Suppose That

This works well as a fluency activity

1. You are the black sheep of your family. Explain to us why.
2. You won a motorcycle and you are planning to embark on a voyage. Explain where you go.
3. You arrive face to face with a person who you owe 100 dollars to. What do you say?
4. You help an old woman across the street. It turns out that she is a magician. To thank you, she offers you four wishes. What do you ask for?
5. You arrive home at midnight, you open the door and ......

Getting to Know a Little More about Your Classmates

The teacher gives every student a piece of paper on which they write a sentence about their personal life. This sentence can be about school, family, music, friends, the last vacation, etc. For example, "I went to the beach last vacation" or "I always study for my exams" or "I have two brothers" etc. When they finish writing their sentences they fold the paper and give it to the teacher.

It is very important to tell students before writing the sentence that the information they are going to write is "a secret" and not to show it to their classmates. If they have a question about something, they should ask it to you instead of a classmate. Tell students to write their names on the papers.

After collecting all the papers, ask the students to write the numbers from one to 10 (or 20, depending on the number of students you have in that moment in the classroom) in their notebooks. After that, the teacher reads the sentences in random order (without saying the name of the student), and the students write the names of the people they think wrote sentences.

After reading all the sentences, say the question number and read the sentence again for each piece of paper and ask the students to name who they thought wrote it.

Then tell the students the name from the student who wrote that sentence. Students should write (C) for correct guesses and (I) for incorrect guesses.

This is one way for students to start knowing a little more about their classmates. 

Human Bingo - Getting to Know You Activity

Have the students divide an 8.5" x 11" paper into 9 squares (two vertical lines / two horizontal lines. The middle square is the "free" space. Next, put a list of 5 questions on the board (these can vary in difficulty). For example:

1. What is your name?
2. Where are you from?
3. How long have you been in the USA?
4. What is the strangest thing you have eaten here?
5. (they make a question)

The students must then interview 8 different people in the class to fill in the bingo page. Each square on the paper represents one person's answers. When they have written all the answers from one person, they go on to someone else until all of the boxes on the paper are filled. When everyone has finished, the teacher uses the class list to call off names. For example, if the teacher says, "Who has Rodrigo?", the students who interviewed Rodrigo would then provide the answers he gave to the bingo questions.
It's a fun game that gets students speaking right away. It usually takes a while to complete.

Think Fast

A game for revision (review). It also works well for the last 5 minutes of class

The teacher prepares a list of items for revision e.g. word fields, grammar, facts. In class he/she explains the procedure. Three to five volunteers leave the classroom and wait till their turn has come. The teacher appoints a student to take the exact time and another to take down a tick for every correct answer. No repetitions! (Set up or negotiate rules on pronunciation.) Then the first player is called in.

• Teacher: You have 20 second to name as many things as come to your mind.
• Your topic: Parts of the body / London sights / plays by William Shakespeare / the places in a town / traffic signs / weekend shopping-list / etc.
• Ready, steady, go

Once all volunteers have done their bit, award a small prize (e.g. a sticker) to the winner of the round. 

Then ask the class for additions before you pick the next item. Then pick the next item.
Allow more time (30 or 40 seconds) for longer answers: What have you done so far today? / What did you do last weekend? / School rules: What do students have to do? What are they not allowed to do?, etc.

If this game is played in groups, they should be evenly balanced.

Reviewing Tenses

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:

• Three Sentences:
  • I am a student.
  • I am not a student.
  • Are you a student?

Guessing the Word from a Drawing

• Ask one student to be in front of the class. Give him/her a word that can not be seen by other students.
• He/she will draw (on the blackboard) a picture expressing the concept of the word.
• The rest of the class have to guess the word.
• If you are keeping score, the one who drew the picture gets the point if the class can guess the word.

Fold-over Stories

This is an old favorite. Give each student a sheet of blank paper. Write the following words on the board in a vertical line: WHO, WHAT, HOW, WHERE, WHEN, WHY. Explain that everyone will be writing a sentence story. 

Write an example on the board, explain, asking for suggestions.

1. Tell them to write someone's name at the top of their paper, i.e., their own, a classmate's, the teacher's, a famous person that everyone knows; fold the paper over in half once so no one can see it, then pass the paper to the person on their right.
2. Write on the received paper what the subject did (suggest funny or outrageous actions), fold it over and pass it on to the right.
3. Continue to write one line, how they did it (adverbs), fold and pass; where-pass; when-pass; and last of all, why (because...) and pass it one more time.
4. Have the students unfold their stories, and read them silently. Help anyone who cannot read what the others wrote, or doesn't understand.
5. Ask one student at a time to read "their" story aloud, or turn the stories in for the teacher to read. Funny!

Headmaster Game

Have each student take out a piece of paper and their dictionary. Write on the board:

You are the new headmaster of this school. You have two years to make this the perfect school. You can have as much money as you want, but you must spend it all in 2 years.

• What changes would you make immediately?
• What changes must be gradual?
• What would you do to make it a better school?
• What changes would you make?

Be specific. For example, don't say hire better teachers. You must say how you would find better teachers or what kind of teachers you would hire. Also, remember you must think like a headmaster, not like a student! Making school easy and letting the students do no exams or homework will not make parents happy!

Give the students 15 minutes to work alone. Then put them in groups of 3-5 with a leader to organize their thoughts. Each group's leader will give its "report" to the other students during the following class period.
If your students have a small vocabulary you can help them out by listing on the blackboard areas of discussion: teachers, buildings, classrooms, activities, dorms, lunchrooms,curriculum, sports, playground, library, bathrooms,schedules,music, art,etc.

This is a great activity for all ages. We always run out of time!

Vacation Cards

For this activity you will need a deck of cards, and an imaginative theme that could be crafted into some sort of story. For example, I choose "send the teacher on a vacation". On the board or overhead projector make a list like the following. (You could ask your student for imput.)

• A-exciting
• 2-depressing
• 3-expensive
• 4-heroic
• 5-romantic
• 6-fantastic
• 7-sad
• 8-almost fatal
• 9-cheap
• 10-dramatic
• J-happy
• Q-wierd
• K-change one option

Prompt the students a little to get them started; perhaps offer a beginning to the story. They then must continue making an oral story by drawing one card and continuing the story along those lines. For example, if they get 4, then the teacher/protagonist must do something heroic or some kind of heroric event must occur. If the students draw a K (or whatever card you stipulate), then they can change one option. This seems to help keep the momentum in the game. Continue through all cards, with the stipulation that the story must be concluded by the end of the deck. Obviously there is a lot of room for variation here. Your word list and theme could be related to your unit of study. 

My students really enjoyed this game; it is most interesting if you personalize it and insert yourself or a student (assuming he/she wouldn't mind).

Words Beginning with a Given Letter

The teacher chooses a letter from the alphabet. Then each student must say a word that begins with that letter. If a student repeats a word that has already been said, then he/she is out of the game. The game ends when only one student remains. That student is the winner. In high level classes students lose if they say a past form of the verb. Example:see-saw.

You can increase the difficulty by adding a timer. Only allow each student 5 seconds to think of a word.

Taboo

This game is a simplified version of the board game "Taboo".

Before class, create several index cards. On each card write one word in a large font with a circle around it, and underneath write 2-4 related words in a smaller font. The goal is for students to get their teammates to guess the circled word. They can say anything they like to try to make them guess, except for the words written on the card.

Divide the class into groups of two, and write each group on the board to keep track of points. Place a desk in the front of the room facing the class, so that someone sitting it has their back to the board and can't read it. Place another desk in front of it, so the teammates are facing eachother.

Pick a team to go first, and have them choose a card. Have the teammates decide who will guess and who will talk. The guesser sits with their back to the board. On the board, making sure the guesser can't see, write the circled word as well as the other taboo words. The talker then has to try to make their partner guess the circled word without saying it, or any of the other words. After they guess it have another group come up. When all the groups have gone, do it again and have the teammates switch roles.

My students really enjoy this game, so much so that they often give the guesser clues even when it is not their team! It's a great way for students to practice forming sentences, and it forces them to use words and structures they might otherwise not use.

Digital Camera Scavenger Hunt

This game may require students to leave the classroom depending on how you set it up.
Make a list of things students must take photos of. Then put your students into teams, each with their own camera and have them go out and take the photos. The team that comes back first with all the photos is the winner.
Some ideas for lists are:

• Bus, taxi, car, bicycle, etc.
• Restaurant, post office, mail box, traffic light, etc.
• In the classroom: pencil, pen, eraser, blackboard, etc.
• Around the school: principal's office, copy machine, cafeteria, etc.

For further review of vocabulary, have the students look at all the photos and identify other things that appear in each photo.

Crazy Story

This is an activity that will make your students speak in class and be creative.

• Ask students to write a word on a piece of paper and tell them not to show anyone. This word should be a verb (or whatever you'd like to rewiew).
• The teacher starts telling a story, then stops and chooses a student.
• That student will continue the story and must use his/her word. This student then chooses the next student to continue the story.
• The last student must end the story.
• After the story is over, the students then try to guess what words each student has written on his/her paper. The student who guesses the most words wins the game.

Catching up on your ABC's

This game is short and simple.

Write the alphabet on the board. Throw a bean bag to someone and say a word begining with the letter A. This person must catch the bean bag, say a word begining with the letter B and then throw it to another person This third person says a word begining with the leter C and so on.

Obviously the game is meant to be played fast. If played with higher level students you may not want to write the alphabet on the board. There are many ways to change the game to make it adaptable to your level of students.

What's the Meaning?

You, the teacher, may need a dictionary do this activity.

• Choose a word which is long, difficult, and unknown to the students, a good word to begin with is: warmonger.
• Without using a dictionary, your students write down a definition. (They can work out the definition in groups of three).  Allow them a few minutes to think and write.
• Collect the definitions and read them aloud.
• When you have finished reading, they will have to vote which of those is the correct one. (It doesn't matter if none of them is the correct one) 
• After they have voted and none of the groups guessed the meaning you read the correct one aloud.

The idea of this game is to let students be creative and practice writing skills.
Then you can have the students to discuss their writings.

Spelling Contest

First, if you have a large class you have to divide it in 2 teams, then the teacher says a word or a sentence depending on the level for the students to spell.

Students should spell these correctly with not even one mistake. The team that has more points is the winner

Pictionary (Game 1) - Charades (Game 2)

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). 

Sentence Race

A good game for large classes and for reviewing vocabulary lessons.

1. Prepare a list of review vocabulary words.
2. Write each word on two small pieces of paper. That means writing the word twice, once on each paper.
3. Organize the pieces like bundles, 2 bundles, 2 sets of identical words.
4. Divide the class into 2 teams. get them to make creative team names.
5. Distribute each list of words to both teams. every student on each team should have a paper.  Both teams have the same words.
6. When you call a word, 2 students should stand up, one from each team. The students must then run to the blackboard and race to write a sentence using their word.

The winner is the one with a correct and clearly written sentence.

This is always a hit with kids. For more advanced students, use tougher words.

Paper Airplane Game

Draw a target (with points - like a dart board) on the white board or use a cardboard box in the middle of the room.

Then, students make paper airplanes and launch them after they answer your question in the form of a sentence. I don't except my beginners/low intermediate students to form complete sentence so I help them to form correct sentences. To my surprise they will repeat the sentence several times (while I'm helping them) just so they can throw their airplane.

For beginner and low intermediate classes, I recommend formulating questions that lead to 1 or 2 types of answers.

This allows for better memorization. For example, use CAN/WILL questions and write the beginning part of the answer on the board "I can/will...".  I recommend giving a prize to make the target points mean something, thus peaking their interest.

Secret Code

I sometimes give instructions to my students written in code that they have to interpret before completing tasks. I've used this at various levels:

Here's an example: to revise alphabet and simple present verbs/vocab.

• ·        Tell students the code e.g. each code letter represents the letter that comes before it in the alphabet ‘a’ is ‘b’, ‘m’ is ‘n’, 'dbu' is cat etc. 
• ·        Then they decode their message and do the task: 

o   xbml up uif cpbse - walk to the board 

o   kvnq ufo ujnft - jump ten times

To make it more difficult, I've...

• ·        Used more complex codes,
• ·        Let them work the code out for themselves,
• ·        Have not defined where words end,
• ·        Have given more complicated tasks or vocabulary
• ·        Or given them half an instruction which they must decode and then find the classmate with the other half of their task information.

This activity can be used to review or practice vocabulary or structure or simply be a different way to introduce the topic for the day's class - each student gets one or two words to decode and then the class work to put all the words together.