0202682 49785 50 Games for Esl Efl Classroom

Soft balls

ALL KEYSTAGES S L R W V G P

It’s an activity to review topics.

Pupils make a big circle.

The teacher throws the ball saying a topic; the pupil who catches the ball

has to say a word that belongs to this topic and throw the ball again.

Noughts and crosses

KEYSTAGES 2/3 S L R W V G P

The teacher makes a 3x3 square on the blackboard.

The teacher turns nine flashcards round and sticks them on the squares.

The class is divided into two teams: Noughts and Crosses.

A team starts saying a number from 1 to 9.

The teacher turns the flashcard round. If the team knows how the word is

called in English, the teacher will replace the flashcard with a nought or a

cross, depending on the team.

The objective is to put three noughts or crosses in line.

Drawing Dictation


The teacher dictates some words that children have to draw in a sheet of

paper.

Guess the number

KS ALL S L R W V G P

The teacher thinks about a number from 1 to X (depending on the level).

Pupils have to guess the number.

The teacher gives as a clue: “More than two” or “Less than 10”.

Pupil can get the role of the teacher and think about a number.

Back to the board


Pupils get in groups of three.

Two of them can see the blackboard; the other one has his/her back

turned. The teacher writes or sticks a word on the blackboard.

The two children that can see the blackboard have to give clues to the

third one to be able to guess it: “It’s a kind of food”, “It’s sweet”, etc.

Spelling race


The teacher dictates a word letter by letter.

Pupils have to guess the word before the teacher had told all the letters of

the word.

For example: E-L-E-P…. (“Elephant!”)

Simon Says

KEYSTAGE 1 S L R W V G P

The teacher gives an order by saying “Simon says touch your head”.

Pupils have to imitate the order only if the order is told after “Simon says”.

If not, they have to rest without doing anything. If children do the action,

they are out.

The last child left in the game becomes the new caller.

Back writing


Each pupil uses his/her finger as a pencil and writes a word on his/her

classmate’s back. This classmate tries to guess the word.

If he or she guesses it before the “writer” finishes, he/she get three points.

If he or she guesses it after the word has been written once, both children

get two points.

If the words has to be written a second time, they only get one point.

Kim’s game


The teacher shows a list of words (three/four).

Pupils have to memorise them for one minute.

Then, the teacher hides them and they have to write them down.

Through the peephole


The teacher chooses a picture and does not let children see it.

The teacher places five sheets of paper with holes of different sizes over

the picture (the sheet with the largest hole on the bottom and the smallest

on the top).

Children have to guess which picture is only by looking at a small section.

They have to ask “Is it….?” and the teacher answers:” No, it is not” or

“Yes, it is!”.

If anybody does not guess the picture, the teacher removes the top sheet

and the hole is bigger now.

Letter jumble


The class is divided into pair or groups.

The teacher writes some words about a topic on the blackboard and gives

each group a set of small cards where children write each letter of the

words written on the blackboard.

Then they have to mix the letters and then recompose each word. The

teacher walks around checking the words and asking the children to read

out the words.

For older students, the teacher can write sentences better than words

and pupils have to recompose the sentence word by word, stead letter

by letter.

Categories


The teacher draws 4-6 vertical columns across the board. Each column

should represent a theme. Divide each column into five squares of equal

size that represents a question. In each theme there are five questions of

different levels that punctuate from 10 to 50. The class is divided into

pairs or trios. Each group chooses a name.

The first group chooses a theme and number (We would like animals for

20 or Animals for 20) and the teacher makes the corresponding question.

After a short time, if they answer correctly, the teacher writes the name of

the group in the square. If not, the next group can answer it or choose

another one. Play two rounds and the teacher adds up the scores.

Draw, Fold and Pass


The object is to draw crazy people or monsters and afterwards describe

them.

The teacher gives each child a piece of paper. They draw a head and then

fold the page back at the base of the head and everyone passes their

paper to the person on the right. They draw the next part of the body and

fold the papers back again and pass them on again. The drawing game

continues until the feet.

When all the pictures are finished, unfold them to reveal the crazy

creations.

In turn, the children describe the pictures using all the phrases they know.

The theme of the pictures can be changed: vehicles, buildings, etc.

Beetle drive


The teacher draws a large beetle on the blackboard and labels each part

with numbers from 1 to 6.

Divide the class into groups of four/five people.

Children can draw the different parts when they obtain the corresponding

number rolling the dice.

Children who complete the whole drawing the first win. The rest continue

playing until the whole group completes their drawings.

It can be used with other themes such as vehicles.

Two dice can be used in order to increase the number of parts.

Memory


The teacher divides the class into groups of four/five people and give each

group a set of ten picture pairs.

They shuffle the cards and place them face down in a grid form.

A child turns two cards face up and says “This is a shirt and this is a

tracksuit”.

If the two cards match, the child keeps the pair and has another turn. If

not, the child puts the cards face down again and the next child turns over

two cards.

The child who collects the most pairs wins.

Children have to look for opposites, singular/plural, and cards from a

common topic.

Bingo


The teacher can give pupils the grid with the different drawings or can

give them the grid where pupils have to draw six-nine pictures from some

that the teacher shows them.

The teacher puts the pictures in a box and mixes them. He or she pulls out

one and shows it to the children, saying: “This is a bicycle”.

Children who have the drawing cover the space with a counter.

The fist child to cover all the spaces on his/her grid wins and he or she can

become the caller.

The revision box


The teacher uses a vocabulary box. This box must mainly comprise of words on pieces of paper (either verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc..) all said by the learners themselves in previous lessons.

The box with all the words is circulated around the class .Each learner is given a chance to pick a word from which he / she will have to construct a short and grammatical sentence.

Each sentence said is written on the board just as the speaker said it. After 12 to 20 sentences the sentences are analysed to see if they are grammatically correct with the emphasis placed mainly on the word from the vocabulary box.

Correction of the sentences can then be done and learners, again depending on time available, prompted to produce the correct sentences with the same word from the box.

A Story Treasure Hunt


A class selects a well-known fable or folktale. The plot is simplified into a

sequence of events that can be transcribed onto cards with short sections

of the tale on each. Students hide the cards throughout the school or

classroom. A treasure map showing the exact location where all the cards

are hidden, is given to another class (Or, with clues, one card can lead to

the next). Groups of students must find the cards and assemble them in

correct order. The treasure is finding the WHOLE story. Two classes can

trade treasure hunts by putting the stories on two different-coloured cards.

Stop the bus


Put the students into teams of three or four. Draw on the board a table like the ones below and get each team to

copy it onto a piece of paper. Students simply have to think of one item to go in each category

beginning with the set letter. The first team to finish shouts “Stop the Bus!” . Check their answers and write them up on the board and if they are

all okay that team wins a point. If there are any mistakes in their words, let the game continue for another few minutes.

If it gets too difficult with certain letters (and you can’t think of one for each category) reduce the amount of words they have to get. You can say. “Ok. For this round you can Stop the Bus with 4 columns”.

Animals Colours Food Clothes Countries Sports

T Tiger Turquoise Tuna Trousers Tunisia Tennis

Spelling tests


Divide the class into teams and give each team a set of Scrabble letters

(You always get more of the most common letters and not so many of the

least common). Get them to spread out the letters on the table so they’re

all facing up. Then give clues for words you want to test them on, e.g. ‘the

day before Wednesday’, students ‘write’ TUESDAY on the table by

selecting the scrabble letters. ‘What’s this in English?’ – point to things in

the classroom, draw on the board etc. Once students get the idea, ask

one of them to lead the game and give the clues instead of you.

Chinese whispers’


A sentence is whispered around the circle of students. The last student to

receive the message either says it aloud or writes it on the board.

A variation of this is to get the students into two lines (team A and

B) in front of the board, so the first student in both lines is really

near the board and the teams are lined up behind him/her. You

whisper a sentence or a question to the two students at the end of

the line and they pass it down the line until it reaches the students

nearest the board who then have to write the sentence on the

board.

Get rid of it


You need two sets of cards. White cards for the words and another colour

(yellow?) for the questions. Put all questions in a bag or hat at the start of

the game.

Give each student at least three word cards, placed in front of them on

their desks.

Choose one card from the hat and read the question. Students study their

word cards. Whoever has the corresponding word can get rid of it. The

winner gets rid of all his cards first.

Wall dictionary


Prepare a colourful piece of paper which can be used as a background for

the wall dictionary.

Sew 26 pockets on it (or use glue/sticky tape) and label each pocket with a

letter of the alphabet.

Ask the children to prepare sets of letter cards by writing the 26 letters on

some small pieces of paper. They put their letters into the pockets.

We can use this wall dictionary at any time to practise spelling.

For example, divide the class into three or four groups. They listen to

words and then choose letters from the pockets to spell the words.

Rhyming pair game


This activity is a pronunciation and memory game. Split the class into

small groups and give a rhyming pairs set of cards for each group with one

word on each card.

Ask each group to place all of their cards face down on the table. Students

must take it in turns to turn over two cards. They must say the two words

out loud to see if they rhyme. If the two cards rhyme, they can keep them.

When there are no cards left on the table, each student counts how many

cards they have to see who the winner is.

For this activity students need to recognise that some words have a

similar pronunciation even though the spelling is very different.

Show the card


The teacher gives a set of cards with a picture or word using several

minimal pairs for each pupil. For example: sheep/ship, but/boot, bed/bad,

why/way, bean/bin, sleep/slip, pig/big, live/life, tree/three…

The teacher says a word and the students rise up the appropriated card.

The tongue twister game


To practice the pronunciation of difficult sounds.

The teacher writes some English tongue twisters on the board or on pieces

of paper to distribute to students.

The teacher asks them to read the tongue twisters aloud.

Then faster.

Then three times in a row.

Here are some examples:

- She sells sea shells on the sea shore

- A proper copper coffee pot

Sound pictures


To associate pictures with sounds

The teacher asks the children to make a sound picture with sounds which

are more difficult for the class

The children draw an object that has this sound such as 'chair'. Inside the

picture of the chair they can write other words with the same sound such

as hair, wear, scared.

This can be an ongoing activity with posters on the walls which they can

add to. It's a useful way of familiarizing children with some of the sound /

spelling rules. This game also helps students who have a visual learning

style.

Word trees

KEYSTAGE 2/3 S L R W V G P

To practice vowel sounds.

Divide the students into groups.

For each sound under study, provide a cut-out of a large tree.

Write or paint the sound/letter on the trunk of the tree.

Ask the students to “hang” words on slips of paper containing the sound

from the branches of the tree.

Display the accumulated trees on the classroom wall as the term

progresses.

Use them for periodic pronunciation review.

Who’s got the rubber?


To practice intonation

Give out a paper sheet for each student (In one of the sheets it is written

“you’ve got the rubber” in the rest of sheets other classroom objects

“you’ve got the pencil-case”, “…. the ruler”). Explain that someone has

stolen your rubber and they are going to help him to find it. Ask

(exaggerating intonation) one of the pupils “Have you got the rubber?”

and he answers offended and with indignation: “Meeeeee? I haven’t got

the rubber. I’ve got the ruler” (or whatever object). Then you ask another

classmate “Anna, have you got the rubber?” and she answers “Meeeee? I

haven’t got….” And so on this dialogue pattern is repeated till the pupil

who’s got the rubber is asked for it.

Using songs


To practice rhythm, stress and intonation.

Choose a song that has lots of rhyming words in it at the ends of its lines.

Take the rhyming words out of the song and put them on a worksheet or

on the board.

Then talk about how songs often have rhyming words at the ends of lines.

The students listen and attempt to put the words back into the song.

This can be attempted before they listen with more advance

learners.

Telephone role-plays


Put the learners into pairs.

Organise pairs of chairs back to back. If not, ask learners to stand back to

back. This means they cannot see their partners' faces or gestures.

Hand out pairs of role cards, e.g. 1a and 1b, to each pair. Demonstrate

one situation with two volunteers if you wish.

Ask your learners to role-play each situation. As they finish one situation,

take the cards back and give them another.

If you are using these cards as practice, you will need to have

prepared your students with some common telephone expressions

The secret code game


Give out the sweets or lollipops wrapped with the slips of paper. This

paper will have a hidden message which will have to be worked out by

students if they want to eat their sweets or lollipops.

Tell students that each letter used represents the previous letter in the

alphabet ( Note: Z comes before A).

Once students understand, allow them two minutes to work out their

messages individually. The first one to find out the hidden message should

read it out to the rest of the class and carry out the instructions on it.

Continue around the class until everyone has deciphered their messages.

Give help as needed.

Picture dictation in pairs


Give students a list of objects and get them to draw their own pictures

with all those objects in them.

The students then work in pairs.

One student describes their picture to their partner and their partner

draws what they hear.

They then swap roles and afterwards they compare the pictures they drew

with their original drawings pointing out the differences.

Running dictation


It is a very useful activity because it develops the four skills.

Children are divided into groups of four/five people.

The teacher sits down on a chair in the centre of the classroom with some

sheets of paper that contain some written information in them.

A child of each group has to run from their seat to teacher’s seat to read

the information and then, he/she has to come back his/her seat and

dictate what she/he has read in the sheet of paper.

Then, other child goes to look for some more information.

Flapbooks


They are useful to work grammatical structures such as Subject+ Verb+

Complement. It consists on an amount of strips stapled together that can

be combined between them.

Subject I He She It We

Verb play sing makes has do

Compleme

nt

basketball a song a drawing a car a cake

Reading corner


Reading should be an enjoyable activity.

If you have the facilities, make a reading corner.

It should be a quiet and comfortable place where children can sit and read.

When they finished the book, ask them to write a book review that can be

collected in a library file so that students can look at each other’s reviews.

Birthday Wheel


Make a birthday wheel at the beginning of the year and ask students to

check whose birthdays take place each week/ month.

Make a point of playing popular games when it is somebody’s birthday and

singing “Happy birthday to you”.

The Alphabet Pyramid


The pyramid shows the letters of the alphabet in ‘sound’groups:

BCDEGPTV FLMNSXZ AHJK QUW

O RActivities:

- Draw the pyramid on the blackboard and erase some of the letters.

Write the letters you have erased around the pyramid. Ask the class

to place them correctly in the pyramid.

- Draw the pyramid with some of the letters wrongly placed. Ask the

class to identify them and place them correctly.

Secret Codes


Write the alphabet on the board with numbers underneath each letter.

Tell the students to write their names on card in the number code with a

slash between each number. Collect all the cards and give one to each

student at random. The students work out whose name card they have

and stand up when they know those it is.

Other activities:

- Make different codes (numbers from 26 to 1/ shapes and colours

instead of numbers)

- Write names of objects in code. Students work out the name and

touch or say the name of the object.

Happy families


Divide the class into groups of four/five students.

Give four flashcards from a single word family (animals, transports, food,

etc) to each member of the group.

The students look carefully at their cards, then all the cards for the group

mixed together and dealt out randomly to the students.

Students have to recompose their word family by asking in turn for the

cards they need: Have you got the bus?

The “Pen” Game


Write a word on the board.

Then elicit a word beginning with each of the letters.

Ask the children to take a piece of paper and write words on the board for

the children to copy.

Then let the children work in pairs to see how many of the word puzzles

they can complete.

Check the answers with the whole class.

Consequences


Give each child a blank piece of paper. The four basic steps are as follows:

1. They write something, according to the question you give them.

2. They fold their paper over, so that nobody can see what they’ve

written.

3. They give the paper to the person sitting next to them.

4. They repeats steps 1 to 3 with a new question.

Finally, let the children unravel their consequence sheet and read the

description.

Sentence anagrams


Write the words of a sentence on the board in random order.

Uses structures that reflect the language you are covering.

Show the children how to decipher the sentences.

Remind them about capital letters and full stops.

Collaborative class surveys


The responses of the whole class are collected to make a survey display.

Examples: What is your favourite colour/ animal? What colour eyes have

you got? How many people are there in your family?

Hangman


Firstly, pick a word the children know and draw a dash for each letter on

the whiteboard. Divide the class into two teams and have each team call

out a letter in turn. If the letter the students choose is in the word, write

that letter above the appropriate dash on the board. If the letter is not in

the word, write that letter at a different location on the board, and draw

one line of the gallows. Continue this process until either one of the teams

determines the word or until a team is "executed" (i.e. when you have

completed the drawing of the gallows, including the hanging stick man).

Award points to the winning team.

Who Am I?


Paste pictures of popular characters on 4 x 6 or larger cardstock. Call one student away from group.

Show the student a card. (Make sure that the student recognizes the individual on the card.) The student then stands in front of the class and his or her classmates ask questions in order to guess who the student is. Students may ask questions like . . . Are you male or female? Are you a child or an adult? How old are you? When a student correctly guesses who the student is, he or she becomes the next mystery person.Variations: Ask each student to bring a picture of him or herself to class. Make cards for each class using photographs of students in that class.

Thwibbledy-Thwop


A player chooses a secret word. The player must then create a sentence

which uses the word correctly. In place of the chosen word, however, the

player says, "thwibbledy-thwap." For example, if the student chose the

word "car," he or she would then say the following: "I rode to school today

in my father's thwibbledy-thwap." Any student who believes that he or she

knows what word "thwibbledy-thwap" represents should raise his or her

hand. If three students fail to guess the word, the player creates another

sentence using the same word. ("Our new thwibbledy-thwap has four

doors.") Up to three more students may guess, and so on, until someone

guesses the correct word. The student who guesses correctly chooses the

next word

Ring, Ring, Who Has My Ring?


Skills: asking questions about people; identifying people by description

Choose a student to begin. This student steps out of the room. Hand a ring

to another student. All students in the classroom should see who receives

the ring. Call student to return to class. He or she must try to guess who

has the ring by asking various classmates ten or fewer yes/no questions.

Sample questions include... Does a girl have the ring? Is he/she wearing

tennis shoes? Is the person who has the ring wearing something blue?

If the student guesses correctly, he or she gets another turn (limit three).

If the student guesses incorrectly, the student who has the ring becomes

the next player.

I spy


Teacher says "I spy with my little eye something that begins with B".

Students try to guess the object (e.g. "book").

Colours are a good alternative for younger students ("I spy with my

little eye something that is red").

Label It


To familiarize students with names of objects found in the classroom, label

everything with an index card that has the item's name on it. The next

day, remove the cards and go through them one at a time and place them

on the correct item together. The third day let them label whatever they

can on their own. I continue this for a few days. When they are able to

independently label most of the items, I surprise them by having them

labelled incorrectly. Then they have to straighten out the mess.

Adapt this to any noun-based vocabulary list (e.g. types of foods,

body parts, parts of a room in a house, animals, etc.) that you can

post pictures of.

Chair game


Form a circle with chairs. Number of chairs equal to students’ number.

All the pupils sit except the teacher.

He writes a sentence in the blackboard as an example: Yesterday I

watched tv. He explains the children to listen to the sentences. If they

watched tv yesterday, they must change their chair. If not, they must not

move.

The teacher plays with the children, and then the after the teacher’s turn

the pupils begin to tell their sentences.

REFERENCES

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/vocabtry/vocab_activities.shtml

http://www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistant-arc-games.htm

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1979/games.html#index

http://members.tripod.com/~ESL4Kids/index.html

http://www.eslkidstuff.com/Classroomgamesframe.htm

Cant, A & Superfine, W. (1997) Developing Resources for Primary. London: Richmond Publishing

House, S (1997) Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

http://www.eslkidstuff.com/Classroomgamesframe.htm

http://members.tripod.com/~ESL4Kids/index.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1979/games.html#index

http://www.britishcouncil.org/languageassistant-arc-games.htm

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/vocabtry/vocab_activities.shtml

Roth, G. (1998) Teaching Very Young Children. Pre-school and early Primary. London: Richmond Publishing

0202682 49785 50 Games for Esl Efl Classroom

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Transcript of 0202682 49785 50 Games for Esl Efl Classroom