E(asy)SL Games and More

Hey y’all. Second term is well underway and probably like many teachers, I am starting to feel a drag. The holidays are over and there is just sort of a stale feeling in the classroom. The next holiday is a long way away, exams and evaluations seem to be happening left and right and to most, the weekend can’t come soon enough.

Am I complaining? No. But lets be real, people. Who likes the month of February while in school? No one. So to spice things up a bit, I thought I would talk a bit about some fun ESL games I have used in my classes and talk about how I attempt to jazz up an otherwise boring topic. The way my classes typically work is that I take out students in small (ish) groups for anywhere from 10-20 minutes to reinforce a topic being taught by the head teacher. While sometimes that time has to be used for speaking test preparation (hey, Cambridge exams) I try as often as possible to do some kind of game style activity to break up the class time while still teaching a topic. Some topics, I’ll admit are more difficult to make a game out of (I’m looking at you, passive voice) but I try. So without further ado (adieu?) here are a few simple games that have worked well in my classes.

1. Taboo!

Yes. Taboo. A staple for game night and a favorite of mine. I usually use this for grades 6 and up and has been proven to be a great way to reinforce vocabulary for literally anything. The way I do this is super easy, I make a PowerPoint presentation with the vocabulary words. One student is in the hot seat facing away from the lap top while the rest of the students can see the word. They have to describe the word to the student but they can’t say any part of the word (so if the word is “Swim suit” they can’t say swim or swimming), they can’t act it out and they can’t say it in Spanish. This could be made more difficult for the older students by also giving a list of key words that they can’t use. I have used this game for so many different vocabulary lists like clothing, nature, arts and entertainment, even a Christmas themed one. An oldie but a goodie.

2. Parcheesi

I don’t know if this is a Spain thing, but elementary aged students here love parcheesi style board games. And the thing about parcheesi is that it is super easy. Online there are so many templates to make your own board game, you can literally make a board game about anything. Shout out to Pinterest for literally having everything. Also, it is very easy to find already made board games about so many different topics. One website I use a lot is www.teach-this.com . It has pretty much every topic you could think of from verb tenses, conditionals, clauses, passive voice, etc. They also have printable flashcards and worksheets. I use this site a lot for game ideas and a quick board game when needed. I try not to use it too much but in a pinch it is great. One of my favorite topics to use a board game style game is for the different verb tenses. I recently did one with future tense and the phrases “I will” and “Going to” where they had to answer a question using the future tense. Very simple, portable and sometimes can lead to fun conversations with the students.

3. Relay races

In my classroom, I am lucky to have a very large black board that takes up an entire wall. So of course, I use it. One game I have done with the secondary students is what I call “Irregular verb races”. A topic a lot of my students have trouble with are irregular verbs and all their forms (infinitive, past simple, past participle, future, etc.). For this simple game, all you need is a list of the verbs (for the instructor), plenty of chalk and for an added flare, a hand buzzer, bell or some kind of noise maker if you so choose. I divide the class into two teams who each have their own side of the chalk board. I say the infinite form of an irregular verb (ex. “be”). They then have to write the past simple and the past participle form of the verb on the board correctly before the other team. This can be done in a few different ways. You could have the whole team working together to come up with the correct words. When they are done, they either sit down very fast or use their noise maker. This is mainly for me to be able to clearly see who finished first (often it’s a very close tie). Another variation is to have only one person per team at the board. When they are done writing, they have to run back to their team who are at a different part of the classroom. This is good to really evaluate each student’s abilities rather than having the teams fall to the stronger students. Another variation would be to have several infinitive forms already on the boards and in a true relay race fashion, have the students run up and each fill in the blanks for the past simple and participle, and then return to their team and so on. Relay races can be used for other topics too, such as spelling, superlatives and other verb forms.

4. Advertisements/infomercials

I am not very original for coming up with catchy game titles but whatever. I’ll leave that to the creative people. This game is geared towards older students (B2-C2 level) and takes up the whole class time. I did this with my C1 testing group that I teach by myself for 50 minutes 3x a week. For this activity I brought in a big box of random things from my classroom including a “magic wand” (a drum stick), a packet of slime, a box of crayons, a tube of hand lotion and a small stuffed Santa from Christmas. I put the students in small groups of 2-3 and each group had to take 1-2 objects from the box. Each group now had about 20 minutes to come up with a 30-50 second advertisement for their object(s). For the commercial, they had to come up with a use for the product (real or made up), a plot/situation/problem/solution, a price, any deals or specials with the product. They must be as creative as possible. And in English, of course. Then they had to present their original commercial to the class. I was a bit nervous doing this with them. I had done similar activities in acting classes I have taught but this group is made up of primarily 11^th-12^th graders. Sometimes they want to do activities, sometimes no. But it was well received from them and they got really into and were creative. It was very entertaining to see their “commercials”.

5. Past Tense Charades

This is literally how it sounds. In a small container I have written a bunch of different verbs and activities such as “running”, “dancing”, “cooking”, etc. The student has to take one of the pieces of paper and has to act out the verb or phrase. The other students have to guess what they are doing by making two sentences, the first in present simple and then in past simple. For example, “Miss Jordan is playing basketball” and then, “Miss Jordan played basketball, or “Miss Jordan was playing basketball”.  I have done this with 3^rd and 4^th grade and they seemed to like it. Kids at that age really like anything that involves moving around and it is a simple way for them to hear the differences between the tenses. It can also be made more challenging by using other verb tenses.

I figured I should talk about some teaching stuff while I was here. Since I mainly teach upper elementary-secondary school, most of these activities are meant for those age groups. I only really see lower primary one day a week, and often their teachers have specific activities that they want me to do with them. So yeah. I hope you enjoyed my incomplete list of very simple ESL games. I have figured out very early on that sometimes simple is better and that way you are able to focus more on what you are teaching rather than the rules and regulations of the games itself. Use what you got. Less is more.

Peace.