Scrabble for the Classroom

Materials: Small pieces of paper, pens, white/chalk board and markers/chalk

Description: Cut up small pieces of paper into about one inch squares. Write one letter and its point value on each paper. In regular Scrabble there are 100 letter tiles, in the following distribution:

2 blank tiles (scoring 0 points)
1 point: E ×12, A ×9, I ×9, O ×8, R ×6, N ×6, T ×6, L ×4, S ×4 U ×4
2 points: D ×4, G ×3
3 points: B ×2, C ×2, M ×2, P ×2
4 points: F ×2, H ×2, V ×2, W ×2, Y ×2
5 points: K ×1
8 points: J ×1, X ×1
10 points: Q ×1, Z ×1

Put your students in 2-4 groups, depending on how many kids you have. Have each team take 7 letters. Pick a team to go first, or have them rock-paper-scissor it out. Write down the word in the middle of the board and tally up their points. Write out the words on the board as if it were a Scrabble board; as a warning, it might get kind of complicated and messy.  Keep it going until all the letters are used, class ends, or no more words can be made. The team with the most points at the end wins.

-Lauren S.

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 share each sheet.

limerick

-Abeth S.

Volcano Reading Comp Worksheet

This worksheet is full-sized, and is a straight-forward reading comprehension exercise, with 10 questions at the end.

volcano-reading-comp

-Abeth S.

Cognates Worksheet

This worksheet is half-sized. Students must put the words into the correct sentences, but all the words are similar to, or the same as, their Bulgarian translations. (Like “doctor” or “marker.”) Good for more beginning classes.

cognates

-Abeth S.

Slang Worksheet

This worksheet is half-sized, as well as double-sided. On the front side, students put the slang words into the given sentences. On the back, they sort the slang words into the correct parts of speech (noun, adjective, etc.). Lots of fun for high school students!

slang

-Abeth S.

Food Proverbs Worksheet

This worksheet is half-sheet sized, and gives students the opportunity to try their hand at matching two halves of famous food proverbs. Sometimes, the incorrect answers are just as interesting as the right ones!

food-proverbs

-Abeth S.

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 closest to them. The teacher also yells out two body parts (adjust to your student’s level of vocabulary), like “Hand to Foot.” The partners then have to touch those two body parts together (Vlado’s hand on Misho’s foot, and Misho’s hand on Vlado’s foot).  You can also yell out the same body part twice, like “Ear to Ear,” and they would have to stick their ears together.  As soon as everyone is touching body parts, tell them “Go!” and they can detach and start milling around again, looking for new partners. There will be a lot of giggling as people are trying to touch elbows to noses and whatnot, but be warned – some students might not be comfortable touching a member of the opposite sex. Segregate your class if needed.

-Nikola O.

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 behind a small house, 3 little birds on a rock, two big mountains behind the elephant and a girl above the mountains in a helicopter.

Explain the instructions very clearly. This is important! Divide the students into 4 groups and divide the board into 4 sections. Have each team stand in front of their section. Each group should elect one person to draw. The drawer may not turn around; he/she must be facing the board at all times. Hand the picture to the students who are not drawing. They must hold the picture so the drawer is unable to see it. Very important: all students may only speak in English. Any Bulgarian is grounds for disqualification.

The students with the picture must describe the picture to the drawer, exactly as it appears. This means that the elephant must be big and the house small, and there must be 3 birds. The first drawer to accurately draw the picture gets a point. Another option: the first team gets 4 points, the 2nd team 3, etc. Each team needs a new person to draw, and hand out a new picture.

-Chantelle K.

Matching Cards

Materials: premade cards on slips of paper or index card halves (see below for ideas)

Description: This is an easy way to work on almost any concept, and the cards can be easily stored for future classes and years. All you need to do is make sets of cards that illustrate the concept you’re trying to teach, as long as there’s enough cards for your maximum number of students.

Say, for example, you’re working on telling time. Then you’ll make one group of cards that has the time words on it (1:30, 5:50, 11:15, etc.) and a matching group that had the corresponding words on it (half past one, ten to six, quarter past eleven, etc.). The cards don’t have to be very big. Then, in class, you mix up the cards and give one to every student. Then everyone has to stand, walk around the room, and find the person with the corresponding card. It works better if you have students and their partners stand in one area of the room once they’ve found each other, so that the other students have an easier time finding their match. Then they can show you their cards and you can check for errors.

Besides time, you can make grammar cards (I, am, You, are), pictures and words to drill vocabulary, pictures and letters of the alphabet for beginning students (A, alligator, B, ball), questions and answers, or even just straight up Bulgarian-English cards. I have a set of about 100 of these that I’ve made, and when I’m feely particulary ornery with my 8th graders, I take the whole set into class and dump it into a big pile on the floor and tell them they can’t leave until all the words are matched up correctly. They don’t like it, and yet, they’re so compulsive, they can’t resist matching them up!

-Abeth S.

Basketball

Materials: a small ball and a basket – either a (clean!) wastebasket or a large water jug cut in half – whatever you can find, really

Description: Students line up in a single file line in front of the basket. To start with, the front of the line is pretty close to the basket, but I move it back after every round. Students then take turns trying to shoot the ball in the basket. If they make it, they’re safe and they move to the back of the line. But if they miss, they have to answer some sort of question. (It depends on what you want to study. I’ve used this game for Bulgarian-English vocabulary review, correcting grammar mistakes, conjegating verbs, or even just for spelling.) If they get the question right, they are still safe and move to the back of the line. But if they’re wrong, they are out, and have to go write sentences or new words at their desk until the game is finished. I usually put some kind of activity like this on the board for kids who are out early. The game continues on, moving the shooting line back farther and farther in each round. Last man standing is the winner!

-Abeth S.

How Many Words?

Materials: paper and a pen for each team/individual

Description: This is a fun competition game I play between different parallels (7A vs. 7B, etc), but it can also be a competition within a class. Give the participants a phrase of at least two words, and they have to try and create as many new words as possible using only the letters in the original phrase. So if the phrase is “Happy Halloween,” they should be writing words such as “wall, he, pan, pen, yellow,” etc. “Tap” or “man” are not valid words, because there is no “T” or “M” in the original phrase.

The team or individual who creates the most valid words is the winner. If you like, you can challenge a team to define the words on their list, so they’re only putting down words they’re familiar with, and not just raiding the dictionary. This is especially fun to do for the different holidays (Happy Halloween, Winter Wonderland, I Love You Valentine, etc) but can also be just for fun (for example, “Mrs. Spencer is the best teacher ever”).

-Abeth S.

Disappearing Vocabulary

Materials: White board and markers/blackboard and chalk

Description: I read this activity in a book, and didn’t believe it would work until I actually tried it! Write new vocabulary words on the board – no more than about ten at a time. Go down the list, pointing to each word as the students repeat it after you (for correct pronunciation). Go through the list once or twice for them to hear the sound of the word. Then go through the list again, just pointing to each word, but only the students say the word. After they’ve done this a couple of times, erase one of the easier, shorter words from the middle of the list. Go through the list again, but don’t skip the missing word – point to the empty spot as if it was still there. The students should still say the missing word. Then erase another word and go through the list again, still pointing to the empty spaces. Repeat until you have erased all the words, and the students are reciting the list of vocabulary words from memory, and you are only pointing at empty sports on the board.

The students will feel pretty proud of themselves at this point! As a follow-up, you can have the students reconstruct the list on the board (in the correct order and with correct spelling) by coming up and writing the words back in their spots, with help from their friends if needed. My classes really liked this, and want to do it every time we have new words!

-Abeth S.

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 loose during class time). Create a list of 15-20 things in English and distribute the list to the class (or write it on the board and make each group copy it down). The groups then have to go and take pictures of everything on the list. Items should for the most part be clear and easy to understand – like a horse, a broken window, someone eating cake, a building with a sign written in English, a yellow car that’s not a taxi, etc. – but I’ve used some vague descriptions with interesting results – like “a picture of a person that’s not alive” I meant a mannequin, but I got photos of everything from statues of Hristo Botev to magazine covers to (I kid you not) a small skull. Not sure where they found it, and I don’t want to know.

To insure that all group members participate, the rule is that every team member must appear individually in at least one of the photos on the list, and all team members must be together in one of the starred items on the list – usually something like “students playing basketball” or “people sleeping on something that’s not a bed, or my favorrite: “students doing their homework.” This way, even those students whose English isn’t as good have to participate and don’t get a free ride from their friends.

The kids love the chance to play with their phones, and find interesting things to take pictures of!

-Abeth S.

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 paper. Give the class 5 categories (such as food, adjectives, jobs, etc.), and ask them to write them down in 5 columns on their paper. Then choose a letter, and give the class 5 minutes to write down ONE word for each category that starts with that letter. When the time runs out it’s time for scoring. If a student has a word written that no one else has, then that student has a point. If they have the same word written as someone else, then neither of them get a point. The person with the most points wins the round. Also, if they come up with a double-word item for a category, then they get two points. For example, if the category is “Bulgarian City” with “G”, and the student writes “Golyamo Gradishte”, they get two points, provided no one else writes it down. The point of the game is to come up with your most exotic vocabulary to win the round. If you have a small class of 6 students or less then game works just as above, with all students working individually.

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For the team version: Divide the class into 3-4 groups. In my school most classrooms are arranged into 3 rows, so I divide them into 3 groups. The round works just like above, with each student writing their own answer individually. For scoring each category, have the entire class stand up. Go around the class and have each student read their answer for the category. If their answer matches anyone else, then all students with that answer sit down. After you count the last person, count the number of students standing in each row. Then move to the next category and have all the students stand up again.

-Tony S.

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 just a whiteboard and markers.

Preparation: If you have the flip chart paper, write the madlib on the paper big enough for the class to see. Number the blanks on the madlib. With the pieces of paper, cut them up like flash cards. On each card, write a number from the madlib and the type of word its asking for. For example…blank 1 is asking for an adjective, so write on the card ” (1) Adjective.”

Description: Explain the activity, pass out the cards to students. Tell them the more creative their words are, the funnier it will be. Give them a few minutes to come up with the words. This is where the flip chart is handy, you can keep the madlib a secret and call on the numbers and tell them to shout out their words. Then once the madlib is finished you can hold it up in front of the class and have a student read it. But if you don’t have the flip chart, you could write the madlib on the board as you go. This activity will not fill in a whole class period, it usually takes 15 to 20 minutes.

-Laura H.