In my pursuit of the perfect lesson plan in upper-division Spanish literature courses, I have discovered that the game show approach works quite effectively to get students actively involved in the learning process. It is also an effective way to model teaching methods and techniques that future teachers can later employ in their own classes. I simply incorporate the rules of game shows into the presentation of the material and have the students act as contestants. I should warn you that this requires a tremendous amount of preparatory work, but the positive results justify the trouble.
Students are generally familiar with the rules of the most popular game shows.
I write the questions, so I have complete control over the intellectual content of the class period. Former students who have gone into teaching have repeatedly informed me that they now successfully employ this method in their classes at the high school level. Two game shows I often replicate in class are Family Feud and Jeopardy. When we play Family Feud, I write the title of my list of questions on the board, and underneath the number of responses that are possible. I then write the correct responses on the board as they are provided by the students in the course of the game.