Pictionary (Game 1) - revamp - Charades (Game 2)

Level:Any Level

Write out series of categories like professions (doctor, bus driver, etc.), animals, foods, actions (fishing, haircut, etc.) then divide the class into groups of 2. One student draws and the other guesses. Next turn, the guesser draws and drawer guesses. This game works best with the arbitrary stop watch (30 seconds). This is designed for one lesson.

Then for another day take the same categories (or create new ones) and play the same game except students, this time, act it out (no speaking or noises).

Can You Find What Is Different?

Level:Easy

Ask a volunteer to go out of the classroom. While the student is out of the room, the other students change their sweaters, shoes, coats and so on. Bring the student who went out of the classroom back inside. He/she has to guess the differences (speaking in English, of course.)

Alphabet Liar Game

Level:Any Level

• Take a pack of letter cards, mixed up. It is better if it is not a complete alphabet, and there are some duplicate cards.
• Deal all the cards out to the players
• Students take it in turns to play cards face down. They must go through the alphabet, starting from 'A', playing one card face down and saying the letters in Alphabetical order.
• Even if they do not have the card to be played for that turn, they must play any card and pretend it is the card they said. Say the sequence has gone A, B. The next player must play a card and say C, even if he has not got an C.
• If any player does not believe that someone has played the real card, he can say: "You're a liar" and turns the card over. If the card has the letter which was said, the challenger picks up all the cards. If it is not, the liar picks up all the cards in the pile. The winner is the first one to finish all their cards.

What's Your Name?

Level:Easy (Raw beginners)

One student sits in the front of the classroom (usually in the teacher's comfortable chair) with his back to the other students. The teacher then points to students in the class and asks "What's your name?" The student indicated must respond "My name is__________" with either his own name or the name of someone in the class. The student in the front cannot see who is speaking. The teacher says to him, "Is it___________?" and he, must say "Yes, it is" or "No, it isn't". If the student in front is correct, he gets to stay there, but if he's mistaken, he changes place with the student who fooled him.

Good Morning Balls

Level: Any Level

1. You have three different coloured balls, (they should be very light weight, samll balls).
2. Get the class to make a circle.
3. Then give three people a ball.
• Red Ball - Good Morning
• Green Ball- How are you?
• Blue Ball - Fine thank you and you?
4. The class members pass or gently throw the balls and the person who receives them says the meaning of the balls.

Air-write

Level: Any Level

One person "writes" letters, words, numbers, shapes etc: in the air and others guess what it is. Can be done in pairs, as a group, along a chain. Can also be played as back-write, that is, writing the letter/word/... on the back of another and they guess what it is.

Karaoke

Level: Difficult

Size:for larger classes

Preparation: choose songs that are easy to understand and somewhat enjoyable.

1. Divide the students up into groups of 4-5 people.

2. Give each group a different song. Have them figure out all the words to the song. Make sure that not just one person is doing the work, but that it is a group effort.

3. Give them the entire class (one hour) to work on it. Next class, have them return to their groups to practice one time.

4. You then have the group as a whole, stand up and sing along with the recording.

Traffic Light Questions

Level: Any Level

This games works especially with adult students who are reluctant to speak about personal issues. Prepare three cards (a green, a yellow, and a red one) with six questions each. The questions on the green card are easy and not personal, and the ones on the red card are more difficult and personal. Each student throws a dice twice. The first time is to decide upon the color of the card (1 or 2 = green card; 3 or 4 = yellow card; 5 or 6 = red card) and the second time is to choose the question.

The Miming Game

Level: Any Level

This is a simple game which requires little preparation. Divide your students into groups of 2 people (there may be two groups or more). Give each group a sentence that includes grammar and/ or vocabulary already practised, and underline the words that should be guessed exactly. One of the students in the group has to mime the sentence and the other has to guess. Of course the other groups will also be allowd to guess, which will create competition.

Who am I?

Level: Any Level

You can use use this with any subject. Write the names of famous people (mixed nationalities) on small pieces of paper. Tape a name on the forehead of each student. The individual student should not see his or her paper, but the others should. Then, like with 20 questions, only yes or no questions should be asked. Perhaps start with yourself and ask "Am I am man?" If the answer is yes, I can ask again, but if the answer is no, it's the next person's turn. Play until everyone has guessed who he or she is! This can be played with nationalities, countries, household objects, anything and it's a gas, especially for adult students!

Guess the Object

Level: Any Level

The teacher prepares cutout pictures that are pasted or taped to index cards. One student selects a card and must describe it in English until another student can guess the object. This is very much like "20 Questions" but instead of the challenge being to ask questions, the bonus is on the cardholder to verbalize the description. The teacher should be careful to select pictures that reflect the vocabulary level of the students. Simple objects, like "baby", "door" or "car" are good for beginners. Later on, more complicated pictures that suggest actions, scenes and relationships could be used, like: "mother bathing child".

Twenty Questions

Level: Any Level

First one member of the class chooses an object, an occupation, or an action which ever you decide. Then members of the class try to discover what it is by asking questions which can be answered by "yes" or "no". For example, if the subject is "occupations" then the questions might be like these.

Do you work in the evenings?

Do you work alone?

Do you work outside?

Whispering Game

Level: Easy

Divide the class into two teams. Line up the players. If there’s an odd number of a player, one can be the teacher's "helper". The teacher or his helper whispers a message to the first person of both group A and group B. The game only starts when both players know the message. Then each player whispers the message to the next player in his group sucessively until the last player gets the message. The team which can repeat the message first and correctly receives a point. Start the game over with the second student of each group becoming the first ones in line.

Grammar games

Something else

Aims:Speaking skill

      Conditional sentences

Level: Intermediate

Time:10-15 minutes

Organisation:Individuals

Procedure: The teacher explains the basic idea of the activity: “Suppose you weren’t you but something else entirely, eg: animal, musical instrument, colour, and city. Just think what you would like to be and why”

Comparing things

Procedure:Present the class with two different (preferably concrete) nouns, such as: an elephant and a pencil; the Prime Minister and a flower; a car and a person (preferably using vocabulary the class has recently learnt). Students suggest ways of comparing them. Usually it is best to define in what way you want them to compare, for example, by using comparatives:

       A pencil is thinner than an elephant.

Or by finding differences:

       The Prime Minister is noisy and a flower is silent.

Or similarities:

       Both a car and a person need fuel to keep them going.

Jumbled sentences

Procedure:Pick a sentence out of your coursebook, and write it up on the board with the words in jumbled order:

early the I week to during have to go sleep

The students work out and write down the original sentence:

       I have to go sleep early during the week   or

       During the week I have to go to sleep early.

If there is time, give a series of similar sentences, and the students do as much as they can in the time. You can use activity to review a grammatical point, taking the sentences from a grammar exercise.

Match the adjectives

Procedure:Write three adjectives on the board. For example:

Important                          dangerous                         heavy

Ask the students to suggest things, which could be described by all three adjectives. For example:

       Student A: A car.

       Student B: A plane.

       Student C: An army.

       Student D: A printing machine.

In pairs, ask the students to jot down three adjectives and as many things as they can think of which those adjectives could describe. Take three adjectives chosen by one pair of students, write them on the board and ask the class to suggest things, which the words might describe. Compare and discuss the pair’s suggestions with those of the class.

Sentence starters

Procedure:Write on the board:

                   Being young is…

Ask the students to call out what they think could be added to this sentence beginning. It there is time, ask the students to work with a neighbour, to select four of the lines, put them in order and then to find a fifth line which they feel makes the writing more like a poem. For example:

                   Being young is being with friends.

                   Being young is losing friends.

                   Being young is taking examinations.

                   Being young is wondering.

Classroom Rules: Must and Mustn't

Level:Easy to Medium

• Prepare small pieces of paper each with either one thing students must do or one thing students must not do.
• Tell the students that they are supposed to form sentences that explain classroom rules.
• Divide the class into groups (of 4 if possible, so that everyone gets a chance to speak).
• Give each group the pieces of paper.

The winning group, the group that finishes first, reads their sentences aloud. (Each student of the group reads one or two sentences depends on size of group.)

It's an easy game and the preparation does not take too much time. You can make as many rules as you wish.

Act Out an Activity

Level:Easy to Medium

This is a game-like activity to teach continous tense. One student simply acts out some activity (e.g.cooking) and the other students guess what that student is doing. The student who guesses correctly acts out another acitvity...

Reviewing Tenses

Level:Any Level

Preparation:

• Print out three sentences (negative, positive, and question) of the tense you want to review.
• Cut each sentence into words.

The Activity:

• Students work in groups.
• Give each group of students words of a sentence and ask them to make the sentence.
• Draw a table on the board and ask students to tick sentences at suitable positiions, positive, negative, or question.
• Ask students to make rules of the tense.

Example: