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.

Battle Ships - A Vocabulary Game

Preparation:
Divide the students in to groups of four or five. Then ask the student to make the name for their ships for example with the names of animals, cities, movie stars or let them find their own favourite names.
Ask them to choose the Captain and the Shooter. The captain's duty is to memorize his ship's name, so he can reply if somebody call his ship's name. The shooter's duty is to memorize the names of the ships of 'their enemies', so he can shoot them by calling their ship's name.

Activity:
Arrange all the captains in a circle, the ships' crews must line up behind their captains. The shooter is the last crew member in line.

The teacher must decide a lexical area of vocabulary, this vocabulary will be used to defend their ships from the attacks. Every students (except the shooters) must find their own words. The lexical area for example, "Four Legged Animals". Give the students 1-2 minutes to find as many possible words as they can and memorize them.

Start the game by calling a ship's name, for example the ship name is "THE CALIFORNIAN". The captain of THE CALIFORNIAN must reply with a word from the lexical area given, for example he says "TIGER" followed by his crews behind him one by one, "COW"; "SHEEP" until it  is the shooter turns and he calls out the name of another ship and the captain of the ship called must reply and his crews must do the same thing. No word can be repeated.

If the captain is late to reply (more than 2 seconds) or his crew can not say the words or a word repeated or the shooter shoots the wrong ship (his own ship or the ship that has already been sunk) the ship is sunk, and the crew members can join the crew of another ship.

The teacher can change the lexical area for the next round.

In the last round there will be two big groups battling to be the winner.

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.

Bang Bang - A Vocabulary Game

Divide the group into two teams. Explain that they are cowboys and they are involved in a duel.

One student from each team comes to the front. Get them to pretend to draw their pistols. Say "how do you say..." and a word in their mother tongue.

The first child to give the answer and then "bang bang", pretending to shoot his opponent is the winner. He remains standing and the other one sits down. I give 1 point for the right answer and 5 extra points if they manage to "kill" 4 opponents in a row.

Editor's Note: Instead of saying the word in the students' mother tongue, it would be possible to use a picture or to say a definition ("What do you call the large gray animal with a long nose?")

Chain Spelling

The teacher gives a word and asks a student to spell it, and then a second student should say a word beginning with the last letter of the word given. 

The game continues until someone makes a mistake, that is, to pronounce the word incorrectly, misspell it or come up with a word that has been said already, then he/she is out. The last one remaining in the game is the winner.

This game can be made difficult by limiting the words to a certain category, e.g.. food, tools, or nouns, verbs, etc.

Bad Fruit: A Shoppers' Nightmare

This is an oral communication activity appropriate for EFL learners in elementary/primary school. (It's optimal for grades 3-6). This game is designed for practicing "shopping" dialogues and vocabulary.

Materials: "produce" and play money.

Object of Game: 

• To accumulate as many products as possible.

• Students are divided into clerks and shoppers.

• The clerks set up "stands" to allow easy access for all shoppers (e.g. around the outsides of the room with their backs to the wall).

• The shoppers are given a set amount of money* (e.g. dollars, euros, pounds, etc.) and begin at a stand where there is an open space.

• Students shop, trying to accumulate as many items as possible (each item is 1 unit of currency).

• Periodically, the instructor will say "stop" (a bell or other device may be needed to attract attention in some cultural and classroom contexts) and call out a name of one of the products. Students with that product must then put ALL their products in a basket at the front of the room. The remaining students continue shopping. Students who had to dump their products must begin again from scratch (with fewer units of currency).

• The student with the most products at the end wins.

• Students then switch roles.

*It is recommended giving students as much money as possible since students who run out can no longer participate.

Alternative play for more advanced students: Clerks set the price of items. Shoppers have the option of negotiating the price. There are two winners in this version: The shopper who accumulates the most products and the clerk who makes the most money.

Toilet Paper Icebreaker

This activity is used as a "getting to know you", icebreaker on the first day of class.

Teacher takes the toilet paper roll and takes several squares of toilet paper, then hands the roll of toilet paper to a student.

• The teacher tells the student to take some, more than three.
• After everybody in the class has some paper, we count the squares we have, then we have to tell that many things about ourselves, in English. 

 This activity works well with substitute teachers also. The toilet paper is such an attention getter.