Fun and Games - activities

I've decided never to produce worksheets but here we are :)

After my Fun and Games workshop on Saturday, I started receiving emails from teachers who either attended or couldn't attend my session, asking for a worksheet summarizing the activities I presented. And although I believe in learning by doing and feel that no worksheet will show you how much fun you can have playing games, I felt obliged to write something. 

What you can see below is partly a collection of my older blog posts (this one and that one) plus three new ideas.

If you were there on Saturday, thank you for coming (especially if you were sitting on the floor or 'volunteering')! If you couldn't make it because the room was full, sorry! I do hope I'll get the chance to do that workshop again.

1. The Spelling Race – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. Make sure you draw a line on the floor and let students know that only the person with the marker can cross it. The teacher calls out a word. Students have to write it down letter by letter i.e. each letter is written by one student. Every student has one move – s/he can write down a letter or make one correction if a mistake has been made. The team that finishes first wins (provided that they spelt a word correctly!). You can ask the team that lost for a definition, if they are able to provide it, they might get a point as well. Perfect for a revision before an exam!

2. The Dolmuş game – a dolmuş is a shared taxi. Once you get in, you have to pay the driver which is complicated if you sit somewhere at the back. So what people in Turkey (and elsewhere, I guess) do is pat the person sitting if front of them on the shoulder and ask to pass the money forward.

During the game, students sit in rows, one student behind the other facing the board. Each student has a pen and the ones sitting at the end of the rows hold a piece of paper. The teacher then calls out a category e.g. words beginning with S, animals, past tense verb forms etc. Each student writes one word belonging to the given category and passes the paper forward. The team that hands the paper to the teacher first, wins. Extra points may be given to the team that wrote the longest/ most sophisticated word. Also, you may make it more fun by letting each group have only one pen that has to passed along with the paper.

3. Hot seats - the class is divided into two teams. A member of each team sits facing the class, with his or her back to the board. The teacher writes a word or a short phrase on the blackboard and the team must define the word or give examples of its use – without saying the actual word itself. If the student guesses, the team gets a point. I always subtract points if the students speak their mother tongue and at the beginning give each team three points for a good start!

4. Stand up if you.../ (Change your seats if you...) – students sit in a circle, the teacher stands in the middle of the circle and says: ‘Stand up if you have brushed your teeth today’. Once students stand up, the teacher sits down on the nearest chair and students quickly do the same (no need for explanation, they just get the idea!) but one is left standing. S/he must now say ‘Stand if you have...’ and ideally sit down on the nearest seat available once the students stand up wishing to change seats. There is no winner in this game and it may continue for as long as one desires. You might want to add an extra rule and forbid changing the seat for the one on the right or left as it's too easy that way.

You can play this game to practise a number of things:

- past tense e.g. ‘Stand up if you watched a film yesterday.’

- like/ hate etc +V ing e.g. ‘Stand up if you like swimming.’

- describing appearance e.g. ‘Stand up if you have blue eyes.’ (this is my Turkish students’ favourite :)

etc

5. Papers on Walls - students and the teacher write their name on the top of pieces of paper (A4 or half the size) and stick them all randomly on the walls (using blue tack or anything you wish to use). Next they have to write three questions they can ask the people in the class; when they're ready the teacher walks around and corrects if necessary. After that the students stand up and ask each other the questions on their list. However they mustn't write anything and can only ask one question at a time. They also have to try to remember what their classmates (and the teacher) told them. After 10/15 minutes (depending on your class size), the students are told to take a pen and write whatever they can remember about their classmates on the appropriate papers with students' names on the walls. When the teacher stops the activity, everyone collects the paper with their name from the wall, reads it, checks if the information is right and corrects the mistakes as homework.

This game is great for the first day but you can play it to revise and practise many structures for example by limiting the questions to present perfect only. You might as well ask the students to begin with questions words (where, when, why, what etc) or make the focus only on one topic e.g. education. 

Alternatively the questions may refer to past, present and future and each student might be focusing on a different topic (decided by you). With low levels, you could simply give them the questions or provide a simple gap fill e.g. What __ your f___ colour?, When ___ you ___ go shopping? etc.

6. Prefixes/ Suffixes race - students sit in two, three groups (depending on the size of your classroom and the board) and choose a runner-writer that will represent each team. The teacher calls out a suffix e.g. -less. The students shout out all the words containing that suffix to the runner and he/she has to write them all on the board in e.g. 1 minute. The team with more words or the team with a bigger number of words that are different, wins. Also, you may give different suffixes to each team because, as many of you can imagine, students simply love cheating while playing this game :)

Instead of suffixes and prefixes, you may want students to write e.g. words beginning with 'sp', 'br' or simply any letter if they are low level group. My students really liked writing words that contained 'oo' 'tt' etc.

7. True/ False Coin game - students stand in two lines facing each other, make sure everyone has a partner (if not, there might be one group of three). Each pair has one coin. Tell them that they will have to toss the coin and depending on what they get say something to their partner. If what they get is a head, they need to tell the truth, if it's a tail, they must lie (in a convincing way!).The teacher decides on the topic and says e.g. tell your partner about the food you used to eat as a child or tell your partner about the worst restaurant you've ever visited, if you are talking about food. Having listened, the partner then has to say if what he/she listened to was true or false (a lie). Next they coin goes to the other student in a pair (the one who was listening), he/she tosses it, the teacher reads a new sentence and the game continues. 

Have fun playing the games with your students! 

For me there's nothing better than to hear them laugh and enjoy themselves while learning English :)