Question Volley
Have a few topics in mind, and complement each topic with a few simple questions .
Example Topic: Sports
What sports do you play?
What sports do you like to watch?
Who is your favorite athlete?
Example Questions: Movies and TV Shows
Who is your favorite actor or actress?
What is your favorite movie?
What is your favorite genre of TV show?
Once you’ve presented and practiced a few ESL Question Volley questions, it’s time to volley.
All you need is a small ball. You can start the game out by having a student toss you the ball and ask you a relevant question. You’ll answer it, toss or hand the ball to a student and then ask them a related question. You want to encourage quick questions and answers from your students to give this a real-life scenario feel.
Flash Art
You’ll give your students scenarios in English and let them create quick interpretations through drawing.
The materials needed for this fun ESL game will be: plenty of paper for your students to draw and color, crayons, markers and colored pencils.
Topics and scenarios you can utilize for this game include:
There is a man running in the park and being chased by a dog.
A mother and daughter are baking cupcakes.
Many cars are stuck in traffic due to rain.
A big wave takes a surfer on the ride of a lifetime.
You have a few options on how you can convey the topics and scenarios for your students to begin creating art on paper. You can simply say the sentence, you can write the sentence on the board without speech or you can do both at the same time. It’s important for your students to copy what you say aloud or write it down before bringing the proposed scenario to life.
Am I Telling the Truth?
You simply need a whiteboard or chalkboard (or something to write on) and a classroom of enthusiasm.
You’ll be writing two truths and one lie on the board for your students to analyze.
Tell your class that one statement about you is not true and open the floor up for interrogation, letting students ask you non-specific questions regarding what you wrote. For example, if one statement is, “I enjoy running every morning,” students can ask you what kind of running shoes you have or what time you begin your run?
Once they have developed their conclusions, have them write down which statement they believe to be a lie.
Each student will share their answer and why they came to that conclusion.
A student will take your place and the game will continue.
Vocabulary Showcase Game Show
All you need is a list of vocabulary words from the week’s lessons and a whiteboard.
Put the Vocabulary Showcase Game Show into action with the following steps:
Since the vocabulary words will be from the week’s lessons, your students should have a fairly good comprehension level for these already.
Divide your class into two teams. The team that will begin will choose their first contestant.
Student A from Team A will stand with his or her back to the whiteboard.
You’ll write a vocabulary word on the board and start the clock. Two minutes per word is best practice, in order to get multiple students involved.
Once the clock starts, Team A will do their best to describe the vocabulary word without using the word or spelling it out to Student A.
If Student A gets the vocabulary word correct, Team A gets a point.
Team B will elect a team member and the Vocabulary Showcase Game Show will continue. The team with the most points will win.
Active answering
To review particular question patterns, have the students listen to a question, then run to designated areas in the classroom. For example, one wall can be the "yes" wall and the other the "no" wall. When the students reach the wall, they answer the question in a full sentence (as a group). To encourage all students to answer, the teacher can line everyone up and ask each student the question one by one. If it is not possible to move around the class, the students can stand up and sit down or hold up Yes or No cards.
Pronunciation game
Choose a list of words or phrases that contain sounds that you want to review. Draw 12 boxes on a piece of paper and write one of the words or phrases in each box. Photocopy the page. Put students in pairs and give each pair a copy of the page. Then have the students cut out the words and make flashcards. In pairs, students spread the cards on their desks. Call out a sound, e.g. M! Pairs race to find the word with that sound. The first pair in the class to pick up the correct card and say the word earns one point.
Listen and draw!
Have the students draw six boxes on a piece of paper. The teacher dictates a sentence, e.g. There is a pencil on the table and the students draw a picture in Box 1 to match the sentence. The teacher circulates around the classroom to see how the students are doing. The teacher continues to dictate individual words or short sentences until the students fill in all of the boxes.
Listen carefully!
This activity is appropriate for the Do you know...? or Bonus pages. Choose an illustration with lots of things happening in it. Show the students the picture and point to various items in it and name them. The students repeat. The teacher then says Listen. Am I right or wrong? If the teacher is wrong, the students say the correct word. For example, the teacher points to a book and says It's a table. The students say No, it's a book. Students can then play this game in small groups, with one student in each group taking the teacher's role.
Mystery guest
Demonstrate this game with a group of students first. Ask for five volunteers to leave the classroom. Out of the students who are left, choose one student to be the "Mystery Guest". The teacher can teach this extra vocabulary. Hang up a large bed sheet and have the Mystery Guest sit behind the sheet so that the students cannot see him/ her. The teacher calls the five students back into the room and has them sit at the front of the classroom with their backs to the class so they can't see who is missing. The five students take turns asking the Mystery Guest questions, e.g. Do you like (English)? The Mystery Guest answers truthfully Yes, I do./ No, I don't. he/she tries to disguise his/her voice. After the five students ask one question each, they guess who the Mystery Guest is, based on the answers. Reveal the guest. Then play another round with a new group of students.
Seven up
Ask seven volunteers to stand at the front of the classroom. Go to six of the volunteers and whisper a word with the same sound, e.g. an initial b, a final t, etc. The teacher gives the seventh volunteer a word with a different sound. All the other students put their heads down on their desks so they can't see. Each of the volunteers quickly and quietly goes to one of the students and whispers his/ her word into that student's ear. Then the volunteers return to the front. The other students raise their heads. The students say what word they heard and guess who whispered it to them. If a student guesses correctly, he/she replaces the volunteer at the front. When all the words have been said, the teacher asks the class to identify the common sound and the word that doesn't belong. The teacher then whispers new words and sounds to the new students at the front and the activity continues.
Hear the difference!
Prepare various sentences, some with final g sounds and some with -ingsounds (see below). Have students listen carefully. The students raise their hands whenever they hear a g sound in the sentences. Some suggested sentences: I am standing on one leg./ I drink my coffee from a big mug in the morning./ I have a cat, but I don't have a dog./ My bag is heavy and my back hurts./ I like exercising in the evening.
Listening circle
This game helps students to review the past-tense form of regular verbs. The teacher and students sit in a circle. The teacher asks the class to listen carefully and has each student make a statement, e.g. I baked a cake (last Monday). After the students have finished making their statements, the teacher asks students questions, e.g. What did (Student 1's name) do (last Monday)? Students answer, e.g. (Student 1's name) baked a cake (last Monday). The teacher checks to see how well students remember what everyone said.
What's that sound?
To review a group of nouns, gather realia, e.g. a tube of toothpaste, a bag of chips, etc. Tell students Close your eyes and listen! Drop one of the items on the floor. Students raise their hands when they want to guess what the item is, e.g. It's a (bag of chips). Then a volunteer can take over the teacher's role. When students have heard each item drop once, a volunteer can try dropping two or three items at the same time for the rest of the class to guess.
True/False Showdown
While this activity can fill time during any class period, it’s a favorite of mine when I’m introducing a new topic to my class. It can work with any subject matter, can run over several days to fill a few minutes, gets students using target vocabulary and is a good way to see what students already know about the new topic.
To play, divide your class into two teams. One person from each team comes to the front of the room. Give the students a topic. The topic can be very general or very specific. I like to choose a topic that is a part of the larger lesson I intend to present (such as pandas before doing a unit on the zoo). Students then take turns making true statements about the topic.
When someone can no longer think of a true statement, he or she tells a lie. If player A thinks player B is lying, then player A says, “That’s a lie!” If B was lying, player A scores a point for their team. If player B was telling the truth, then player B scores a point for their team.
If any player doesn’t catch their opponent’s lie, the liar scores a point. At the end of the playing time, the team with the most points wins.
Paper Airplane Bracket
If you are working on modal verbs or the conditional tense with your ESL class, this easy and super-fun activity is for you. You can play inside or outside without the fear of damaging anything in your classroom. Your students will compete with each other to see who has the farthest flying paper airplane.
To play, every student in class makes a paper airplane. As they are making their planes, you should set up a bracket on your board (if you are going to play inside) or on a clipboard (if you are going to play outside). If you are unsure how to set up a bracket, you can find instructions here.
Before flying any of the planes, tell students who they will be flying against. The members of your class should make predictions about how the planes will fly and who will win using modals or conditional sentences.
Then fly the planes. The planes that fly the farthest move on in the tournament while the losers are eliminated. Before flying the next round, students again make predictions. Continue on this way until only one player remains–the winner!
The Longest Sentence
Getting ESL students to create longer, more descriptive sentences can sometimes be a tough goal to accomplish. In this activity, it’s plain and simple fun.
Write a simple sentence on your board such as:
The boy saw the cat.
Ask your students “Who?” and add their answer to the sentence. For example, your sentence might look like this:
The boy who works at the coffee shop saw the cat.
Follow up by asking your students what, where, when, why and how. After each question, add a phrase to the sentence. Eventually, you will end up with a detailed sentence such as this:
The boy who works at the coffee shop saw the orange tabby cat near the dumpster when he was taking out the garbage.
If you’re looking for a way to practice dependent clauses or complex sentences, this activity is perfect. If you like, have students write their own simple sentences on index cards, collect them, shuffle them and redistribute to your class. Then have each person write a more detailed version of the sentence on the card they received.
