Print this PDF and keep in the teacher s office. ’
Print this PDF and keep in the teacher s office. ’
Really simple but fun warmer today... At the start of the class, get your students sitting in a circle. One student starts by saying a word. The next student must say a word beginning with the last letter of the first student's word. The next student must then say a word starting with the last letter of the previous and so on and so on, around the circle. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Love Elephant Talking Good Daydream , etc, etc...
The object of this game is just to get the class warmed up and using a little English before you start your 'real' class, so just have some fun with this. See if you can make it three times around the circle! Lower levels or younger classes can use their course books to help. Tip: Keep this light-hearted. Be ready to help student's if they can't think up of a word. Always keep your students' confidence high.
This is a really funny classroom game which your classes are guaranteed not to have done before. It is a mix of a sentence structure game and an unusual Indian sport called Kabadi! 1. Get a sentence or two of a recently studied topic , or just something level appropriate. 2. Photocopy this out so you have the same sentence twice . Try to make the words nice and big, at least size 48 on Word. 3. Cut the sentences up into individual words and put them into two separate envelopes. Both envelopes should contain all the words needed to make the original sentence. 4. Divide the class into two teams. If you have a big class, make three teams and three envelopes. 5. Put all envelopes on a table at the other end of the classroom.
How to Play 1. Get teams into lines 2. One student from each team must race out to try to put the sentence into order at the table. However, while they do this, they must not breathe in!! To prove they are not cheating, they must constantly say 'Banana' over and over and over again! 3. As soon as they can't go on, they must run back to their line and tag-in the next student who runs in and takes over from where the last student left off . Again, they must say 'Banana' constantly until they can not go on and have to return for the next person. The first team to get all of their words into the correct order wins!
Tips: Don't make the sentence too short , otherwise the first few students will finish it with the rest of the class not getting a go and feel disappointed. Similarly, don't make it too long that it becomes an impossible exercise . You may have to experiment a little here to get the right balance. Perhaps go to the class armed with two sentences. If you plan to use this with multiple classes, consider using a dif f er ent colour ed f ont for each team. That way, at the end of the class, you can whack all the words back into the right envelopes according to colour rather than having a big, mixed-up pile of random words to sort out on your precious break between classes! No colour printer? No worries, simply run a different coloured feltpen on the reverse side of the sentence before you cut it up.
This is a brilliant warmer which will get your class speaking straight away! The best thing is that you can adjust the difficulty to suit any age or any level...so you can all use this today!
1. Give each student a sheet of A4 paper . 2. Each student uses a pen to divide the sheet into 9 sections , like a naughts and crosses board - two lines across, two lines going down. 3. The teacher writes around 15 questions of the board to suit the level of the students. Easy for small kids, harder for advanced students. 4. Each student chooses eight of these questions and writes the questions in the squares, leaving the centre space blank. 5. Students then must speak to eight different students to get their answers. These answers are written on their paper. 6. At the end of the activity, have feedback. For example:
Teacher: Who spoke to Lucky?
Teacher: What did Lucky say?
Student 1: Me
Student 1: She wakes up at 7am
Student 2: I did
Student 2: Supermarket, greengrocers, bookstore
Teacher: What did you ask her? Student 1: What time do you wake up? Student 2: Tell me three shops.
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This is the perfect activity to lift a dreary class! Choose a suitable song (not too fast), and choose about 15 keywords from the song. Write the words in big letters on paper and stick the words on the blackboard. Also write about 5 words which don't appear in the song and put these on the board too. Be sure to put all the words in a random order. Get the students into two teams and have them form lines. Play the song and the first student of each line has to run out and grab the word they hear off the board. If you are worried about your words getting totally wrecked, then just have students point to the correct word . (Each student only gets one try, they can't just point at all of the words until they get the right one!) This is a great game which is good for listening practice. If you need to, you can play the song twice or pause it where needed. Tip: Remember if you choose your one of favourite songs, which you have listened to 1000 times, then this will seem easy to you. Remember that this could be the first time your students may have listened to it and they won't know what is coming next in the same way you do! Take it easy with your students...
*Note: You can do one, two or all of these activities depending on what you want to do and how much time you have) Lead in (5-10 minutes) - Ask class if they know what a lottery is. Ask if there is a lottery in China (there is, Sports Lottery, Welfare Lottery, etc). Do any of your students play? Why/why not? Have they won any money before? How much? Activity #1 - The Newspaper Interview (30-45 mins) - Get a photo of a lottery winner. Show the class and tell your students that they have just won $200,000,000. Ask your students how he/she might feel. What do you think he/she would spend the money on? Get ideas. - Tell students that they are newspaper reporters and have to get an interview with the lottery winner. Have pairs of students think of 4-5 questions they would ask the lottery winner for the newspaper. When finished, interview different pairs of students. Activity #2 (20-30 mins) - What to do with the Money? Put students into groups to decide the best way to spend the money and present it to the class. They can either get mansions, golf courses in their back garden, etc, or can be more imaginative or charitable, up to the groups! Activity #3 Lottery Draw! (15-20 mins) - Before class, go to the shop and buy 12 ping-pong balls and a black permanent marker. Write numbers 1-12 on each ball, and put them in a bag. If your students want to, collect 0.5RMB from each student (or 1RMB if they are high-rollers haha) and hand them each a slip of paper. Tell them that they are going to play the lottery. Each student must write three numbers from 1-12 on their paper. Go around and check each paper to see that it has been done right. - Tell the class that they will play the lottery. You will pick three balls f rom the bag. If they can match two numbers, they win 2RMB. If they match all three, then they win the pot!! (You can usually play 3-4 games before the pot is empty). Ask the winners and losers how they felt afterwards.
This activity is great as a warmer or a first class icebreaker . By a toilet roll from the shop and bring it to class.
Sit everyone in a circle and hand the toilet roll to the first student. The toilet roll is obviously a very unusual thing to bring to class, so everyone will be wondering what is going on and you'll have their interest . Give the roll to the first student and tell them to tear off between 1-4 sheets . Don't say why just yet. The roll then travels around the room, with every student choosing to tear off between 1-4 sheets each. When it gets back to you, you also can either take 1, 2, 3 or 4 sheets of toilet paper. Students (and you) then have to say something about themselves . If they have one sheet, they must tell the class one thing about themselves. Two sheets, two things about themselves. Three sheets, three things, and so on. This is a fun and simple way for everyone to say something about themselves and to break to ice for a class. Tip My mate played this with his class and grabbed a half-finished roll from his bathroom before coming to school, only to find that no students wanted to touch it in the classroom and the game fell apart. Use a fresh roll to save yourself the hassle.
Level: Any Level This game is fun and challenging at the same time. It can be adapted for virtually any subject and any grade level. It allows the students to review material they've learned, without having to get out a pencil and paper and answer questions from the text. What to Do Arrange 6 chairs in a circle with students seated in them and choose one person, the teacher or another student, to stand outside the circle. Give someone sitting in the circle a stuffed animal - the funnier the animal the better! If you don't have a teddy, then find some other cool passable object, it doesn't really matter. The person outside the circle states what the person holding the animal has to name six of , for example, six classroom objects, or six things in the city, or six verbs, etc. The person then starts passing the animal around the circle from student to student as fast as possible. The person standing in the middle must name six of the objects before the animal gets back to him or her. If the player can say six items before the teddy gets back to the first student, then he/she has won. If the teddy gets back first before the player has said sx things, then the player in the middle loses!
During your classes, teachers will need to pair up students. This often means just pairing up students with the person they are sitting next to. This should be avoided.
Always having the same pairs means students miss out on interacting with one another and the class dynamic won't be as strong and fun. Try to mix things up.
Ball o' String I got this idea from an English teacher who is teaching in Spain. It is really simple and will guarantee that you will have different pairs each time you try it. Get a ball of string from the shop and cut several lengths of string , a few metres long each. If your class is 20, cut 10 bits of string. If your class is 14, cut 7 lengths of string and so on - one length of string per pair . If you have odd numbers, put one group into a three or you join in yourself. Get everyone to stand up in a large circle. Have all of the string bunched up in a ball in your hand (but not tangled up) with the ends poking out. Ask each student to grab one end of a piece of string and gradually walk backwards. They will be left holding the string with their new partner at the other end ...so easy! This is a very fun and original way to choose partners and you'll be the coolest teacher in your school for sure!
Use this activity to underline the importance of intonation when your students, as they often do, talk like robots. Basically, get them to say the words in quotation marks in the contexts that follow.
Say 'Hello' to a friend you haven't seen for 3 years to a neighbour that you don't like to a 6 month old baby to someone you have just found doing something they shouldn't to someone on the phone when you're not sure if they are still on the other end Say 'Goodbye' to a member of your family as they are going through the boarding gate at the airport to someone who has been annoying you to a child starting his very first day at school Say 'How are you?' to someone you haven't seen for 20 years to someone who has recently lost a member of the family to someone who didn't sleep in their own bed last night
Say 'I never go to pubs' by a person that totally disapproves of drinking alcohol to someone who often goes to pubs as a response to someone who has told you they sometimes go to pubs
said before: '…but I quite like discos.'
Say 'What have you done?' to someone who claims to have fixed your television only that now it's worse than before to someone who is scolding you for not doing anything when you suspect the same about them. to someone who has just done something very bad and which has serious consequences
The Darwin Awards are given out to very, very stupid people who help the human race by taking themselves out of the gene pool by either death or by sterilizing themselves i.e. a man dangling his nuts in a golf ball cleaning machine for a laugh (this has happened....)
Using the Darwin Awards in the Classroom About ten years ago, I was teaching an adults class for EF English First Xi'an. The unit was about 'Greatest Human Achievements' and the language point for c o m p a r a t i v e s a n d s u p e r la t i v es . I flicked through the pages in the office and decided that the unit was i n c r e d i b l y b o r i n g , but had a felling that it needn't be... I decided to put a twist on it and do the Darwin Awards to contrast with the Greatest Achievements. We looked at the Darwin Awards and some of the winners and what they had done 'to win'. The students absolutely loved it!
What we did Following reading through a couple of real award winners , students were put into groups and had to invent their own Darwin Award stories (using the language point) they were really creative here! Some stories were amazing! At the end, they acted out their stories for the class. It worked perfectly; lots of smiles. If you have an adults class this week, a university class, or a Salon Class in an adults language centre, then try out using The Darwin Awards!
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This Young Learner activity is for kids who are just beginning to read and write in English. You can easily grade this activity to make it super easy or a bit more challenging. It is best suited with a maximum of 12 or so students. In a nutshell, your students will be given a lollypop each with a small, secret message wrapped around the lolly stick . They need to unravel this, and then go to the board to work out what the message says from the key you have stuck to the white board. They then have to write down this message on a piece of paper to show you. When they have sussed it out, they can have their lolly. Preparation: A few days before class, pop into a corner shop and buy one lollypop per student in your class. They are only 1RMB each, so no big sweat. Choose a suitable word or small sentence for your class. If you have 5 year-olds, this might be 'dog ', 'cat', co w' , whatever. For slightly older classes, it could be 'M y n a m e , or 'I lik e .....' . I'll leave this to you. is ' First prepare your key for the whiteboard. In the teachers' office, jump onto Microsoft Word and type out on one page letters A-Z in Arial font and then type each letter A-Z again out using the WEBDINGS font (Webdings are little fun pictures instead of A, B, C, D, etc). You should be left with the whole alphabet and the corresponding symbols from Webdings. 26 letters, 26 matching symbols. Print this page, go to the photocopier and print it out to A3 . You now have a big, clear key to stick on the whiteboard for your students to follow. Now for the messages. Jump back on the computer and type out short words or messages using the Webdings font on Microsoft Word. You can either choose them all the same, or have a couple of different messages. This is more fun for the kids in my view. Print out the page of coded messages , cut them into individual strips (one strip per student) and wrap them around the lolly stick . Job done!
(The vocab used in this example is for 'food', but any lexis is fine for this flashcard game)
Sit down in a circle and pass the first flashcard to the child on your right. As you pass the card say the word, or a short sentence, e.g. “Carrot” , “It‟s a carrot”, “I like carrots”, etc.
That student must pass the card to the next student, repeating what you have said. Then that child passes it on to the next and so on.
In the meantime, you have passed a new card to the first student, then another, then another and so on. Students are then continuously receiving cards and passing them on, saying the correct word or phrase. Start slowly at first and gradually speed up. When they have had some practice with this and are able to do it quite well, you make the activity more complex . Instead of only passing the cards round in one direction, you pass a card to the student on your right but then you pass the next card to the student on your left . So cards are moving around the group in both directions. It's a good way to develop vocabulary and to get your students to use short phrases.
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This is a fun warmer to start off your adults' lessons this week. 1. Get students into small groups 2. Tell the class that you need help with some problems 3. Groups must take it in turns to call out help for you 4. Before you start, write a problem on the board and write down suggestions of how you can be helped to show the class what they need to do 5. You are now ready to begin. Get one idea from each group, then change to a new problem. Keep going for a few minutes, then start your usual class. Example problem: I have a headache "Take an aspirin" "Stop drinking beer" "Lie down"
Example problem: I have no money "Ask for a raise" "Get a new job" "Get out of bed"
Example problem: I have missed the bus to work "Catch the next bus" "Run!" "Call work to tell them you will be late"
Draw a target (with points - like a dart board) on the white board or use a cardboard box in the middle of the room. Students then make paper aeroplanes and get to launch them after they answer your question in the form of a sentence. Encourage students to answer in sentences, rather than single word utterances. You will be suprised just how hard students will try to say the answer , repeat your sentence, or whatever, just so they can throw their paper plane! I recommend giving a prize to make the target points mean something, thus peaking their interest in the activity. Lastly, use scrap paper for this activity. Large packs of new A4 paper are costly for schools and a ball-ache to go and buy, so get some use out of the scrap paper box.
An Ice Breaker is a simple activity for the first class of a new term. In a new class students may well not know each other yet (and nor will you know them). They may well be shy about speaking also. An ice breaker is designed to do several things. Good ones will relax the class and create a friendly atmosphere . They will also allow you to get a good idea of the level of the class and see how different students work together (or not, as the case may be).
Skittles! Buy a big pack of Skittles (enough for five Skittles per student) and go around the class giving each student five Skittles. Important: Tell your students they can't eat their Skittles yet! Now go to the board and write the following: Red Skittle = Favourite hobby Blue Skittle = Dream job Yellow Skittle = Favourite place Orange Skittle = Favourite film Purple Skittle = Wildcard - ask any question you like Students now have to go and meet other students . Student A offers Student B a skittle to eat and this student must choose one and ask the matching question e.g. Takes a blue Skittle and asks "What is your dream job?" Student A then takes one of Student B's skittles to eat and also asks a question. After this, both students must walk off and find new partners. Keep going until each student has spoken to five other students and all the Skittles are gone!
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This is a fantastic game which practices the use of the present perfect tense and tense and using the past participle. participle . Your students will absolutely LOVE this game and will want to play again and again.
What to do: do: Ask examples from your class of things they have NEVER done . Write your students' suggestions on the board. For example: " I h a v e n e v er er b e e n t o Shanghai"
" I h a v e n e v er er f l o w n a helicopter"
" I have never eaten snails"
" I h a v e n e v er er r i d d e n a horse"
"I have never played golf"
After you have gotten ten or so ideas on the board, ask your students to move their chairs so chairs so that they are sitting in a large circle. circle . You, the teacher, should now stand in the middle and middle and say something that you haven't done (whether done (whether you have done it or not is irrelevant). For example, you might say: " I have never dran k water."
Now tell your students that if they HAVE drank water, then they should move and swap places with places with another student. Naturally, everyone will get up and move places. Give two more examples and have students get up and move around , for example, "I have never ridden a move . bicycle". Again, any students who HAVE ridden a bicycle should move. On the third time, you yourself should quickly take a seat and leave one student in the middle standing. standing . Your students will find this very funny! ever..." " Now it is the student in the middle's turn to . Again, your students must turn to say " I have n ever... activity which your students get up and switch around if they HAVE done it. This is a fast paced activity which will love!
This is a dead easy activity to set up and can create a lot of laughs! Get some A4 paper and and cut it into quarters. On each piece of paper, write a situation of two people in a sticky or embarrassing situation . Have one situation for each pair of students. Here are some examples:
- A man catches his wife cheating - Someone wants to take money from his account, but he only has 10RMB in the bank - A doctor fails an athlete in a drug's test after a race - A store detective catches a shoplifter - A woman is late for work for the third time in one week - A boy kicks a football through his dad's new greenhouse - A dad buys his daughter a new phone, but it is like a brick and she hates it - A woman wants to die her hair brown, but it comes out blue - A blind date goes horribly wrong , etc Give each pair of students one o ne role-play card each and give them 5-10 minutes to make their own dialogue. They can then act it out in out in front of the class. *Tip 1: before 1: before pairs act out the dialogue, separate each pair , pair , as they will just keep planning their own dialogue and not watch the acting pair/will just continually talk to each other through each performance. can make notes of *Tip 2: Teacher 2: Teacher can make notes of any interesting parts/language errors to go through at the end
The Dinner Party Tell your class that this weekend you are having a dinner party. There will be good food, good music and good company. Tell them that you have invited five very, very, very special guests to the party and ask your students to guess who they might be. Get some answers from them. After you have got a few ideas, reveal your list of five special guests . Here are my five, you can choose any you like: Helen Keller Elvis Presley Nostradamus Neil Armstrong Queen Elizabeth II Make sure that your five are well known and have some no longer living. Tell your students why you have chosen your 5 . Now tell your students to make their own list of five people for their own dinner party. They can be alive or dead, but can't include their own friends or family, who will be coming anyway. After they have made their list, have each student tell everyone who was on their list and why they were chosen . This is a quick, easy and fun speaking activity which requires no special preparation.
Newspaper Sumo
Get a large newspaper and pull out one large page and lay it in the middle of your classroom.
Get two equal-sized students to stand with their backs facing each other with their toes just touching the edges of the paper (their backs won't be touching at this point and there will be a large gap between the students) Ask the students a question and the first student to answer correctly gets to take half a step backward. Keep asking questions with the fastest student to answer always taking half a step backward. When their backs are touching each other, you may stop asking questions and it is time for battle to commence!
At the count of three, students must try to walk backwards to push the other student off the paper . As soon, as any part of their foot has come off the newspaper and touched the floor, then that student loses! You can then get two new students in to play.
Just make sure that both students are equally matched in size and weight and don't expect your newspaper to last very long either!
Play this game at your own discretion. Don't be afraid of one student flying off headfirst, it doesn't happen, students generally just put a quick toe down off the paper for balance. However, do stand close just in case.
Marooned! Get your class into pairs or 3's , and tell them that they have been marooned on a desert island . The next ship will pass in 6-12 months time.
(If with a lower level class, a picture of someone marooned on a desert island will help with the explanation). There is fresh water on the island, as well as loads of fruits, nuts and berries. Food and water isn't a problem.
Ask each group to make a list of five things they would like to have with them for their time stuck on the island. They can have anything they want , but the rule is that they must be able to carry it , so a boat or helicopter is out!
Give them five minutes to make their list and walk around helping with language. At the end, get each group's ideas and discuss them .
Word Tennis This English teaching game is an ideal warmer when teaching English to kids, especially 6 to 13 year olds. It is an excellent way to review vocabulary. It also teaches category names to the students. Divide the class into 2 halves . Write the team names on either side of the board at the top. Leave a space in the middle of the board to write a list of categories . Write the first category [for example, animals]. Have the students read this to you, if they can't read it yet, you can read it to them. Repeated exposure to the category names will help them recognize them. Point quickly to the first student. The student must respond with an animal name within a few seconds. Then the 'ball' bounces to the other team , and the first student quickly gives the name of another animal. Then the second student on the other team answers. This game must be done quickly, and without any repetition of vocabulary . When a student cannot answer, a point is given to the opposing team , and a new category is written on the board. The whole process is then repeated. Ideally this game should be a fast review of vocabulary items. The very first time you do this activity, the students may well need help. However, once they are familiar with it, then it should become faster . Any categories can be used from vegetables to verbs, and places in the city to parts of the body. Sometimes teachers stop using TEFL games like this when the children know animals, fruit and other simple vocabulary. However, this English teaching game can also be used to teach more advanced vocabulary categories [for example things that melt, personality types...] can be used
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Clothes Race If you teach elementary levels, be it Young Learners, teens or adults, at some point you are going to have a unit on your course looking at clothing. If you are going to be covering this topic in the next few weeks or months, then read on and remember this little beauty...
In the week before class, get from home several items of common clothing - jeans, hat, T-shirt, jumper, socks, etc. Beg, borrow or steal items of clothing from a colleague so that you have clothes for both sexes . Get all the clothing ready in a big bag and your preparation is now complete.
In Class Get everyone sat in a circle and use the clothing to pre-teach the vocab . Pass around a ball of socks from one student to another. Get them to say 'These are socks' , or 'This is a T-shirt' , as they pass the clothes around. Actually holding and passing real clothes, whilst saying what they are will help them to remember the names of the clothes much better than a picture in a book! When you feel you are ready, put the class into two teams and have them form lines. Dump all of the clothes at the other end of the classroom . When you are ready, call out the name of an item or two of clothing and the first two students must run out, locate that item from the pile (have two of each item if you don't want your T-shirt stretched!) and get them to put it on and return to their line. The first player back wearing the correct item gets a point for their team. As you go on, you can call out two or three items which makes the game more challenging and funny. Getting the boys to race out and get on a dress is a particular winner with your class! This is a great way of teaching clothing and your students will remember the vocab much more effectively, whilst having an awesome time in class.
Grandma Went Shopping
This is a great warmer or time filler for your class if you finish earlier than expected.
Get your class in a circle and say "My grandma went shopping and b o u g h t a b i k e " (you can say any
item here really). Now get the student on your left to say " M y g r a n d m a w e n t shopping and bought a bike AND a ...." (the student on your left adds
an item).
The next student along now says " M y g r a n d m a w e n t s h o p p i n g a n d b o u g h t a bi ke, a ..... AND a ......"
Keep going around the class and see how long you can make the chain. The students shouldn't write anything down , just use their memory.
For elementary students, this is also a good game to practice the use of a/an/some.
This is an adventurous whole-class activity which involves lots of speaking and interaction. This activity can be done with ages 8-80! In a nutshell, your students will be going around to three 'supermarkets' in your classroom to buy the goods on a shopping list you give them for as little money as possible. The winning team is the team which buys all the items on their list for as little as possible! Before class, set three tables in your classroom. These table zones will be your supermarkets. Spread them apart as much as you can. On each table, put a list of items which that particular supermarket sells and how much each item costs. When class begins, tell your students that a few of them will be shop assistants in a supermarket and the rest of the class will be shoppers. The shoppers will have to buy items on a list given to them. Before you begin the activity review all the key vocabulary (the items on the list) and the language needed to buy and sell . For example: Shopper: "How much is 1kg of bananas please?" Assistant: "That will be $9"
Shopper: "Here you are" Assistant: "Thank you, please come again"
Once you have reviewed the key vocab and the important language, then you are ready to begin. Depending on how many students you have, choose 1 or 2 students to work at each supermarket. The rest of your students, put into pairs. Explain to the whole class that each pair will be given a shopping list and that they need to speak to each person at the supermarket to buy these items. The pair who buys everything
using the least amount of money is the winner. Each team starts with $150 (you can download dollar bills from the internet and print them off easily). When making the price lists for each supermarket, make sure that some items are cheap, the others are more expensive. This way, students will have to continually shop around and be repeating the language at all three locations , rather than buying all items in one place. Here are two examples: 'Insta-Saver Supermarket' 1kg of bananas $15 Bread $4 Cheese $10 Toy car $12 Mini pizzas $13 'Food World'
1kg of bananas $12 Bread $5 Cheese $11 Toy car $9 Mini pizzas $17 Float around the room lending a hand when needed and listen out for any language errors which you can either help with straight away or go through at the end if you wish. Depending on the level/age of your students, you can adjust the difficulty and number of the items on the list . For lower levels, use words like 'bread' and 'milk', for higher levels you can use items like 'ketchup, 'chicken fillets' or 'instant noodles'. After a supermarket has sold an item, they should take the money and tick it off the customers list. This is a very cool activity I have done a few times before and is actually really easy to set up. All you really need is some money you've printed off.
Adverb Madness! Adverbs are most commonly used to modify and give more information about a verb. Check these two examples: "John walks to school." "John walks to school s l o w l y . " Here, s l o w l y is the adverb and it gives us much more information about how John walks to school. How to Play Get ten flashcards of some common daily routines or activities . Here are some ideas: b r u s h i n g t e e t h , ea t i n g b r e a k f as t , p l a y i n g f o o t b a l l , s h o p p i n g , c a t c h i n g t h e bus, doing homework , etc. Now get some large word cards of some common adverbs. You should pre-teach or revise these. Here are some examples: q u i c k l y , s l o w l y , a n g r i l y , beautifully , l o u d l y , q u i e t l y , b l i n d l y . You can choose the activities and adverbs to suit the level of your class.
Now ask a student to come to the front of the class and choose one activity card and one adverb card. The student should look at these, but not tell the other student what they chose. The student now gives you back the cards. The student should now mime the activity and adverb to the class (no speaking at all), for example, "brushing teeth b l i n d l y ". Students should try to guess what it is. The first student to guess gets the next go!
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The TV Interview This is a very simple, yet effective way to get your students speaking English. As with any language, the more chance the students can actually speak and produce, the faster they will improve. Basically, in this activity, your students will be performing a TV or radio interview . Before class, make some interview scenario cards . Simply get a piece of paper or card and write different interview situations on these cards. Be as imaginative as you like. Here are some interview situation ideas:
Interviewer and a rock star about to go on tour.
Interviewer with an Olympic gold medalist.
Interviewer and a Hollywood star
Interviewer and a man just released from prison.
Interviewer a Presidential candidate
Interviewer with an athlete who's just failed a drug test.
Interviewer with lottery winner. Divide your class into pairs (or three's if you want two interviewers). Let each pair pick one of your cards and then give them some time to plan what they are going to say and the questions/answers . You can then have them show the rest of the class their interviews!
Tip: Separate the pairs when they are watching others perform their interviews. If you
don't separate the pairs, they will just continue to plan their own interview and will pay no attention whatsoever to the performing group.
Secret Student Next time you take a flight, remember to keep the eye cover each person gets and put it in your bag to take home. They are great for the classroom! There are many ways you can use a blindfold in classes for learning English and today I will look at one for 'Warmer of the Day'. Get your students to stand in a circle and have one of them standing in the middle of the circle blindfolded. Now ask all of your students to swap places quietly, so that the person in the middle doesn't know where everyone is standing. The teacher now goes into the middle and spins the student around a few times and then asks the blindfolded student to point their finger . Whoever the student is pointing to have to come into the circle and talk to the blindfolded person, but must not say their name. The blindfolded student then must guess who it is. The chosen student may change their voice (students find this hilarious!) For example:
Blindfolded student: "How are you?" Chosen student: "Fine thanks!" Blindfolded student: "What did you do last night?" Chosen student: "I did my homework and then watched a movie." etc. This is a fun way to get people talking and for building class rapport. If you don't have a blindfold, then a scarf works just as well!
Cross the Line This is a very simple game which can be played with teens and adults who are Pre-Intermediate level and upwards. Make a line down the middle of your classroom (you can use rope, string, bags, whatever). On a piece of A4 paper write a topic, for example, 'cars'. On another piece of paper write 'public transport', for example. Lay one piece of paper on one side of the line and the other piece of paper on the other side of the line. Now ask your students to stand on one side of the line or the other by deciding if 'cars' are more important to society, or if 'public transport' is more important. This is a personal choice and not one as a group, so students can stand where they like. Once your students have chosen which side they wish to be on, they must persuade other students to 'cross the line' and come over to their side. Encourage students to 'cross the line' if arguments are good. (You can help this by being the first to cross the line yourself to set the example.) This is a great way to develop talking and language for argument/discussion... "I believe that..." "I disagree with you because..." "Although what you say is important, I feel..." "I agree with you on this point, however..."
Other topics could be: Books vs Internet Music vs Clothes Chopsticks vs Knives and Forks Eating meat vs Being a vegetarian Television vs Telephones Small shops vs Big Supermarkets University vs Getting a trade
Running Dictation Running Dictation is an ESL classic , but there may be many of you teachers out there who, for one reason or another, haven't heard about this TEFL gem. If that is you, then you are in for a real treat! This activity allows the students to practice reading, speaking, listening and writing skills all in one awesome go. Have printed out a text appropriate in length and difficulty for your class. Ideally, it should be no longer than a paragraph for older students and a few sentences for younger students , otherwise the activity will take too long and overrun. Before your class, make sure you can easily read the text from at least 1m away. Stick the text on the wall with sticky tape about 30cm above the eye-level of your students. Divide your students into pairs and have them all sitting well away from the text you have stuck on the wall. Have one student sitting down with a pen and paper. The other student needs to run to the text, read and remember as much as she can, then return to her partner and tell them what the text says. The seated student listens to this and then writes this down. The running student will need to run back to the text (she won't remember it all for certain!) to read some more before again returning to the partner who again continues to listen to the text and write. Keep going until the the text has been fully written out. Make sure the runner and writer switch halfway through the game, to make sure that all skills are practiced by every student
Some points to remember In addition to practicing all the skills, its more fun for the runner than the writer, so do make sure to change them over halfway through the game. Don't allow the students who are running/reading to write anything at any stage. No pens and paper at the wall. Also, don't allow shouting from the wall over from their partner. The room quickly becomes a shouting match and nothing is achieved. Have your runners, read the text at the wall quietly, run back and whisper to their partner.
Don't allow students to run back, pick up the pen and write themselves.
Older students will try to take a photo of the text with their phones to show their partner so they don't have to remember the words and to get an advantage. Don't allow photos to be taken of the text . If your students do take a photo, don't get angry with them, just give them a little laugh and take their phone away until after the game.
This activity should be done in a race format to encourage competition and motivation. If it is done correctly and managed well by the teacher, then this is one of the best ESL activities out there , where there is an element of speaking, reading, writing and listening throughout .
Timebomb! 'TIMEBOMB!' is a really fun game for students of all ages and it helps them to practice numbers. Have your students stand up in a large circle. Stand in the middle of the circle and blow up a balloon. Try to get the balloon as full as possible, without bursting it (you may want to have a few spares in case it goes bang!) Tell your students that you are holding a time bomb and it will blow up when it gets to zero!! Be holding a pin or a sharp pencil and let them know you will burst the balloon when the count gets to ZERO!! Give the 'time bomb' to one of your students. They start with the count of 60 and can choose to say one number or two numbers before giving the balloon to the person to their left. For example, they can either say '60' or 60, 59'. The person taking the 'time bomb' now has to say the next number down (or the next two numbers down if they choose to say two numbers instead of one). Example:
Student 1: 60, 59... Student 2:58... Student 3: 57... Student 4: 56, 55... Student 5: 54, 53...
As the balloon goes around the circle, each student taking the 'time bomb' has to count backwards by either one number or two numbers all the way until someone eventually gets to ZERO! Whoever is holding the balloon when it gets to zero has the balloon burst by the teacher whilst they hold it! BOOOOOM!!! (Remember, the count goes backwards from 60 down to 0). The students LOVE this ga
In a nutshell, this activity is a cool twist on the old 'Message in a Bottle' activity. Instead of putting a message in a bottle and casting it into the sea, your kids will write a message and attach the message on a helium balloon and float it off into the sky!
What You'll Need: One helium balloon per student, sticky tape, paper or tags for your students to write on, a small photo to personalise the tag. What to Do
The class before, ask the students to bring in a little passport sized photo of themselves for this class. The front desk can help you make these calls to parents.
Tell your class (either directly or through a teaching assistant) that you want to do a 'Message in a Bottle' activity, but instead are going to use a balloon to carry your message through the skies!! You can also tell them that their message will probably climb higher than the clouds....enjoy their gasps of excitement!! (True...they can get to 10,000m!! )
Have a balloon pre-made with a large tag with your passport sized photo on it and some info about you. Today my son wrote his name, age, favourite animal, food, colour and hobbies. On the back in Chinese was an explanation of what the activity was about and to get in touch with me (I left my WeChat and QQ number) to say that the message had been found and where it landed!
Ask your students where they think the message will end up! Get guesses and build excitement and interest. Then go outside and release your demo balloon! Now tell them that they will be making their own now to release!
Depending on the age and level of your students, you can write anything you like, as low as a simple name and age, up to likes and hobbies or a student fact file.
When the students are ready, attach the tags to each balloon. You can decorate the tags with glitter, stickers, coloured pens and stars. This will make the students even more proud of their personal creation and also increase the chance of it being picked up from the street in a nearby (or faraway!) city.
A School Marketing Activity
Helium balloons can be expensive and if you have a large class, then you may be out of pocket a bit. One thing to consider is the marketing value of an activity like this. Tell the parents about it, get them involved, perhaps the school has branded balloons in the store room or would be happy to order. Image 100's of school branded balloons all being released by students into the air....that's WeChat and Weibo gold right there!! It will get shared a lot!
Why not offer a free language course in the school to anyone who finds a tag and calls to say where it was found? There is a lot of marketing value in this activity as well as an excellent way for Young Learners to enjoy writing and have a lovely memory of the time in your school!
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So, you are a foreign teacher here in China, and you take a taxi. There is a silence for a minute or so, and then the questions come...and actually, these first few questions are usually pretty much the same and in the same order, just usual 'small talk', to keep the journey friendly.
"Where are you from?" "How long have you been here?" "Do you like Xi'an (or what ever city you are in)?" "What is your job?" Etc,
And this got me thinking...I reckon that these opening questions would be pretty much the same in any taxi cab in the world , and that you could probably get a good speaking activity out of this with your adult English students...
What to do
Tell your class that you are totally new to China and that you got in a taxi for the first time just yesterday. Tell your class that the driver was trying to speak to you in Chinese, and that you understood some of it, but not all . Your journey was only five minutes, so he could only really ask a few questions before you got out .
Ask your class the kind of questions he might have been asking you . Put your students into pairs and ask them to think of five possible questions he was asking you.
Watch the class closely, and when you see them slowing down and starting to look up at you, then you'll know that they are pretty much done. Ask students to give you some of their ideas and write them on the board.
Now ask them to think of a few more questions had your journey been for 15 minutes. Again, get them into pairs and this time, circulate around and help with language. Once they are done, get more of their ideas written on the board .
Now, time to move on to the next stage...
Tell the class that they are on business in New York and it is their first day. They are in a New York cab going to a meeting . The taxi driver doesn't know any Chinese, is friendly, and wants to know more about their new Chinese passenger .
Arrange four chairs in the middle of the class to make your 'taxi', and you the teacher, in the 'driver's seat. Ask one or two of your more confident students to 'hop in' and take them to the meeting!! Actually pretend to be a driver, moving your arms, and asking them the questions from the board ! Your students now have to answer these questions as though they were actually in New York!
Change passengers frequently and give everyone else a chance to ride in the cab. You can also change drivers and have a student be the driver to get them practicing the questions, too!
This is a good activity for lower level students , with lots of really good speaking practice in a fun way.
This is a very easy activity to set up and is great for Teens or Adults. Hand to each student a coloured piece of paper (white paper is also fine, but coloured paper is more visual).
Ask the students to write one interesting word on the paper, for example, pasta.
Give your students 1-2 minutes to write their word (they may use their phones to help).
When your students have finished, ask them to call out their words one by one until you have filled the board with words.
Now ask your students to either write a story individually or make a role-play in a group. Great fun, great language practice and very little preparation!
This is a TEFL warmer for adult classes. Play this at the start of a class to get those English juices flowing for your main activities. Although the description below is for adults, you can easily adjust the rules for any audience.
What to Do 1. Draw a Naughts & Crosses / Tic-Tac-Toe grid on your board.
2. In the squares, write 9 different topics e.g. sport, China, food and drink, iPhones, your hometown, whatever. 3. Divide your students into two teams. One team is 'naughts', the other team is 'crosses'. 4. Choose a student from one team and they choose a square. They must then speak for 30 seconds, without stopping. If they can do it, their team takes the square. 5. The other team then has a go and must do the same. The first team to get three in a row wins. Choose a different student each time.
No More lives! This is a quick and easy flashcard game for children. The purpose of the game is to help kids to memorise the key vocabulary in your lesson. No fuss! What to do 1. Using flashcards, pre-teach five words from the page in your course book you are on. 2. Now get all your kids to turn around facing the other way and place your five flashcards face down in an order that only you know. For example: Car (first), plane (second), train (third), bus (fourth), bicycle (fifth and last) 3. Get the students to turn back around and then hand out eight coloured chips or pieces of paper to the students. These represent lives.
Each chip represents a life! 4. Ask your students which word they think is first. If they get it wrong (for example, they guess 'bus', then tell them that its wrong and take one of their chips away. 5. Let them guess again. If they get it wrong again, then take another of their lives away. If they get it right, then turn over the flashcard to show them and keep going (although they don't get any lives back, they just keep going.)
This game is an ESL classic and an absolute winner if you teach Young Learners here in China. Kids aged 4+ will really respond to playing this language game and it will help them to review words or simple sentences very well. All you need is a whiteboard, a large dice, board marker and two board magnets. (If you don't have board magnets, or have a glass white board, then you can simply draw two different symbols for each team). What to Do 1. Divide your class into two teams. If you have a large class, then you can divide them into three or four teams just as easily. 2. Draw the following on the whiteboard:
3. Put both teams' board magnets in one of the grey sections at the start of the game. Both teams start with five lives. 4. Choose a team to start and ask them a question - this could be a 'What's this?' (pointing at a flashcard) or a simple question. If they get it right, then they can roll the dice. 5. Move the team's marker around the board the number of moves shown on the dice. If they land on a ghost or a spider , then they lose a life! Make a spooky, scary noise when they land on the booby square! 6. It is now the other team's go. Ask and question and move them around, losing a life if they land on a ghost or spider. 7. If a team lands on a grey section, then they don't lose a life or gain one. If they land on the shield, then they get one life back. 8. Keep playing until one team has no more lives. The first team to lose all of their lives is the loser. Have fun teaching this week!
This is a brilliant ESL game to practice giving advice. It should be played after a 'giving advice' vocabulary lesson has taken place. It is a great way for students to see what they have remembered and what needs reviewing. This game works well with any age group, particularly adults, just adapt it to fit the age you're working with.
How to play
1. Write ailments or problems related to your most recent lesson on post-it notes and stick one post-it note on each student's back.
2. The students must mingle and ask for advice from other students to solve their problem.
3. Students should be able to guess their problem based on the advice they get from their peers.
4. Use more complicated or obscure problems to make the game more interesting for older students.
5. For lower levels and younger students, announce a category or reference a recent lesson, like "Health", to help them along.
Chinese learners often have difficulty in using a range of adjectives and instead just rely on a couple for almost everything. How many times have you heard 'My hometown is very b e a u i t f u l ' or 'The food is very d e l i c i o u s '...waaay too many times.... Students here get comfortable with a handful of adjectives and stick to them. As TEFL teachers, we need to get students out of this hole.
This is an activity where students need to use a wider range of adjectives in order to succeed.
What to Do - Pre-teach a number of adjectives to describe size, weight and texture. - Get a cardboard box and fill it with about 10 different items. For example, a feather, a ping-pong ball, a coin, sandpaper, a pencil, a key, etc. - Now blindfold a student and bring them to the front of the class and seat them in front of the box. - Choose one of the items and hold it up for the class to see, but don't tell the blindfolded student which object you have chosen. - Put the item back inside and the class now need to use language to help the blindfolded student to find the mystery item by feeling inside and lifting it up into the air.
"It's round..." "It's smooth..." "It's light..." "It's rough..." "It's hard..." Give everyone a go and build confidence in your students to use more diverse adjectives naturally and comfortably.
Today's post is a cool flashcard game and an excellent way for students to memorise vocabulary. You need 10-15 flashcards with vocabulary you want to review.
What to Do 1. Have your students sitting in a large circle. Join the circle and then go through the vocabulary with the class. 2. Choose a good student and have them say one of the flashcards you are holding up. The student is then given this card. Move on to a second student, hold up the card, and get them to say it. This student then keeps this card. Keep going around the class until every student has one of the flashcards. 3. Get your students to hold up their flashcards and ask your students to memorise as many of the flashcards as possible and their position in the circle. After 30 seconds, ask your students to hold their flashcards facing down on their laps so that no one can see each other's cards. 4. Choose a student to try to point at another student and saying which flashcard they have. If the guessing student gets the word right, then they can 'steal' that new flashcard, so they now have two flashcards and loser has none. Keep going around the class with students stealing each other's cards. It can be great fun trying to keep track of which card is where!
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This is a classic TEFL Warmer , which has been used by teachers for years. You can use this with most levels and it ’s a great way for your students to wake up and get switched on for your lesson.
What to Do? Divide your students into two teams and have them form two lines facing the board . (If you have a large class, simply make three or four teams.) Draw a line down the middle of the board and give the first person in each line a board pen. At the top of board write a category, for example, T h i n g s i n t h e H o u s e or C o l o u r s . The first student from each line now runs out and writes a word to do with this category in their side of the board. They then run back to the line, give the pen to the next player and then go to the back of the line . The first team to ten words, or the most within one minute, is the winner. Tip: Be on hand to help with spelling and make sure everyone gets a go. Have fun!
This is a game that should take place after the students have already been taught the proper words or sentence structure. The great thing about this activity is that it suits classes of any size, every student is involved in every round. It's a great chance for everyone to feel like they can USE the language.
What to Do 1. Before class, print of some simple pictures which represent what you have been learning. There should be no words. These can be single word pictures for lower levels i.e. pen, book, chair , or a number of pictures which can be used to represent sentences. Below is what I used in my class recently (The tiger can eat meat, the elephant can't eat soup, the monkey can't drink tea, the cat can eat fish):
2. Place students into pairs . If you have an odd number of students in your class you can have one team of 3 students or if you have another teacher in your class you can get them involved and place one of the strong students with them. 3. Have one student from each team stand up and f ollow you out in to the hallway to look at the first picture. Number or point to the picture you'll be using that round. The intention is to have each individual tell you what the picture represents , while you correct any major mistakes, before releasing them back in to the classroom. They will, in turn, tell their partner what the first picture is. Then the partner has to run to you and tell you what the first picture is (without having seen it.) 4. Give one point / sticker/ high-five to the first few teams to relay the message correctly back to you . 5. Have everyone sit down, ask that the other partner now stand up to do the first leg of the race. Rinse and repeat. Do make sure that everyone has a go. Teaching Tips This game seems to hold the complete interest of all students in a class for a maximum of 6 rounds. Don't drag it out too long and you'll get the best out of this activity. Even weaker students will want to stand up and have a go with this one, and if they are a little slow you'll get a little alone time outside correcting them before letting them back in to tell their partner. There may be more energy than you're used to in your classroom, and you'll probably get swarmed by a mass of kids shouting the answer in your face, in which case you'll want to implement a 'NO SCREAMING' rule. Go through this activity with your Teaching Assistant before you go into the classroom. If your TA ever doesn't understand your instructions and tells the students what to do incorrectly, it isn't their fault, it's yours. Work well with your co-teacher.
Have you got a class (or a number of classes) that simply don't want to participate - or you find yourself picking the same students time after time? There is a way around it, and I call this method THE TERROR CARDS. Materials: Standard playing cards, white sticky labels, marker pen.
What to Do Get enough sticky labels and cards so that every student has their own playing card. Write one student's name on each card (if the students know their English names well, just write their English names on the cards, otherwise add their pinyin names as well) Then introduce them to the class. Explain that this is h ow you will be choosing students to answer questions - if they answer a question correctly, they can choose a card from the deck. My students have a love/hate relationship with the Terror Cards - they love picking certain students out, but they hate having their name called out. I recently made my decks a little more interesting by adding "Student Choice" and "Teacher Choice" into each deck - this puts some power into the hands of either the student or I. This is ideal for middle school, high school and university classes - probably not so good for training centers where the classes are small, but I recommend that you give it a go.
This activity is suitable for all ages and all levels where you have Questions and Answers, from personal introductions (name, age, hometown, etc) up to more complex stuff such as hobbies, film tastes, whatever. It‟s a really useful activity and the students will find this beneficial to improve their English.
What to do Pre-teach a question and answer to the class. For right now, we'll take 'hometown' as an example: Q: "Where are you from?" A : " I 'm f r o m X i ' an , C h i n a ."
Practice this a few times with your class. Once you feel they are happy with it, ask all your students to stand up and find a with their partner. The winner gets to partner . Tell them to play Paper, Scisso rs, Ston e ask the question, the loser has to answer. They now both go and find a new partner and play again; the winner asking the question, the loser answering. This activity is a great way for your class to mingle and to be producing the target language repeatedly in an unusual way with different partners; Its works really well and the students enjoy it very much. Be on hand to help with pronunciation and kill the activity when everyone has spoken to each other.
In this activity students write about their ideal day, then get to test how well they know their peers by guessing which day belongs to which student. This is great for older teens and adults, both for practicing writing and getting to know their classmates.
W h a t y o u w i l l t e ac h
- Writing skills - Expressing creativity and imagination - Peer correction - Various tenses depending on lesson aims The Set up
Tell your class they are going to imagine and describe their perfect day, where they would be, what they would do, who they are with, etc. Move onto brainstorming-related categories and adjectives (the more creative, the better) For example: locations, activities/hobbies, friends/celebrities, food/drink. Note - It’s a good idea to tell each student not to mention their favourite thing, this makes the guessing game at the end more challenging.
Then you can establish your target tense and do some review if necessary. Past tense - “Yesterday was my perfect day, it began... C o n d i t i o n a l - “My perfect day would start with...
Activity
Now have the students write about their perfect day. They should have enough ideas from the introduction to do this, just encourage them to use their imagination! Once they have completed the activity, collect papers and hand them out again. Have each student read a day and then get the class to guess who it belongs to.
Most people are afraid of something. One of the most common fears is the fear of spiders. Other fears may include fear of heights, fear of snakes and even fear of the moon. These fears are called p h o b i a s . Begin your lesson by giving your students a list of words ending in phobia such as a r ac h n o p h o b i a , o p h i d i o p h o b i a , c l a u s t r o p h o b i a , a n t h r o p o p h o b i a and s el e n o p h o b i a. Explain that these words mean fear of „something‟, ask them to guess what that „something‟ is. Spend a few minutes on this. It works as a great lead-in to the rest of the class.
Conversation Element: Then ask your class if they have any fears. This will open up an interesting discussion between your students. You can use any of the questions below for gentle prompting:
Are you afraid of flying?
Are you afraid of going to the dentist?
Are you afraid of ghosts?
Are you afraid of heights?
Are you afraid of scary movies?
Are you afraid of the dark?
Are you afraid of giving a speech in public?
Questions for more advanced levels:
Do you know anyone with a phobia?
Do you know anyone with a strange phobia?
What animal do you think is the scariest? Why?
Have you overcome any of your fears? How? Do you believe people can be cured of phobias by hypnosis? How do you cope with your fears?
