People to People

Materials: none
Description: This is a good game to review body parts. You need lots of room for the students to walk around and mingle, without desks in the way. To play the game, everyone stands up and walks around the area. The teacher then yells “People to People,” and everyone partners up with the person [...]

Reverse Team Pictionary

Materials: whiteboard and markers, pictures
Description: Create or find pictures to use. This game is best if there are several things in each picture. As an example, I’ll use teaching prepositions of place. The pictures can be unrealistic and fun, as long as the students know all the words. In one picture, show a big elephant [...]

Learning Numbers Using Cards

Materials: one deck of cards for each group
Description: This works best in small groups, no more than 3. Aces count as 1 and all face cards start out as 10. You can change this when practicing bigger numbers. When learning numbers 1-10, students place deck of cards in the middle. One student flips the top [...]

Free Write

Materials: an egg timer/stopwatch/clock, paper and pens
Description: This is based on the idea suggested by research which states that the number of words a student can write in 5 minutes is an indication of fluency and ability in a foreign language. The generally accepted number is 100 words in 5 minutes.
At the beginning of the [...]

Greatest Bad Ideas

Materials: about 30 index cards, or cut up pieces of paper about the same size.
Description: First take the cards or pieces of paper and write hypothetical “problems” on them (eg. “My winter coat is not warm enough”, “I can’t afford to pay my rent”, “My cat makes me sneeze”, or something more absurd like “My [...]

Spelling Race with Cards

Materials: a set of alphabet flash cards for each team playing (either cards sent from the states, or you can make them here)
Description: Break the class into teams. Word to the wise: you might want to spread the teams out as far as possible to avoid accusations of cheating. Each team is given a set [...]

Battleship

Materials: white board and white board markers, or paper and regular markers
Description: This is a good game for young beginners, because it doesn’t use a lot of English, and they have a lot of fun trying to figure out where the ships are. It can also be used as a reward game. To set up [...]

Telephone Numbers

Materials: Small scraps of paper, pens
Description: To begin, you need a lot of phone numbers. If your students have their own numbers that they’d like to learn in English, you can use those. Otherwise, make up a bunch of phone numbers. Whether you’re using real or fake numbers, you need to write each number twice [...]