Pictionary on the Board

Materials: writing surface, marker/chalk, eraser, and self-made pictionary cards (about 60).
Time: 10-20 minutes (good warm-up activity)
Preparation: Cut scrap paper into small (inch x inch) squares. Write one word on each square. The words can be taken from your textbooks to test new vocabulary, or you can make up any words you would like. For more [...]

Taboo – A Game of Oral Descriptions

Materials: pre-made taboo cards.
Time: 10-30 minutes
Preparation: Prepare the taboo cards. If you have played this game at home, you know that the word on the top of the card is the word the group needs to guess. The other 5 words below it are “taboo” – they are the first 5 words that come to [...]

Who Am I?

Materials: small pieces of paper and tape, or sticky notes

Description: When teaching human characteristics, there’s a fun game that I like to play. I write the names of famous people on small pieces of paper and stick them to the students’ backs. Then, working in pairs or small groups, the partner has [...]

The Ball Game

Materials: a ball
 
Description: One really simple thing that I love doing is to use a ball when I’m trying to teach my kids how to ask questions. I throw a ball to one kid, ask them a question, they answer, and then they get to throw the ball to another kid and ask a [...]

Prisoners

Materials: 1 photocopy per desk of the following descriptions Prisoners, plus an additional photocopy cut into individual descriptions for each of the “prisoners”
Time: 25 minutes
Description: Below are 6 profiles of prisoners who have all been convicted of petty crimes. The jail is overcrowded and one of these 6 will be released. The class will [...]

Letterboxing (Treasure hunting)

Materials: small, durable containers (I use the small plastic capsules that house the toys in those chocolate eggs), small label stickers,
Description: This activity is based on a favorite hobby of mine: letterboxing! It’s basically like treasure hunting, and the students will follow clues to find the containers you have hidden. This makes a good homework [...]

Do You Love Your Neighbor?

Materials: Chairs. You will need one less than the number of people playing.
Description: Have students sit in their chairs in a large circle. The person without a chair (the teacher usually starts) approaches someone in a chair and asks, “Do you love your neighbor?” The person in the chair (after carefully considering the people on [...]

Pass the Chalk

Materials: a chalkboard and chalk, or a white board and two markers
Description: Students divide into two teams (three for large classes) and each team has a marker or a piece of chalk. Everyone is given a category (like food or animals) and teams have to race to put as many words on their list as [...]

Point System

Materials: none
Description: It’s really simple – just start a point system for how the whole class behaves, and after 10 points or so, they get a fun day. When they’re listening and working, I give them a point, and write it up on the board, and when they’re not, I take one away. [...]

Playing Card Stories

Materials: a deck or two of playing cards, paper and pens
Description: Before class, I write a list on the board of all the playing cards in a normal deck of cards. Each card value is assigned an adjective or a noun (usually I give the number cards adjectives and the face cards nouns). Then we [...]

Baby, if you love me

Materials: none
Description: This is a fun little game to play around Valentine’s Day. Someone in the class is “it,” and they have to approach someone else in the class and tell them (as pitifully and woefully as possible) “Baby, if you love me, will you please smile?” The other person has to respond “Baby, I [...]

The Money Game (aka Jeopardy)

Materials: Whiteboard/Blackboard, index cards (if desired)
Description: We call this game “The Money Game” because the concept of “Jeopardy” was too hard to explain. Anyway, it works just like the game show back home – students divide into two or three teams, and answer questions that are grouped by category (holidays, sports, sea animals, whatever) and [...]

Hide the Keys

Materials: a set of keys (or any other small object recognizable by touch), a scarf or blindfold
Description: One at a time, students are blindfolded, while the teacher places the set of keys somewhere in the room. I usually write the key vocabulary on the board (turn left, go straight, turn right) and the rest of [...]

Classroom Map

Materials: paper, markers
Description: When teaching directions (turn left/right, across the street, between, opposite, etc…), it’s fun to turn the classroom into a map.  I give some students certain words such as library, bank, park, market, museum, etc, and then they go stand somewhere around the room.  Then one student stands at a starting point, and [...]

Motivation Bingo

Materials: Bingo cards, small markers (beans work well)
Description: I use this as a reward to encourage good behavior. I pick a word and if the class is noisy or not working I start counting if I count to five they lose a letter in the word. If they lose all letters by the appointed day [...]