Wedding Role Play

Materials: paper and pen, one role for each student
Description: Type or write out a role in a wedding for each person in the classroom. Of course you will have the obvious characters- priest, bride, groom, etc. but make sure to write out a specific role for each person in the wedding party as well; some [...]

Not-What-It-Seems Auction

Materials: set of picture cards with objects,animals etc., these can be printed off a computer or drawn by hand
Description: For this you need a set of picture cards with objects,animals etc. Tell the class that you are going to auction these objects, and that each student has $100 to spend. Auction the items and keep [...]

Limericks Worksheet

This worksheet is full-sized, and is meant to help students write their own limericks in English. Besides giving examples at the top, the bottom half of the worksheet gives lists of rhyming words for students to use in their own poems. Students do not actually write on this worksheet, and two to three students can [...]

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 [...]

Egg Drop

Materials: one egg for each student/team (they can give you stotinki for this), one ziploc bag for each egg (Very important! Get these sent from home if you want to do this!) packing materials like old newspapers, towels, plastic grocery bags, scotch tape, etc.
Description: First of all, don’t panic. Letting students drop eggs out a [...]

Cell Phone Scavenger Hunt

Materials: One cell phone camera for each group of kids (I usually tell the kids their groups can be anywhere from two to five people – as long as one person in the group has a camera).
Description: This has to be done as a homework assignment (unless you want to let your little dears run [...]

Team Scattegories

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Materials: None

Description: Yes, it’s Scattegories, the party game that we all remember! If you have a smaller group of students, adapting this game to the classroom is easy. A round of Scattegories works like this: You have the students take out a sheet of [...]

Madlibs

Materials: a madlib (there are tons of madlib sites on the internet. I found a madlib, and copied it because I didn’t have access to a printer at the time), 2 or 3 pieces of paper and scissors
If you can get a piece of flip-chart paper, that works well, but you can do this with [...]

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 [...]

Infomercials

Materials: items found in the classroom
Description: Students will create a clever, short infomercial. What is an infomercial? They have them in Bulgaria. Discuss what makes them successful (limited time offer, extra bonus, phone number to call, unique features of bland item, cheerful voices, looks of amazement, etc.) Students should work in pairs, choose something [...]