Eight Enjoyable Games

The school year is coming to an end at least here in Turkey. It’s hot, some students no longer feel the need to attend classes and the rest… Let’s say, they also deserve to have some fun J

Following my successful (seventeen times tweeted!) post about simple blackboard games, I have decided to share some of my favourite non-blackboard games.

1. Drawings on the floor - Teacher puts large pieces of paper (ideally A4) on the floor (one for each student) and tells students what will be drawn (e.g. a monster). Music is played and students walk or dance around the classroom. When the teacher says stop/pauses the music students are told to draw something on one of the pieces of paper e.g. if you a drawing a monster – two eyes, seven noses etc. Students should choose a different paper each time they stop and mustn’t pick them up. Eventually you’ll have a nice collection of pictures and a class vote for the best one may be organized.

The game may be modified depending on what are working on. The students can draw, for example:

- a picnic basket ( two apples, one banana etc)

- a kitchen ( a table, two chairs, a fridge etc)

- a student’s school bag ( three books, a pencil case, two erasers etc)

- a clothes’ shop ( one dress, three pairs of shoes etc)

- on ocean ( thee sharks, one big whale, an octopus etc)

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.

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 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 student speak their mother tongue.

4. Stand up 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, 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 sit down on the nearest seat available. There is no winner in this game and it may continue for as long as one wishes.

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 :)

5. I went to the market and bought... - Everyone sits in a circle. One student or the teacher starts by saying ‘I went to the market and bought apples’. The next person repeats the sentence and adds another word following the pattern given e.g. ‘I went to the market and bought apples and bananas’. The game continues and everyone adds something new repeating what has been said before. The students that cannot remember all the words are out.

The game might be used for practising vocabulary as well as grammatical structures e.g.

*        like/hate (verb) + ing I like sailing, reading, dancing…

*        past simple Yesterday I went to the cinema, bought a newspaper, drank tea…

*        conditionals (e.g. If I had a lot of money) I would buy a Porsche, I would go to China…

*        there is/are In a kitchen there is a table, there are chairs, there is a lamp…

*        a/an/ some (C/U nouns) I’m having a party so I need: a list of guests, some invitations…

*        vocabulary e.g.

-         clothes In my wardrobe I have: a dress, trousers...

-         animals In a zoo there are monkeys, lions…

The game may also be played at the beginning of the year when everyone has to learn each other’s names.

6. Call my bluff - Students are put into teams and given dictionaries, one for each team. The teams choose a few difficult words from the dictionary. They have to create definitions for each word only one of which should be correct. The other teams must decide which definition is correct and which ones are wrong.

For example: A protractor is:

a. an extremely infectious disease

b. a device used for measuring and drawing angles

c. a character in a book, play, film, etc. who harms other people


The students may also use free online dictionaries, e.g. this one or that one.

7. Envelopes - On small pieces of paper the teacher writes words belonging to one category e.g. food, professions, love, S-words, T-words or words from a unit you wish to revise. The cards are put in envelopes. The class is divided into pairs. Each pair is given an envelope; the students’ task is to explain all the words from the envelope to their partners.


You may also ask the students to prepare the envelopes as homework. It's pretty useful before an exam! I've tried it once as a revision - the students brought the envelopes having chosen the categories themselves so we had e.g. T-words, Unit 6 words, Adjectives. Some students chose the same categories but it isn't an issue - the words inside the envelopes are never exactly the same!

8. Who am I? – The teacher prepares small cards with famous people’s/ film/ book character’s names – one for each student. Each card is pinned to the students’ backs. Students walk around asking questions to find out who they are e.g. ‘Am I an actor?’, ‘Do I have long hair?’.

Many thanks to all the teachers from whom I learned J

Six simple blackboard games

I like games that require little or no preparation, ones that you can always adapt and adjust.

With races to the board in large classes, experience taught me to tell students to sit instead of waiting in a line. Otherwise, the ones at the back get bored and start fidgeting, shouting and doing things they’re not supposed to. I always let the teams choose a name and give them 5 extra points for a good start. If they speak their mother tongue, misbehave or cheat, the points are subtracted.

Here are my favourite blackboard games:

1. The Spelling Race – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. 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!). Perfect for a revision before an exam!

2. The longest word – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. The teacher writes a long word horizontally on the board twice (there should be one word for each group). The students run to the board one by one and write down words beginning with one of the letters in the word written by the teacher. It’s good as a filler or an ice-breaker. The team that finishes first, wins. Extra point may be given to the team that writes the longest word.

3. A-Z race – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. The teacher writes all (or some) letters of the alphabet on the board twice (there should be set of letters for each group). The teacher chooses a category e.g. clothes, food, animals, sports etc. The students run to the board one by one and write words beginning with one of the letters of alphabet. The tam that finishes first wins.

4. Swat the fly – students line up in 2 rows facing the board. The teacher places flashcards on the board in random order. Once a word is called out, a student from each team has to run to board and touch a corresponding picture. To avoid confusion, my students are allowed to touch one picture only. Otherwise, they may keep on touching all the pictures until they find the right one! The student that touches the right picture first wins and gains a point for his/ her team.

Variations involve writing down words in English and calling them out or calling out the words’ equivalents in the students’ mother tongue.

5. Draw the word, guess the word - students gather in 2 groups in front of the board. Two students (one from each group) approach the board with a marker/ chalk in their hand. The teacher secretly shows them a word which they have to draw on the board. Their team’s job is to guess the word. The team that guesses first wins.

6. Tick-tack-toe (Noughts and crosses) – divide the class into two groups. Draw the grid on the board and fill it in with e.g. new words you’ve taught. Each team has to make a correct sentence using a word from the grid until they get three X's or O’s in a row (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal).

You may also:

- put verbs in the grid and ask the students to make sentences in e.g. past simple tense

- put adjectives in the grid and ask the students to make sentences using the comparative /superlative

- put words (that go with a preposition e.g. ‘jealous of’) without the preposition and ask the students to make sentences using both

A more advanced version of the game involves making a bigger grid (with 5 rows for instance). Before a class, prepare a question/ task for each square in the grid e.g. What’s the opposite of ‘cold’?, ‘What do you call a person who looks after animals?’ etc.

If you have your favourites – do drop me line!

Blowing my own trumpet

A few months ago, Zarina Markova, whom I met at the BETA Bulgaria conference in May 2009, asked me to host a SEETA week.


For those of you who have never heard of it, SEETA is a  collaborative on-line community of eleven Teachers' Associations in SE Europe run by volunteers.


I feel honoured as some of the former hosts invited to share their ideas on the website were Scott Thornbury, Jamie Keddie, Nik Peachey and Philip Kerr among others.


From 14th to 20th of May 2010 I'll be there discussing all possible issues related to Classroom Management.


Hoping that some of you will find time to join me :)

Corrective feedback

I’m currently preparing for an ELT conference in Vienna where I’m going to talk about error correction and feedback. To cut a long story short - I need your help to prove that what I’m planning to say is not sheer theory. 

Here are some basic, immediate ways of correcting students’ utterances. You may or may not like them but the truth is we all use them, from time to time and sometimes automatically, during out classes.

My request is for you to spend a few minutes and let me know which technique(s) you use most often to correct your students. Are there some you never use? Can you think of other ways that I, in my ignorance, haven’t mentioned?

I’ll be extremely grateful for your replies J

1. Explicit Correction – Teacher provides the correct form and clearly indicates that what the student had said was wrong.

 e.g.

S ‘Yesterday I go to the cinema’

T ‘Yesterday I went to the cinema’. went is the past form of go. If you talk about yesterday you have to use went not go.

2. Recasts – Teacher reformulates all or part of the student’s utterance.

e.g.

S1 ‘Are you agree with me?’

T ‘Do you agree with me?’

S2 ‘Yes, I agree.

3. Clarification requests – indicate to students that what they said has been misunderstood by the teacher or that the utterance is incorrect in some way. Repetition or reformulation is required from the student and the teacher may use phrases such as: ‘Pardon?’ ‘Excuse me?’

e.g.

T. ‘What did you do yesterday?’

S ‘I play football’

T ‘Excuse me?’

S ‘I played football’

4. Metalinguistic feedback – contains comments and information about the student’s utterance without providing the correct form. Metalinguistic comments indicate that there is an error somewhere but they are also an attempt to elicit the information from the student. Teacher may use grammatical terminology or a word definition.

e.g.

S. She like bananas.

T. What’s the ending of the 3rd person singular when we use Present Simple?

5. Repetition - Teacher repeats student’s erroneous utterance typically by adjusting the intonation to highlight the error. 

e.g.

S. I watch TV in Monday.

T. IN Monday? (rising intonation)

Please, don’t be a lurker and drop me a line :) If you have more time you can also mention the level and age of your students. 

Thanks a million!

Music is the soul of language

When I was a kid my parents kept the radio on even at night. Even this day I can see this old Dorota in front of my eyes. It was a wedding gift they got from my uncle. During communism such gift was a treat of great value. And they did make use of it.

Music has always been around although I have never been able to play any musical instruments or sing. I got used to having it around and music became a part of my life. 

Although it may sound the opposite, this post isn’t about how much I like it. 

It’s about how useful and beneficial listening to music may be in the ELT classroom.

You see, back at school I was always better at English than other kids. We all had the same start in grade 6 but I somehow knew more. Never had serious problems with pronunciation and grammar... Well, some sentences simply sounded either good or bad.

I took me some time to figure out why I succeeded in learning English whereas some of my friends did not. I’m sure you already know what I’m hinting at – it was all because of the music.

On the Polish radio (and that’s my guess) around 10% of music played is in Polish and the rest is in English. That’s a generalization, of course, but most commercial stations arrange it this way. Hence, subconsciously, I was exposed to the English language most of the time. I didn’t focus on form or meaning. I used to hum songs to myself just because I liked how they sounded.

Some three years ago I decided to give it a try and started using background music in my classes. The results were not miraculous – eventually a few hours of listening to music in English was not enough to expect some radical changes.

• To begin with, I managed to get a pretty good rapport with my teenage students as I let them bring music of their own and asked what they liked. All the hip-hop or whatever it was turned out to be slightly tiring but they thought I was cool. Fair enough.

• It also became easier to get the students’ attention. When the music was suddenly turned off or simply faded away, they knew that it was time for something new and were instantly ready for it.

• Students appeared to be calmer when exposed to soft music in the background. When I wanted them to discuss important issues I chose, for instance, Dido or Sting. They were more involved in the conversation and listened to each other more carefully. On the other hand, when I played lively and energetic songs, the students were having more energy and fun but the class was a lot louder.

• They seemed to enjoy taking part in activities lot more and with greater enthusiasm when their favorite music was played

• My 2nd graders really liked ‘Accidentally in love’ (aka the 'Shrek song') and asked for it all the time. A few weeks after I started using background music my colleague asked them to prepare mini dialogues between two animals. She had a lot of fun but couldn’t understand how the kids learned all the phrases they used. The dialogue one of the pairs created went something like this:

‘Hello! What’s your name?’

‘Hello! My name is horse Debbie!

‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, thanks, and you?

‘I’m fine. What’s the problem baby?’

‘Dog Jake is speaking Turkish and swinging on the chair!’*

‘Ok, bye bye.’

‘See you later’

Silly as it looks, if you know the song I mentioned, you should realize that ‘What’s the problem baby’ was a phrase they picked up just by listening and enjoying the music I brought to the classroom. To me, the dialogues my kids created were amazing and I couldn’t have felt more proud!

My little experiment also proved that children can be exposed to any kind of music even if it’s music for adults where they sing faster and use more complicated vocabulary.

Now here is the conclusion.

I’m not claiming that my success in learning English should be attributed solely to the radio I listened to as a kid. I’m also not saying that background music will magically transform your students into fluent English speakers. It may help though so why not use it?

Has anyone of you tried?

*Obviously the ‘speaking Turkish’, ‘swinging on the chair’ and other phrases from the mini dialogues were what the students picked up from their teachers ;)

Thanks Mike for the inspiration! J

That's more or less what our old radio looked like btw :)