Spiders and Candy

This is a great game for pre-school children (2+) but it can be used with older children as well.  you can use it for simple vocabulary review or to make sentences.

How to play:

- place all of the small flashcards face up in the middle of the group

- students must turn around and cover their eyes

- the teacher places one marker under each card (either a piece of candy or a spider)  I usually do it in a ration of about 2:1 candy and spiders.  You might want to have more candy for younger students.

- students turn around and one by one call out a vocabulary word or make a sentence using the word.

- the teacher lifts the card to reveal what's underneath.  If it's a candy card, the student takes the card and keeps it as one point.  If it's a spider card, don't make the student take the card.  Leave the spider on top of the card and proceed to the next player.

- The person with the most candy wins!

You can turn over cards after they have been opened.  That tells the students not to guess that card again.  For older students you can leave everything face up and they have to remember what has been opened.

For larger classes, play in groups of 4 and let one of the students play the role of the teacher.

Markers to print: Print these to regular paper and cut them out

There are three different sets of spiders.  Use the cute ones for 2-4 year olds.  If you are playing with older children, use the scarier ones.

This is a great game for one-on-one classes with young children.  Take turns being the teacher and once you find three spiders your turn as the hunter is over.  Tally the number of candy pieces you each win.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this game, post them here.

******variations******

Different items to search for - here are several other items you can print off and hide under the cards.  Instead of candy, hunt for treasure or ice cream.  Instead of spiders, watch out for frogs or caterpillars.

with the baseball game - play the same way, but every time a player finds candy, they can take a baseball card and proceed around the bases.  If the player finds a spider, that's one out.  This is good for elementary school students who know and understand the rules of kickball or baseball.

more than one item under a card - try placing a few pieces of candy under one card.  That way there is a special card or a chance for a turn around in the candy totals.

Dice games

This is a fast pace game for review set up like American football.  It's a noisy game that will get even the quieter students up and at 'em.

game board and game cards

  b/w game board and game cards with b/w backings

How to play:

- dived your class or groups up into 2 teams and have them line up single file

- place a marker in the center of the game board (on the 50 yard line.)

- flash a reading card, flash card or what ever you're trying to review/solidify

- the first person from each team races to say the word/phrase and the fastest person gets to advance the marker for their team.  The player who was the fastest may choose to take a football card at this point.  (They don't have to.)  They would follow the instructions on the cards moving further forward or 'watch out!' backwards.  It's a bit of a gamble and makes the game interesting and disappointing with a little chance thrown in.

- Once a team reaches the end zone they get one point.

- If a team is forced into their end zone by the football cards (a safety,) the other team gets 2 points

For use on the board, blow the game board up to A3 size an pin the board to the board or simply draw the field on the board and use a magnet as your marker.  This way all the students will be able to see how their team is doing.

******variations******

Just Cards - You can have the students who successfully perform tasks draw cards and move according to the cards.  There's no race here to be the first to answer.  Any and every student who completes the task/gets the answer is allowed to draw a card for their team.  This is a little slower but gets everyone participating and reduces the competition level.

No cards at all and the ball just moves back and forth with victorious teams.

For this game or any line up game including slam, slap ...

I like to stop the students and have a rock-paper-scissors round.

1. All the students simultaneously play rock-paper-scissors against me.
2. Students who win or tie stay where they are.
3. Students who lose have to change lines.

I do it 3-4 times during the game, usually just in the beginning.

They love to hate this!

It also puts a little bit of excitement into the game if you're playing it over and over. Also, everyone then has a chance to win or lose at any time.  Feel the students out, some groups are really bummed out by this though

Any ideas/suggestions for variations?  Send them in and I'll try to get them up or post them in the forums.

The Skit Kit

The Skit Kit is an activity for creating skits, creating stories or creating dialogues

.  Students are given an envelope with the Skit Kit cards.  In groups students have to

make up a story, make up a dialogue or make up a skit

.  It's pretty simple but fun and effective for teaching English in real situation and for teaching real English.

Here are the Skit Kit cards:

animals	colors
food	nature
numbers	objects
people	places
transport	verbs
weather

If you already have MES flashcards printed out, you can use those.  You can use any flashcards really, but I didn't want to break up my sets, so I made new cards for the Skit Kits.  If you don't want backings, you can print out some cards using the Tools for Educators handout maker.

The activity:

- Break the cards up with one or two of each of the cards in an envelope.  If you print all the sets, you should be able to make 10-12 sets with 12-15 cards in one envelope.

- Distribute one set to each group of students (2-5 per group.)

- To start have the students take just a few cards out of the envelope and explain that they will need to make a story using all of the vocabulary.

- Allow the students time to make a story and encourage them to add characters or themselves to the story.

- Once they get the hang of it, have them take a few more cards out and make a new story or build upon the previous one.  (Eventually building up to all of the cards in the envelope but you can advance to the next step at any point.)


Step 2: Our story is made. Now, have the students become the actors in the story.

- Explain that the students will be acting out the story.

- Help the students change the story to a dialogue, with or without a narrator.  You may choose to make them include all of the vocabulary in the dialog or just stick to the story and leave the vocabulary at this point.

- Use props where possible and act out the story from the Skit Kit.

That's it really.  But you can help direct students initially by guiding them with these 3 questions: Who are you? Where are you? What do you want?  Those ought to get the story ball rolling.

Options:

- allow students to discard/remove one of the cards

- let students create the story, dialog, or skit for another group to perform

- add objectives to the dialogues: 'You have to buy something.'  'You have to ask where something is.'  'You have to borrow something from another character.' anything that fits with what you are doing in class at the time.

Warm-up Games and Activities

English Club Warm-up Games and Activities

20 Questions
One person thinks of an object (person, place, or thing). Everyone takes turns asking yes/no questions until someone can guess correctly (or until 20 questions are asked). The difficult part is that you cannot ask "wh" questions!
Example: PINEAPPLE. Does it talk? No. Does it make life easier? No. Do you eat it? Yes. Is it something you would eat for dinner? No. Etc...
If someone makes a mistake in forming the question, other club members can help turn it into a proper question.

Can't Say Yes or No
In this game everyone is given a certain number of coins or squares of paper (about 10). Everyone moves around the room starting conversations and asking each other questions. The only rule is that you cannot say the words YES or NO. If you accidentally say one of these words, you have to give a coin or square to the person who you said it to. Try to trick each other by asking questions that you would almost always answer with a yes or no. Think of other ways to trick your friends. Sometimes asking two quick questions in a row works well. (Especially tag questions: Are you new here? This is your first time in America, isn't it?). This game is a great way to practise using small talk and to add variety to your vocabulary. It also makes everyone laugh.

Fact or Fiction
In this game, one person tells a short story about themselves or someone they know or heard about. Usually it is something funny or crazy. It can be a true story, or something made up.
Example: Josh tells a story about his Uncle Leo who sleeps in the nude. One day Uncle Leo was sleepwalking and he went outside and took his dog for a walk. The next door neighbour was coming home late from work and saw him! She called the police and he got arrested for being naked in public.
Everyone around the room has to say whether they think Josh's story is fact (true) or fiction (made up). Josh reveals the truth when everyone has guessed. Members can take turns telling a story.

Chain Fairytale
This is a fun writing warm-up. Everyone has a piece of paper and writes the first sentence or two to start a fairytale (not one that already exists).
Example: Once upon a time there was a frog that had no legs. He wanted to get married, but there were no female legless frogs in the land.
After one minute the leader will say "SWITCH". At this time the writers have to put down their pens and pass the papers. They cannot finish their sentences. Then, the next writers will continue the story. After about ten minutes you will have as many silly stories to read as you have club members. The leader should warn the writers that they will soon have to wrap-up the story during the last two minutes so that each story has a conclusion. Read all of the stories out loud for a good laugh. You can extend this activity by trying to edit each other's writing and spelling errors.

Draw the Picture
In this activity members split up into pairs or small groups. One person looks at a scene from a magazine or book (the leader should cut out enough pictures, or bring in enough magazines for the club). The other person has a pencil and a blank piece of paper. The person with the picture will try to describe everything he sees to the drawer. This is good practice for using prepositions of place. When the describer is finished, compare the drawings to the real thing! Whose is the closest to the original?

Categories
For this game, one person thinks of a category, such as MOVIES. In a circle, everyone must take a turn thinking of a Movie title (in English of course). If someone takes too long to give an answer (the leader should count to five) then that person is out and a new category begins. If someone gives an answer that doesn't make sense or is incorrect, he is also out of the game. For example, if the category is VEGETABLES and someone says "banana" that person is out. The game continues until only one person is left!

Who am I?
In this game, the leader prepares cards with famous people's names on them. The leader tapes one card on the back of each member. Then everyone pretends they are at a party and asks each other questions to find out their own identities. When someone guesses their own name correctly, the name-tag gets taped to their front and they continue to chat with the party guests until everyone is wearing the nametag on the front.

Jeopardy
In this game, which is based on the famous gameshow Jeopardy, everyone writes down ten answers to questions about themselves. After writing down the answers, people have to form pairs or small groups and try to find out what the questions are.
Example: (answer = purple) "What is your favorite colour?" "Blue." "What colour do you hate?" "Green." "What colour is your underwear?" "Purple!" You can stop at three guesses if you want, or keep going until someone in the club can guess the question.

Hot Seat
In this game, the club is split up into two teams. One member from each team sits facing the group. The leader holds up a word (or writes it on the board if you are in a classroom) for all of the team members to see except for the two players in the hot seats. The teams must try to get the person in the hot seat to guess the word or phrase. The first person to guess correctly gets to stand up and a new member from their team takes the hot seat. The person on the other team has to remain in the hot seat until she gets an answer first. You can keep score or just play for fun. This game can also be played in pairs. One pair member closes their eyes while the leader shows the word to the other pair members. The first pair to get the word right gets a point. Warning! This is a loud game because people tend to get excited and yell!

Broken Telephone
This is a listening and pronunciation activity that always gets people laughing. The leader first must think of a sentence or phrase and whisper it to the person beside her. That person will then whisper what she heard to the next person. Each person can only say, "Can you please repeat that?" one time. When the message reaches the end of the chain that person must speak out loud. Oftentimes the message will be completely different when it reaches the end. Try to find out where the chain broke! In a big group you can send the message two ways and find out which team comes closest to the real message. (A famous example is the army message that started as "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance" and ended as "Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance.

=)

Get Four

 

The game board:   Get Four 12 x12   Get Four 10 x 10 This is a single sheet game board designed to be printed on A4 sized paper (slightly thinner, but longer than letter.)  You'll need one sheet per student pair.  The files are .doc so you can edit the values to practice just about any target language.  It's a lot faster than BattleShip or Bombs Away and you'll see everyone in the room talking.

This is a great game for low numbered classes and of course for those dreaded 80+ classes.  It also works well for one on one classes.

Instructions:

• Students choose a mark of their own. (star, smiley face, heart, diamond, but nothing to elaborate.  It's not art class, Kenny!)
• Decide who goes first, and the first person can enter her mark anywhere on the board.  She would then combine the two sentence portions to make a sentence or question.
• The second person would then enter his mark anywhere on the board and also make a sentence or question.

The point of the game is to get four in a row.  Once a player gets four in a row, she should draw a line through the four and score a point in the score section (if you try to count at the end, you'll go nuts.)  The person with the most point at the end of the game is the winner.

Rules:

The Rules are really up to the teacher, but I allow students to use marks twice as long as they are in a different direction.  If the same spot is used both diagonally and vertically, that's Ok.  But using the same location in the same direction is not.  If that's confusing please ignore it and make up your own rules.

Variations:

- You can have the students build off of one of the walls.  They may start in any column or row, but can't freely place their mark anywhere.

- You can have the students build bottom up.  They may place their mark in any column but they must put it in the bottom most spot available.

- Tell the students they must always place their mark attached to another mark.  They will grow like a great gelatinous blob.  Basically they must build off of the original placement.

- the Get Four Challenge:  There are 4 small boards and it makes it more difficult and strategy becomes a bigger issue.  Students play until one person gets four in a row.  That person wins the single game and they break off to play another person.

Unscramble it !

UnScramble It! is a spelling game for  ESL and EFL students to work on vocabulary and spelling and still have fun.  The students should be paired up and given one Unscramble It! game board.  The students draw 3 or more scrambled words from the draw pile and the game begins when one student has successfully unscrambled one of the words.  That student places the word on the game board horizontally using the start square at any position in the word.  The second player then can build off of any letter on the board.

This game will definitely bring life and excitement into those boring but necessary spelling practice lessons.  98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed!

The Unscramble It! game board

The Unscramble It! game board difficult version

After unscrambling and writing the word in on the grid, the students then take another scrambled word from the pile and continue to work on them.

Scoring for this ESL spelling game is on the game board.  The word should be written down on the scoring list with all point values for the letters added up and entered in as the students go.

Words can be placed up and down or side to side.  Not diagonally.  Extended value squares can only be used one time (double letter score, double word score and triple letter score.)  The rest of the rules feel free to make up as you go along.

The game continues until all words have been used or time is up.

I have made a blank sheet for you to use to type your scrambled words in.  Save the file with a different name and use it again and again.  Unscramble It! cards You will have to jumble all the words up yourself.  It shouldn't take long and with this sheet you can print out as many as you need and you can save them for future use.

This game can be used by teachers of any language as well as ESL and EFL teachers.  You can also have the students use the word in a sentence for smaller classes.  For larger classes have the students write out a sentence and go around and check (I award 2 to 5 more points for the sentences the students make.)  Having the students write out the sentences as they go, also keeps them active between turns.

Variation: The game can be played with out unscrambling words but this keeps students focused on learning what they're currently studying.  I have let the students use any word they can think of in turns.  This worked OK for a while but then students began trying to find words with a lot of 'z's and 'q's and was pretty much a waste of everyone's time.  I now only use it as you see above.

A day at School

This is a game for review or practice of vocabulary associated around the school building, but much more than that.  It can be used to practice target language like:

Mr. Jones wants me to ...
You need to ...
I came here, because ...
I came here to talk to ...
Can I borrow ...? / May I borrow ...?

 

How to play: simple version

- Give each group a game board, markers, a set of game cards and dice.

- The red spots are action spots that require the students to take a game card.

- The first player rolls the dice and moves that many spots in any direction, but the player can't change course during the move.  For example, they can't go three moves one way and two moves back.  They may go backwards to avoid a red spot.

- Before the student can enter the goal, they have to have at least three game cards.  The more cards you have them collect, the more they'll use the language, but the longer the game will take.

- Once students have three game cards, they can enter the goal.  The first player to the goal is the winner!

How to use the language: When students draw game cards, you can insert the speaking task.

You can have them read the card out loud or silently.  Then the teacher or the group ask them: 'What does the teacher want you to do?' and the students answer:

'She wants me to come to the library.'

'She asked me to come to the library.'

And/or you can have them read the card out loud or silently and the students move to the appropriate location.  Then the teacher or the group ask them: 'What's up, Kenny?' or 'What do you need, Kenny?' and the students answer:

'I came here because Mr. Jones called me.'

'I came here to see to Mr. Johnson.'

'Mr. Jones wants to see me.'

The boys' room and girls' room cards are straight forward:

'Excuse me.  I need to go to the restroom.'

To decrease the amount of time it takes and for larger groups, you can pair up students as one team and have them share the speaking tasks.  This is also good for practicing plural pronouns: 'Mr. Jones asked us to come to the library. We need to bring him a notebook.' Basically the less 'players' you have on the board the fast you can complete the game (and the less students have to wait for their turn.)

Personalize the game: If you want to create your own game cards that have the teachers' names for the school your teaching at, you can use these game cards and alter the teacher's name.  This is a Word .doc file.

Variation: Same as above but students must collect items upon drawing cards.

- You'll need two sets of small game cards.  (I use the classroom game cards.) Place the cards in two piles a good distance from each other, but within reach of everyone.  You just don't want the sets to accidentally get mixed together. You then have a draw pile and a possession pile.

- Before starting have each student draw a couple items from the possessions pile, and then play the game as above.

- After reading from the game cards where the teachers want them to go, have another student draw a flashcard from the draw pile.  They would then say 'He wants you to bring him a ruler. Do you have a ruler?'

- If the student has the item, they say, 'Yes.' and move to the location they were called to and return each card to the respective piles.

- If the student doesn't have the item, They say, 'No.' and then they can ask one of the other students for the item.

S1: Lisa, do you have a ruler?

S2: Yes, I do.

S1: Can I borrow your ruler?

S2: No!

* For fun, I allow them to say 'no' one time if they want.  But on the second time around, they must say 'yes.'  This allows them to stall another team.

- Once the student has the item, they move to the location they were called to and return each card to the respective piles.

- If the student doesn't find the card on the first try,

S1: Lisa, do you have a ruler?

S2: No, I don't.  Sorry.  What do you need it for?

S1: Mr. Johnson needs it.  Thanks anyway.

the student draws one card from the possession pile and then the student's turn is over and he must wait for the next time around to ask another student for the item.  (This part is a little like Go Fish.)

- If the student land on one of the rooms, I allow them to take one card from the possessions pile.  That way they can collect a few more possessions before they land on a red spot.  Also, the teacher or group members can ask:

S1: Hey, Kenny.  What's up?

S2: Nothing.  I just came here to get something/my notebook.

*If you have them say what card they picked up then the other students can try to remember who was what.  That keeps them involved when it's not their turn and also encourages them to ask the question ;)

- If the students get 'the girls' room' or the 'boys' room' cards, they don't have to bring anything to anyone.  remember they are trying to collect game cards.  So, they get one for free!

This version take a long time to play, 30-45min. depending on how many students you have.  The more students in one group, the longer it takes.

If you have an idea for a variation, post it in the games forum!  I'm sure there are all kinds of games and variations for this.  You can also post any questions you have about the game in there.