Looking for suggestions and tips on RPG/ English teaching courses for kids

[Kol Korran]

Hey folks. A friend of mine who is a long time English teacher intends to expand her courses to include RPGs, and by them teach English. (We live in Israel). I'm looking for any kind of advice you may have to give her. She has never played, but she likes the idea. She believes you learn best by playing, and wishes to create a quality product, one from which the kids will truly benefit. (I think she start with 3-5th graders? when we start learning English in Israel)
I'm looking for advice on anything you can think about, some things of the top of my head:
- What system to use? why? what system to avoid? why?
- What qualities you think will be most important in a game master? why?
- How would you make the game more "Teaching English" oriented? what aspects of the game will you focus on? on what less? how will you encourage the kids to improve their English?
- what is the ideal group size? (considering this should also be a business?)
- what do you think will most draw kids to join? to stay?
- what sort of common pitfalls should the game master be aware of? (dominance in the group? character death?)
- any thing else you can think of?

I may update this later when I get more knowledge from her. I'll send her to this thread as well. Thanks!

[Totally Guy]

The only RPG I've ever read that has (presumably American) educational standards printed in the back is Project Ninja Panda Taco. It's a GMless game about comic book style super villains in the vein of Despicable Me.

In this game you get into a group of 4 to 6 players and make Mastermind and a Minion character each. Each scene a Mastermind explains the current step their plan for taking over the world, another explains how they will stop them and they both say what the other player's minion characters would get if they helped. The minions explain how they would help. Dice are rolled but mechanically it's very simple. The main skill you use to play well is describing new and appealing content that progresses the game and assessing your preference for the direction that other players have proposed.

It's all talking about a variety of odd concepts which I think would be interesting when used as a language learning tool.

I brought this game to the UK GitP meetup and it was my highlight of the day!