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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]