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The last letter of the word must be the first letter of the next word.
You will need a ball, ?but a screwed up piece of paper is fine.
The teacher throws the ball to one student and says a word, such as "dog".
The student must reply with a word starting with "G," such as "girl".
When answered, the ball is thrown back to the teacher and it is then thrown to the next
The sequence may then be (for example):
girl, look, king, go, octopus, student ... and so on.
You can have the students throwing to each other.
i.e., student A = "Cat," throw to student B = "Today," throw to student C = "Yes," etc.
Please be warned, you may have some fastball pitchers in the class! |
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Divide the class into even rows.
The last member of each row (at the back of the class) is taken out of the classroom. A "key" letter, word or sentence (depending on level) is given.
The students run back inside, and whisper the "key" to the next student in their row. It is whispered down through the row until the last member writes it on the board.
The first student to write it correctly on the blackboard is the winner! | |
The teacher starts the game by saying a word, such as "Hotel".
For example:
Teacher: Hotel
Student A: Bed
Student B: Room
Student C: Service
Student D: Food
Student E: Restaurant
Student F: Chinese
As you can see, any association is ok.
If the student can't answer (5 second limit) he or she must stand up. The last student seated is the winner.
If the association is not obvious, the student is asked to explain the association.
Here’s a warm-up exercise to wake up a first or second class meeting. Have the students line up by alphabetically order. DON'T
Have the students ask each other their names and figure it out together (In English). Then you check it.
Write the names on the board. Round Two, line up by Last name, alphabetically. Then check.
Other variations. Line up by Birthday, Language, Distance from School, Size of family. Avoid obvious things like physical size, weight, hair color, etc... | |
Divide the class up into teams. Have one
For example, you could have 7 words that start with M, or several words that are parts of the body.
In two minutes (let the other teams watch the clock for you), the student with the paper must try to get one of the students on his/her team to say as many of the words on the list without using the word itself.
One point is scored for each word guessed.
The challenge here with a class full of students who all speak the same language is keeping them from giving hints in their native tongue. Usually, the other teams are vigilant about policing this for you, but when they are lazy,
I can't take credit for coming up with this idea, it came from a book called ESL Classroom Activities. They call it "Just a Minute".
I read a couple of ideas about tic tac | |
Also, I play Wheel of Fortune with my elementary school kids that can read. A great way to review vocabulary and verb tenses that you are studying.
Also, if you can, buy a game of Scrabble (you remember that game you hated as a kid!) It's great.
We play it with our middle school kids and elem. 5 kids once a week. They love it and their vocabulary is always increasing. You can even make a list of all the words made and then either have the students write sentences with them, or look them up in a dictionary, what ever.
My advanced middle school kids are getting really good. They actually beat me last night!
By the way, it's best if you have the kids play in teams of 3 or 4 so that they can work together. Have fun! | |
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THE PICNIC (For Intermediate to Advanced Level Students)
This is a simple game that requires students to generate vocabula
Alicia: I want to bring apples.
Teacher: You can bring apples, Alicia. Alicia can bring apples. What do you want to bring, Marco?
Marco: I want to bring a radio.
Teacher: Sorry, you cannot bring a radio.
If students need a hint after
Maria: I want to bring bananas.
Teacher: Sorry, you cannot bring bananas. Why not ask Barbara to bring bananas?
Usually someone figures out the game. Knowing the secret forces them to narrow their suggestions to words beginning with the same letter as their name. | |
Preparation: On several Post-It notes, write in large letters a single word of recently learned vocabulary.
The activity is easiest with simple nouns, though more advanced students can play it with any vocabulary.
Place a Post-It note on the forehead of the subject who then 'becomes' that item of vocabulary but,
not being able to see the note, does not know what they are.
To find out they must ask the other students in the group who can answer with reasonably helpful replies.
The activity is best played with a class who know each
The teacher should be responsible for distributing the items of vocabulary as sometimes discretion should be shown in assigning vocabulary to students.
It is a fun activity ideal for a few minutes at the end of a lesson.
I’ll write this in MS Word and email it to you when I am online.
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This teaches them absolutely nothing. But it’s easy and they like it. Go to the internet and search for word search puzzle (software) or something like that. It’s easy to find. Then just type in a heap of words that they know and let the computer design a puzzle for you. (You know where you have to find words hidden in a grid of letters?) I have already done an adjective word
search and an adverb word search, so I suppose I still have nouns, etc. up my sleeve. Teams lose a point if, for example, you are doing an adjective word search and they find a word which is not an adjective. | |
| Get them to give you step-by-step instructions on how to do something. For example, I told my classes that I wanted to eat xiao bai cai (one of those Chinese leaf vegetables) for dinner tonight, but I don’t know how to cook it. So they have to help me or I will starve. Pick them up on every omission. After that, I just said, “Well, that’s great, but I have another problem. I can’t cook my dinner until I change the light bulb in the kitchen.” You get the idea. | |
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