Yes, that’s the other part I was gonna add. Every class is different, every teacher is different and every “activity” (game 
) ends up being different (even if it’s the same game).
I’m liking how this thread turned out. I’m taking notes.
Yes, that’s the other part I was gonna add. Every class is different, every teacher is different and every “activity” (game ) ends up being different (even if it’s the same game).
I’m liking how this thread turned out. I’m taking notes.[/quote]
I sense another Teacher’s Network get-together.
Any takers?
I use crosswords to review vocabulary. I’ve also done cloze activities with crosswords where one student will have all the down clues and their partner will have all the across clues. I only use this for reviewing old vocabulary because I prefer to teach and test new vocabulary in context.
[color=red](beginning of rant)[/color]
I know some people do vocabulary tests through matching the words with the definition which only teaches the students how to memorize the definitions without learning how to actually use the words. I do fill in the blank paragraphs. Usually, at the beginning of the school year, some kids struggle with the format, but by the middle of the year, they are not only doing well on fill-in-the-blanks, but they are actually using the words in their daily writing or written assignments.
[color=red](rant over)[/color]
I also got this gem from a co-worker of adjectives and nouns. Have your students line up in two lines. One student names a noun. The student facing them from the other team has to name an adjective to describe that noun in a set amount of time (depending on the level of your students…I give mine 2 seconds, but they’re pretty advanced). If the adjective matches, then that student names a new noun and their opponent must name a matching adjective. The first one to miss or take too long sits down. Keep going until one team has been completely eliminated. Last team standing wins. Example: chicken-crispy or chicken-short would be okay. Chicken-purple is not.
My kids absolutely love playing this game (almost more than Fluxx) and it’s a good way to kill time if they finish their work early.
I really like puzzlemaker.com’s hidden word puzzle. I use this one for holidays with the hidden message being something like “Have a great spring break” or “If you can read this, then you are done”.
For little ones to expand on flashcards, I like to play Go Fish or Concentration. I always make pairs for my flashcards for this reason.
Reading Activity for Mastering Chants or Poems
- Issue the kids a rebus poem that has an easy natural meter.
For example:
“A Sailor’s Dream”
I dream of ships at night,
I can see their beautiful lights,
The sound of the sails,
The sound of the whales,
The sound of the sea, I can hear,
All by putting this shell to my ear.
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Teach them the phonics etc.
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Clap out the meter for the kids. Focus on having them master the clapping only without the reading.
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Have a clapping competition. Who can clap out the meter best?
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Read the poem with the meter.
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Divide the class into groups and have them read to each other.
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Have a reading competition between the teams. Focus on standing, delivery, use of meter, pronuciation, etc.
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Have students put away reading.
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Clap out the meter with the kids saying the poem.
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Clap out the meter only (i.e., nobody is allowed to voice aloud the poem) but when you stop the children must tell you which word you stop on.
Drill them into submission.
This is a primitive way, but can be used effectively. Or at least I think it can.
There are lots of good ways and it’s interesting hearing about more of them. Keep them coming.
Writing: Creative Writing Warm Up for Upper Intermediate
Message in a Bottle
You were a stowaway on an old sailing ship 200 years ago. Your parents died when you were only 8 years old and you had to survive anyway that you could. You lived close to the ocean and every day you would watch the ships coming and going. You knew that each ship was heading for a great adventure. One day a ship called the Black Pearl pulled into the harbor. It was an unusual ship because it was completely black even the sails. You were curious so you went to have a closer look at the ship, as you were looking around on deck you heard gunfire on the shore. Scared by the gunfire you ran below deck. Soon while you were hiding you heard a lot of noise above you from the crew
[quote=“wipt”]Drill them into submission.
This is a primitive way, but can be used effectively. Or at least I think it can.
There are lots of good ways and it’s interesting hearing about more of them. Keep them coming.[/quote] I agree. I like using a ball and the kids (hopefully)catch it repeat the drill and throw it back. There is a danger of it becoming throw the ball at the teacher so those small soft balls are best.
I also like using a die and counting the kids off. When your counted off you get to roll the die. Most kids don’t realise it’s a drill due to the fun element.
[quote=“ImaniOU”][color=red](beginning of rant)[/color]
I know some people do vocabulary tests through matching the words with the definition which only teaches the students how to memorize the definitions without learning how to actually use the words. I do fill in the blank paragraphs. Usually, at the beginning of the school year, some kids struggle with the format, but by the middle of the year, they are not only doing well on fill-in-the-blanks, but they are actually using the words in their daily writing or written assignments.
[color=red](rant over)[/color][/quote]
Do you use a word bank? I hate cloze exercises where there is no word bank. With a word bank it’s excellent, though.
A fill in the paragraph with no word bank is good if any syntactically correct word that makes half an ounce of sense is acceptable. This is a good measure of how well students have learned the structure of sentences and parts of speech.
But cloze without the word bank and requiring a specific word… well, I hate that. Particularly on a test.
Build a sentence
Goal: Assess and help build up student’s ability (and inclination) to write detailed sentences. This is particularly useful after introducing a new pattern or concept (clauses, adverbs of manner vs. adverbs of time, apositives, etc.)
Setup: Choose or elicit from the class a simple sentence and write it on the board.
Play: As a class or in teams of two, have students take turns coming to the board and rewriting the sentence making one addition to the last sentence written. Students cannot change anything already written by themselves as a teammate.
Example:
John eats.
John eats a dog.
John eats a big, brown dog.
John eats a big, brown dog on Wednesday.
Optional rule 1: Each addition must add a new, previously unseen element. You cannot repeat adding the same element.
John eats a big, brown dog on Wednesday with a monkey.
John eats a big, brown dog on Wednesday with a fat monkey. [color=red]BAD[/color]
Not ok because someone else already added the same kind of adjective to “dog” earlier.
Optional rule 2: When adding in an element, you must add in the same element to all parts of the sentence where applicable.
John eats a big, brown dog on Wednesday with a fat monkey.
John eats a big, brown dog and a cat on Wednesday with a fat monkey. [color=red]BAD[/color]
Not ok because you need to add a conjuction with each noun.
John and Peter eat a big, brown dog and a small, yellow cat on Wednesday with a monkey and a rabbit.
I just attended an awesome workshop with Harcourt Publishing yesterday afternoon. It was all about teaching reading to children. They had all sorts of great ideas and spent some time talking about language acquisition theories and classroom strategies. I was very impressed. One of the ideas I tried today with my 5th graders was Touch and Go. The speaker introduced it as a way to review new high-frequency words, but I used it to go over a concept.
Write up 3-5 words on index cards. Stick them to your door frame. As the students leave to go home or to do a transition, such as lunch or recess, have them touch one of the words and tell you what it says.
Obviously my fifth-graders are beyond sight words so I used it with our literacy focus lesson words. We did QAR (Question-Answer Relationships) as a test-taking strategy and a way of analyzing questions to work out how to get the answer. There are two sources for answers in reading comprehension: either from the text or from your head. The kinds of answers you get from a book directly are either “right there” answers where the information can be found in one or two phrases or sentences and “think and search” where you think about what kind of information you need to answer the question, and then look for specific examples from the text to answer the questions (example: “What was the name of the main character?” would be “right there” where “How can you tell the main character likes animals?” would require you to “think and search” for examples to answer the question). The kinds that are in your head are “the author and you” where you use what the author says in the text and think about what you know to answer the question and “on my own” which are questions that require you to use your own personal experience (example: “Why does the author use the present tense instead of the past to tell this story?” is “the author and you” where “Do you think the main character did the right thing? Why or why not?” would be “on your own”).
Anyway, I put the words up on the wall and as they left, they had to touch one of the four types of comprehension questions and tell whether it was an “in your head” or “in the book” kind of question. They loved it and all of them remembered. It’s a very kinesthetic way of reviewing concept words. And it’s easy to set up and no one really loses. If they all do the same word, take it away for the next time you play so they can try other words.
Lots of good ideas here. Thanks, everybody.
Lately, I’ve been doing a rhyming game because I have a hunch that it will help the kids learn phonics and spelling and that it will give them a new way to order English words in their minds.
I take a bunch of picture flashcards and write rhyming words for them on the board. Sometimes the words of the flashcards rhyme with each other; in that case, I put the flashcard words themselves on the board. I often assign more than one rhyming word to each flashcard.
My usual practice, which may or may not be a good one, is to have an individual competition, so I write each student’s name on the board and give points for correct answers. I simply go down the list, showing each student a flashcard. The student has to recognize the word that the picture is supposed to evoke, then find on the board a word with which it rhymes. Occasionally, I’ll play the game so that each student gets three “bites at the apple,” i.e., three flashcards and therefore can score a maximum of three points at a turn. Once I tried five per turn, but that took too long per student.
I have another game in which I use picture flashcards for nouns that seem naturally to “go with” certain verbs, e.g., kite (fly), fish (catch, cook, eat), cat (play with, feed), fire (burn (acting), light (acted upon)). The kids are supposed to make a sentence based on the question “What do you do with it?” or “What does it do?” For example, in the case of “kite,” the answer should be along the lines of “I fly a kite.” I won’t allow “play with a kite,” because one of my aims is to get them to acquire a bigger, more varied vocabulary. My kids also have a tendency to cop out with the word “use,” so I rarely allow that as an answer unless the noun is problematic (such as “umbrella”). I may also ask them “What are you doing with ________?” “What is Mary (classmate) doing with _________?” in addition to “What do you (i.e., generally, usually) do with _________ ?” Where the students are supposed to know the past and the future tense, I’ve occasionally used, “What did you. . . ,” “What will you. . .,” “What is Bill going to do . . . ,” “What are Mary and John going to . . .” If I say "What am I . . . " they have to know to answer "You are . . . "
Also, and this may be a little brutal (not to mention that individual competition may sometimes be brutal, and I’ve considered abandoning it), if they give an answer such as “I eat with a fish” (hypercorrection since they learn in the game that some of their verbs will be intransitive and will take a preposition such as “with”), I sometimes quickly draw a crude picture of a fish and the student sitting at a table eating together. Likewise with “I fly with a kite,” etc., student flying up in the air with a kite. The idea there, I think, is consciousness-raising.
Recently, I’ve tried combining the two games, the rhyming game and the “What do you do with it/What does it do” game. Because in the rhyming game I also have verb flashcards, when I come to one of those in a combined game, I ask the student “What are you doing,” “What am I doing,” “What are Bill and Sally doing,” etc.
The above seem to work reasonably well.
I used to play a game that I called “Shampoo Sentence.” I would write a sentence on the board and get everyone to read it. For example, “I see a bird.” Then, I would change it by striking “I” and writing “George” above it, so the student whose turn it was would have to say “George sees a bird” to score a point. Then I would add “three” above and before “bird” with a carat. The next student would have to say “George sees three birds.” Then I would change “bird” to “goose,” for example, to give them an irregular plural. Then I would add “Yesterday” or “Last week” to put it in the past tense. Then I would change the verb to “eat” so the student would have to say “ate.” I might later add prepositional phrases, change the tense again, etc., so that with more advanced classes at least, we might finally wind up with a sentence like, “Three weeks from now, John and his friends are going to eat five chickens at Mr. Brown’s restaurant in Taipei.” At some point I would often jokingly tell the students, “You read to much. Too much reading can hurt your eyes.” Then, I would erase all the information on the board and make them say the sentence, with new changes, without reading. Of course, I, too, had to be sure to remember the sentence and each change. I usually wound up eventually putting the sentence back on the board.
That one worked reasonably well for some classes, usually for those in which the students had at least three years of English under their belts at at least 12 hours per week.
With some of my more advanced students (10 to 13 years old), I have a reading class involving stories I wrote or legitimately lifted (i.e., by changing the plot, characters, circumstances, etc.) and exercises that I wrote with them. Many of these stories, as it turns out, are not too good. Additionally, I overshot the mark on my assumptions of the students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension. So we’re bound to get bogged down. In an attempt to remedy that, after we’ve gone over the vocabulary for a story, I make up my own story on the spot and tell it. It doesn’t have to make sense; it’s just to go over the vocabulary. I make my story a kind of cloze test by saying “Pooooooop!” in a high falsetto to indicate a blank. Then I call on a student and he or she has to fill in the “Poooooop!” blank with the appropriate vocabulary word from the original lesson.
Sometimes, if no one can get the word, I’ve been resorting to a game I used to use, a modified “Hangman” that I call “Letter-Word Game.” As in Hangman, I put up the blanks for the word in question. I call on the students one by one, but they know that they have to give me a letter first. I emphasize this with younger students (since some of my students confuse the word “word” with the word “letter”) by singing “ABCD. . . .” If the student guesses a right letter, I ask, “Do you know the word?” If they don’t, I go to the next student, again requiring that he or she guess a letter first. If the student doesn’t guess a letter correctly, then he or she is not allowed to guess a word. Guessing a letter correctly gets one point; guessing the word gets two more points.
I write the incorrect letters under the word, as with Hangman. For giggles, I got in the habit of frequently trying to pronounce the letters below the word, e.g., “kmxabrsfl.” The students often laugh, and sometimes they also try to say the non-word. I’ve decided to continue doing this in hopes of helping them to remember that in this kind of reading, the signs for individual sounds are important.
Reviews/Observations
[quote=“Fox”]Simple Vocabulary Game
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Divide class into two teams.
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Write vocabulary on the board.
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Choose a player from each team to sit with their backs to the whiteboard.
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Place a magnet on one of the words.
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Other team members must act out the word.
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The first to say the word wins that round and then two more players come to the front.[/quote]
I almost never do team games (and didn’t with this one), but this game worked out really well.
I’m subbing at a buxiban this month and got to test out some older kid games. I did the word scramble one, but found a flaw. In one class all but one of the kids liked it (his spelling wasn’t strong enough, probably shouldn’t be in the class). It ended up being OK because he got to be the time keeper, but I thought that kind of sucked.
Played it with another class and a girl says “Can we do teams?”. Ah, perfect. Then I ended up pairing up with one of the weaker kids and he had a really good time (I’d give him hints).
The words the kids find are usually really funny and/or surprising too. I remember one kid doing DVD and someone else doing kolin. I haven’t really worked out a scoring system for it, but they seem to have enough fun just playing.
A new game
When I first got here I bought a book called “Teaching English to Children in Asia”, but never really got into it because it was meant for older kids and I always did kindergarten. Here’s a really simple one from the back of the book that one class liked (only tried it on one).
[quote=“David Paul”]Banana
One child sits in a chair and has to answer, banana, to every question without changing her facial expression. The other children take turns to ask questions and try to make her smile or make another facial expression.[/quote]
I was just winging it with this one, but it seems like it could be a fun way to review questions. Banana quickly turned into apple and then poopoo. Poopoo has the same rules as banana.
REORGANIZE THE ALPHABET
- Divide the class into two teams.
- Scatter alphabet cards all over the classroom and tell them that they have to reorganize the alphabet (specify capital or small) in a line or a circle on the floor.
- Time them.
- Repeat the process with the other team.
The more you do it with them, the more organized they become. A leader usually steps forward to instruct the others what to do. It’s enjoyable for both the ones who take part and those who watch.
SENSORY GAMES
Most games employ the senses of sight and hearing. The other three (taste, touch and smell) get neglected.
The feeling game
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Prepare bags with different objects inside them. They should have different shapes, textures and even temperatures.
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Divide the class into two numbered teams.
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Hold one of the bags (they should be deep enough as not to give away their contents) in front of you.
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Call a number and tell them to try and feel what’s inside.
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The first one who anwers correctly wins.
The smelling game
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Two numbered teams.
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Call a number.
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Blindfold the two contestants.
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They have to identify the contents of the bag/box/plate.
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First correct answer wins.
The tasting game
As above, but use edible foods. Keep religious observances, diet and allergies in mind.
[quote=“xtrain_01”]if you make them by hand, or by program that lets you fill in some of the blank spaces (exists?), then you can make some false paths for the students to follow. if you do this for the first word, and then a few more throughout, it might help in this respect.
this is one of the reasons why I still like to make mine by hand, rather than use a program.[/quote]
I made a hella hard one for my kids this summer using puzzlemaker.com. I put in false leads and bad spellings into the word list to generate the puzzle and then excluded these fake words from the final word list.
Also word scrambles can be useful in reinforcing spelling…
Again, word searches and puzzles are very good review tools if used sparingly. If they are overused, they become a chore. If they are used inappropriately as a part of your lesson (such as to introduce new words or have words that are not relevant to your lesson), they are ineffective. I like to make word puzzles out of old spelling and vocabulary words and put them into my TWCIDN box (the “Teacher What Can I Do Now” box o’ fun for early finishers and early arrivers). My kids are still adjusting to me since it’s only the second week of school, but when they look like they’re about to ask what they can do, I simply say, “T-W-C-I-D-N.” and they know what to do.
I’m disappointed to hear that, miltown. Team games take the pressure off the individual to perform and put it on the team to help each other to do well. They offer encouragement to one another and cheer each other on. It’s a great tool for boosting cooperation and teamwork. If you’ve got a shy kid, you’re more likely to get output from him when he’s got 5 other kids relying on him and cheering him on than when it’s just him all by himself against everyone else.
[quote=“ImaniOU”]Team games take the pressure off the individual to perform and put it on the team to help each other to do well. They offer encouragement to one another and cheer each other on. It’s a great tool for boosting cooperation and teamwork. If you’ve got a shy kid, you’re more likely to get output from him when he’s got 5 other kids relying on him and cheering him on than when it’s just him all by himself against everyone else.[/quote]Team games are often better than individual scoring for the reasons you mentioned.
I don’t keep the same teams from one lesson to the next. I don’t want the kids to take it too seriously and get too cliquey. But I can see that there could be some good reasons for keeping the same teams. Any other opinions on this?
I find that another good way of encouraging class bonding and avoiding cliqueyness is to have the whole class v.s. the teacher from time to time. Obviously not all games will work for this, but there are quite a few that do, even for low-level students. Guessing games are good for this.
Guessing games are great all-round. One of the problems with a lot of games is that the language lacks context. With guessing games the language is always tied to meaning, so they really count as acquisition activities in the full sense.
ImaniOU was right to point out that a lot of games are unsuitable during the initial stages of learning particular language items and are better used as review. One way of doing guessing games can be used shortly after meaning has been established, however. Each team has an object, or is thinking of a language item. The teacher uses the target language to ask questions. For each question, the team concerned gets a point. This gives the kids a lot of meaningful, comprehensible input and also keeps their interest.
Later, in the subsequent lesson or afterwards, the students themselves can ask the questions. They are now familiar with the language. Producing it in questions may aid fluency and confidence, and it provides additional comprehensible, meaningful input for other kids in the class.
For some of my lessons I use no scoring whatsoever. There is quite a feeling of satisfaction after a lesson of discussion and other activities where the kids have remained focused, active and enthusiastic without the need for any games.
What are some fun games or drills for beginning students?
I’m a new teacher with no formal training and little experience. I got a job at a small chain school (just two locations) teaching kids ages 8-16, but they all seem to be beginners or, for the older kids, of low intermediate level. The school’s textbooks are not designed for TEFL. They are American textbooks for beginning native English readers. The director has given me a lot of flexibility in making “lesson plans” (see below), and emphasized doing something fun while encouraging the students to speak.
I tried the simple vocabulary game posted by Fox where a couple students sit facing away from the board and the other students have to act out or describe a word on the board. It works well. The kids really get into it and it’s easy enough. Thanks Fox!
- re: lesson plans. I’m not responsible for designing a whole curriculum. The students have class for two hours at a time. One hour is taught by a local teacher, to tell them the definitions of words in Chinese, test them, grade them. The other hour is for me to have fun, get them speaking, drill them, and share American culture. Maybe they’ll eventually have me doing it all after I have more experience and understanding of TEFL theory.
This thread is kinda cool. Keep them coming.
Here are some games I’ve found useful.
Although most my rooms are too crowded, this one is always fun, for beginners. It’s the old game “mother, may I.” Mother may I take five baby steps? Yes you may. No you may not. You change what kind of steps they are (elephant, mouse, giant) or replace steps with hops and leaps. You can use “can” instead of “may.” Let the kid who wins, be Mother for the next round.
Another game I’ve found useful for working on pronounciation is one I found somewhere on the Internet. Draw two bombs (with long fuses) on the board – one is teacher’s and one is the class’s. Have a sentence for the class to read. Generally the first time they read it there won’t be any intonation, so after erasing part of their fuse, I repeat the sententence in exaggereted monotone. “To-mor-ow I am go-ing shop-ping with my moth-er.” I tell them this is bad. Then I say “listen” and read the sentence with slightly exaggereted stress and intonation. I have them say it again, and it’s amazing how much better it sounds. When their pronounciation is good erase part if your fuse. They love to blow up the teacher. I think it also gets them listening to the pacing, intonation in other contexts.
For reviewing grammar structures, split the class into teams. give each team 100 points and have them bet however many points they want. write a bad sentence on the board (eg. You is reading.) If they can fix the sentence (S/he is reading or You are reading) they get however many points they bet, otherwise they lose the bet, and the other team can steal the points by fixing it. One should probably be careful not to overuse this game as it might re-inforce bad structures. Sometimes I make the whole class repeat the corrected sentence.
My friend Cheyanne taught me this one:
Get a question. (eg Where are you from?) Pick two kids and have them practice the question in the hall. Tell the kids to answer the question “I am from Taiwan.” Then choose two kids to give a different answer (eg. I am from England.) The two kids in the hall must then find the two kids who answer the different way. Those two kids get a different question, (What’s your favorite colour?) and the game goes on.
When I was having trouble to get the kids to use the present continuous, I had them play charades–I called the game “What is he doing?” One kid steps outside and is told he is swimming. He returns to class and pantomimes swimming. The first one to answer “He is swimming” (Not “swimming” or “He swims”) gets to do the next one–“She is riding a bike.” You could adapt this to the past tense by telling the acting kid to stop, and then the kids have to answer “She was swimming.” Have two kids do the acting for “They are/were swimming.” Do the acting yourself for “You are swimming.”
This game is fun because it allows students to bet on their classmates
I’ve picked up some new stuff. Here’s one (with visuals.) It’s definitely for younger learners (but even the 12ish range like it.)
9 Square Sticky Ball
There’s a 3*3 grid on the board (see picture.) Numbers 1-9 are in the grid. You can use any question answer thing you want to play the game (or something that isn’t question answer, like having them do something.) The winner gets to throw 3 sticky balls, the loser 2. When they hit a number, erase it from that team’s line of numbers. First to remove all (or have the least when time’s up) wins.
The best part about this game is that it’s stays interesting the whole way through and even the losing person can play. The score always stays close and it stays exciting.
Random Tips:
Have premade teams. I’ve just made two “balanced” teams. When it comes time to play a team game, everyone knows where to go and I don’t waste time setting up teams.
Numbered lines for games. Not only are there preset teams, but now they have prearranged seating (with “balanced” opponents.) I have 18 kids, so there are 2 rows of 9. Each kid has a number (and a “partner” on the opposing team with the same number.) It works out nice beacuse everyone has to think about every answer. It works like this.
I say: Put the dinosaur under the chair. (both teams had their own dinosaur)
Kids are all thinking
I say: Numberrrrrrrrrrrrr… (kids get quite) 8!
The two number 8s go nuts trying to put the dinosaur under the chair.
Let kids make the questions. This one may be obvious to some, but it just occured to me a little while ago. When playing question/answer games, I’ll let kids make questions and give them bonus points for them (usually more than for answering them.) I also use this as a way to control scores (when using numbered scoring), be giving the losing team more oppurtunities to make questions (it’s easy to do with out the kids catching on.)
How about teaching verb tenses and prepositions ?