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1. “Freeze”, “Freeze” or “Stop” “stop”

Skills to practice: Any type of skill.

Levels: All levels of kids (simplify for very low levels)

Requirements: A ball, flash cards

Class size: 10 - 20

General rule- Ball stops with a student, s/he has to do something

How to play:

Bring picture cards or word cards to class which you want to practice. Refresh the students’ memory of the vocabulary on the cards

Pre-teach the words: “Stop” or “freeze” and make them know if they hear that, it means they cannot move. They must be still.

Next, tell students they are going to play a game. Ask students to sit in a circle. Put the cards face down in the middle of the circle.

Tell them they will pass the ball around the circle very quickly until you say “stop”. Warn that no student can hold the ball for more than two seconds. As the ball is being circled around, the teacher randomly shouts “Stop”.

The student who is holding the ball when you shout “stop” cannot pass it to the next. S/he remains still with the ball. Ask the student to pick up a card from the pile of cards facing down. The student reads or tells the other students what is on the card. Depending on their English level, s/he makes a sentence or more with the word on the card.

Ask questions to prompt weaker students. If the student cannot make a sentence(s), s/he should hand the card to another student to help, or simply ask any student to help. Then the game continues until the cards are finished.

Variations:

You can make it more competitive by giving points to any student who makes a sentence with the card or word which is picked up.

N: B- This is a flexible game, so it can always be adapted depending on the levels of the students.

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2. Volleyball [pic][pic]

Skills to practice: Speaking and vocabulary practicing.

Levels: All levels of kids except toddlers

Requirements: skip rope, whistle, and one balloon or more just in case.

General Rules: Every time a student touches the ball, s/he must say a word or sentence.

Class size: 10 – 20 students

How to play:

Pick out three students, bring them to the front of the class and make them team captains. Tell the students they are going to play a volleyball game. The captains will take turns choosing students to join their teams until everyone is chosen.

Ask the students to choose their sides of the coin. Toss a coin to decide which two teams start first. The team that looses during the coin tossing has to sit at the side of the playground.

Define a playground and use a skip rope to divide the playground into two equal parts. Get a medium-sized balloon and blow it to almost full capacity. Tell the two teams to take their positions.

Tell them the rules- The teacher is the referee.

Rule 1- Every time a student hits the ball s/he must say a word or sentence the teacher has mentioned. For example the teacher can say “when you touch the ball say a word related to animals” or make a sentence using the word “like” or ask a question using the word “want”, -almost anything you want to practice.

Rule 2- Students can only hit the ball once every time.

Rule 3- Loosing points. When a team looses a point the teacher blows his whistle, takes the ball and restarts the game.

(The ball cannot touch the ground. If the ball touches the ground a team looses a point. If a student hits the ball without saying a word, the team looses a point. If the ball does go over the skip rope after three attempts, the team looses a point. If a team looses a total of three points, the next team takes their place.)

Tips: This game can be played in or out of class. This is a great stirrer for most kids’ classes, but note that there are other variables you must consider depending on the students.

- The teacher might decide to play on the weak side to make it more fun.

- Some students might me physically weak to play- As a teacher I often took out the weak students and put them in the teacher’s team.

- Create more rules as time goes on, to save the fun.

- Watch out for students who wear glasses. I often advise my students to take off their glasses if they can.

- You might have many broken noses in the end if you don’t make a tough rule of no hands touching or crossing the skip rope i.e students must strike the ball from their own half of the defined playground.

3. Running Dictation

Skills: Reading, writing, spelling

Levels: High Level Kids to teenagers

Requirements: pen and paper and text excerpts.

General Rules: Divide class into teams. In each team there is a reader and a writer. Paste texts (usually short text) at the back of the class. Tell each the readers of each team that they will run to a text, read and memorize a part of it. As quickly as possible they will run back and dictate the text to the writer in their group. The writer writes while s/he goes back to read more text. The group that finishes writing their text wins.

Runners (readers) cannot write the words. They must dictate what they read in the text to the student writing. They cannot help in the writing but they can tell him/her how to spell words.

The team that finishes first wins and reads out the text to the class.

Tips: Put students of mixed abilities together.

4. I spy something…

Skills- Vocabulary, speaking, reading and listening

How to play

Teacher sticks pictures on the wall, or puts a number of flash cards on the floor. The teacher gives two students a flyswatter each. Suppose the teacher wanted to review animal vocabulary, the game will go like this. The teacher chooses an animal picture in his mind and says something like this, “I spy something with my little eye beginning with P”. The students with run to the cards and slam the flyswatters on the picture that starts with the letter P. If there is the picture of a pig on the floor that would certainly be what the student will hit and say. Suppose you had a number of flash cards with words beginning with P, you may choose to say something like this, “I spy with my little eye, two animals beginning with P”. or you may choose the ending letters. Then the students run to the pictures, hit them with the flyswatters and say the word. Praise the student who gets it correct or both of them.

Other Variations: Instead of saying I-spy + letter, you may choose to say I-spy + description. For example you have the picture of an elephant among the animal cards. You may choose to say, “I spy with my little a big animal with a long nose.”

5. Miming games

Skills: Most often used to practice present & continuous tenses with prompting questions like, “What’s he doing?” Or to practice gerunds using questions like, “What does he like doing?” Miming games are also good for lessons about daily routines. For example mime your day and get students to describe what you are miming.

How to Play:

• The teacher starts by miming an action and getting the students to guess what he is doing or what the action describes.

• After miming a few actions ask students to take turns miming actions and get the other students to guess.

6. Memory or Concentration game

Tip: Great game for many language skills practice.

Skills: Ideal for teaching words that have a close relationship. For example: Bank = get money.

For grammar, you may want to practice past vs present tenses.

How to play

In this example you will learn how to play a memory game. We will practice vocabulary and phrases related to places around nouns and activities we do in these places.

Prepare ten nouns and ten verbs that have a relationship. In this case our topic is places around vs. activities we do in these places.

The students will practice the words & phrases: First write them on the board and practice using the following question structure:

Step 1

“ What do we do in a ….?

1. Bank = get money

2. post office = send letters

3. library = read books

4. bakery = buy cakes

5. hospital = see a doctor

6. pharmacy = buy medicines

7. Cinema = watch a film

8. toy shop = buy toys

9. restaurant = have meals

10. park = go for walk

After teaching and practicing, proceed to the game. Go to the next step.

Step 2.

- Teacher randomly fills in the word and phrases into different boxes as shown below.

(For teachers only. Should be done before class)

|1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |

|Bank |Library |Have meals |Go for a walk |Send letters |

|6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |

|Park |Buy medicines |Watch a film |Toy shop |pharmacy |

|11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |

|Restaurant |See a doctor |Read a book |Cinema |hospital |

|16 |17 |18 |19 |20 |

|Bakery |Post office |Buy toys |Buy cakes |Get money |

- In class draw grids on the board as shown below and number the boxes without the words inside.

(On the board for students)

|1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |

| | | | | |

|6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |

| | | | | |

|11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |

| | | | | |

|16 |17 |18 |19 |20 |

| | | | | |

Step 3:

Split the class into teams and ask them to take turns guessing two numbers that might have a combination. Every time a student makes a guess, write out the words from your sheet, which corresponds with the numbers s/he guessed. Ask students whether the words or phrases have a relationship. Surely, the relationship will be the ones on your grid. If the two numbers guessed have a relationship, ask the student to make a sentence with the combination (optional). Then give his or her team a point and leave the correct words on the board. If the combination is wrong and the class agrees it is not suitable, wipe it off quickly. For example if a student says s/he thinks box number 1 and 20 have a connection. Write out the words from your grid into these boxes. That will be BANK and GET MONEY. When the class agrees that this combination is suitable, give the team a point. If the combination does not tie with that on your grid, wipe it out immediately.

The game ends when all the words have been rightly guessed and filled into the numbered spaces.

7. Spelling Relay

Skills focus: Practice spelling words with this excellent stirrer.

How to Play:

• Separate the classroom board into two or more equal parts by drawing rows and columns. The students will spell words in the rows. In the columns above write team names. (You can create more rows and columns depending on the number of teams.(tip- more than four rows is not advisable).

• Give each team a board marker or chalk depending on the nature of your boards.

• Make an equal line up of first relay runners of each team.

• The teacher then says a word s/he wants the students to spell. Each runner runs to the board and writes the beginning letter of the word. He/she runs back to team members and hands the chalk or board marker to the next runner in the team. Each team takes turns writing a single letter until the word is completely spelled.

• The first team to finish spelling the word correctly scores a point or gets some form of praise.

Tips:

- Start with easy words that students can spell

- This is an exciting game. Relay runners have a tendency to stand up before the marker or chalk is handed to them. Make sure relay runners are not doing similar unfair practices.

- This is a stirrer and can be physically demanding. Some students might be good at spelling but not good runners. Mix students according to intellectual and physical strengths.

- Generally, in all games of competition, make sure there is a balance of abilities in teams- physical & intellectual.

- Try to help weak teams score points.

- As a general rule, don’t always let one team win thrice in a row. This might discourage the other teams.

- Keep the competitiveness by helping the weak teams in a way the winning teams do not judge unfair. But in the end give every team what they deserve.

- Watch out for students who cannot handle the physical demands of the game. Pause occasionally and give students a few minutes to rest.

- For higher levels don’t just ask them to spell a word. Describe a word and they guess and spell.

- Adapt games according to the situation of your classrooms and students.

8. Hot seat

Skills: speaking and listening skills pratice

How to play:

With hot seat a student seats with his back to the board and facing the other students. The teacher shows a card or word to the other students. The other students describe the word to the student who can’t see the word and the student tries to make a guess. The student in the middle can ask questions to enable him/her guess correctly.

9. Story relay

This is more of a classroom exercise than a game in the strict sense of the word. However it still has the game element of fun at the end.

With story relay, the teacher writes a number of topics on the board. The class votes to choose the topics they want to write about. For the stories chosen the teacher should provide a sheet of paper each. If possible the teacher should start each story, then pass the sheets for students to write one sentence each to build the story.

Variations: Give topics and bring in sound effects that are related to that topic. Let students listen to the sound effects and try to create story based on the sound effect.

One Halloween, I asked my students to write a horror story and I downloaded a free Halloween sound effect and brought to class. To see what my little kids created, click here. I made tiny grammatical modifications to the story.

House of horror.

Teacher: Once upon a time there lived in a lonely haunted house, a witch, monster and vampire.

Student 1: The monster is coming to a woman’s room.

Student 2: The monster wants to kill the woman.

Student 3: The woman sees the monster and starts to cry.

Student 4: The monster is taking her baby away.

Student 5: The monster is eating the woman and the baby is crying.

Student 6: The monster is giving the baby to the witch.

Student 7: The witch is taking the baby to the basement.

Student 8: The vampire is waiting for the baby in the basement.

Student 9: The witch is happy to give the baby to the vampire.

Student 10: The vampire drinks the baby’s blood.

Student 11: The vampire gives the baby to the witch.

Student 12: The baby is dead.

Student 13: The witch cooks the baby in pot and eats.

Student 14: The witch and monster eat the baby and die.

Student 15: The baby and mother’s ghost appear and kill the vampire.

10: Fly swatting

Skills: Vocabulary, speaking and pronunciation of words

How to play

With fly swatting games teachers can review any type of vocabulary using picture cards or words. This game is a variation of I-Spy. With Fly swatting the teacher spreads of cards all over the classroom or sticks them on the walls. Then the teacher makes a sentence using one of the words. Students have to run to the word or card and hit it with their fly swatters. To get the necessary reward or praise, the students must say the word they hit with the fly swatters. For higher levels teachers can describe the word instead.

Requirements:

At least two fly swatters and a number of word or picture cards.

11 . Mallet Mallet :

Skills : Communicative vocabulary practice and speaking.

How to play :

The teacher brings a soft toy Mallet to class. Bring two chairs to the front or center of the class and put them back to back. Split the class into teams. Choose or let students volunteer to come sit back to back. Tell them what the rules are. The students will say words related to a group of words. For example you can tell them to say animal words or words related to animals. When the teacher raises the mallet over a student’s head s/he has to say an animal.

• When one student says a word the other student cannot say it.

• Students cannot say a word twice in one sitting of the game.

• Students cannot wait for more than 4 seconds before saying a word. Shorten the time as you advance in the game.

• Every time anyone of the above rules is violated the student gets a mallet hit on his or her head.

• Then replace the student with another student and continue with the game.

12 Chinese whispers:

Split the class into two or more teams. Whisper a word into the ears of the first students in each row. They whisper the word into the next student’s ear in their row until the whisper gets to the last student in the row. The last student in the row has to say out the word. The team or teams that get the pronunciation right scores a point. This game is fun because by the time the word or sentence gets to the end of the class it is distorted.

Competition in this game can be so serious that when a team says a word wrongly, teammates start throwing blame on a student they thought got it wrong. Time to tell them the game is not over yet.

13 Word searching

Create a word search puzzle. (Create puzzles here). Cut out the words from the puzzle and give students the word search without the words to find. Then in teams, call out a word in the puzzle and students search. The team that finds it first scores a point or gets some form of praise. Make it difficult or easier depending on the levels by doing one of the following:

• Describe a word rather than say it. For example: “It’s a place where we get money”, if you have the word BANK in the puzzle. But don’t say BANK.

• For low level students write the word on the board and ask them to search.

• To practice listening and spelling just say the word. Pronounce the word a couple of times and clearly.

Tips: You can also do word searches as a classroom activity.

14. Hop and say + Stone, Paper & Scissors:

Skills focus: Speaking, vocabulary and general communication.

Requirements: A number of vocabulary cards to line up on the floor.

How to play: Hop and say is a pretty easy game to play. The teacher brings a number of flash cards to class and lines the cards up across the floor in a row. Two teams stand at the extremes of the row. When the teacher orders the game to start, the first student from each team starts to jump on the first card. Every time a student jumps on a card s/he says what is on the card-For higher levels ask them to make a sentence with the word on the cards. Eventually s/he will meet the other team player somewhere on the row. When the two team players meet, they have to do the old Chinese guessing game of ROCK, PAPER & SCISSORS . The student who looses the Rock, paper & scissors game of chance, leaves the row and goes to the back of his or her team’s line up. Another player in his/her team restarts the game for their team. It should be such that the next team mate in the line up should be ready to start immediately s/he realizes that their team player has lost the stone paper scissors guessing part. The idea is not to let the other team player get to the end of the row. If one team player gets to the end of the row, his / her team wins.

Tips: Don’t know how to do ROCKS, PAPER & SCISSORS? Read here.

15- Swap seat game

This seat swapping game gets kids very excited. Kids sit in a circle. Prepare some word or phrase cards and put the up side down in the middle of the circle. When teacher says SWAP, students have to stand up and run to another seat. The teacher tries to find a sit also. There will be one student standing. That student will have to pick up a card and use it to make a sentence. After that the game proceeds until teacher begins to sense a bit of boredom.

This game is good for all revision activities in ESL kid’s classes.

16 Football game rules

Football game- split students into two teams. Let one student from each team come up to do rocks, paper scissors to see who starts the game. The student who wins is asked a question by the teacher. If s/he answers correctly, their team advances one space. Then they do another rocks paper each time to find out who takes a turn.

Teachers can simply ask questions each time and when students answer correctly their team advances. Or, teacher can describe something and the student guesses. For example: It is a yellow and very sour fruit. The answer is LEMON. When the student guesses, they advance. The team that gets to the other’s goal scores wins the cup.

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Check out the board games section get more football board games

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