is up to you if you get them to do the Hand dance/Jive at the end!

Blockbusters PowerPoint Template Downloads.

We have a few of these (all linked below) in case you don’t have time of the inclination to edit them. We have put them all in a zip file

See under the image below for the actual link. ( apologies its small ( we are working on that!)

We have # versions in the Zip file linked below, remember the name of it when you download it. The three version are as follows.

• BlockBusters Trivia
• BlockBusters ABC
• Blockbusters Riddles

Using the Blockbusters Powerpoint in an English Classroom.

We have used this for years, and we mean over a decade, as its great for all levels of English abilities.

Having the questions have a clue of the first letter is an immense help to ESL students, but also for Native and more advanced students if you are scaling up the difficulty when you edited the template.

We have had students actually ask to take the game home to play with their parents.

Conclusion

There are many Blockbusters PowerPoint templates out there, we just happen to like this one the most and have adapted it for English classrooms. However you use it it will work great, and it is a superb teaching aid and consolidation tool.

We have a couple of links to some others in case in the million to one chance you don’t like this one! Including one on Prezi if you are much more up-to-date than we are!

• https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/blockbusters-game-in-powerpoint-11276933
• https://prezi.com/l/blockbusters-game-template-powerpoint/