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So, I recently moved to Chile to teach English, learn Spanish, travel and see a different part of the world. I usually teach to adults with a text book provided from the school, so it's really easy to prep for these classes.
Starting tomorrow though, I'll be teaching to some high school students in a kind of summer camp course. The goal of the course is to provide kids with an opportunity to use English. There are no materials and it is expected of me to come up with games and activities for this course.
So I was wandering if anyone knows of any classroom games (English games would be best) that you either have used if you are a teacher, or that you enjoyed while you were a student.
oh, and there is internet and a computer in the classroom so videos and such are accessible.
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I made a blog about the same thing... kinda. Maybe some of the replies will help you like it helped me  Enjoy!
EDIT: Except it will be teaching to many people, not just one person 
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Ice breaker games. You know the ones where you all sit/stand in a circle, and you say your name and a word?
Like, Awesome Ashley, or Crazy Charlie(Idk lol) ? Something like that is fun. My sister played it when she was younger in preschool to learn different words.
Or, a game where you say a word, and the next person has to say a world that starts with the letter that the last word ended with. You know? xD
Simple word games =P Good for when you're just starting, IMO.
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i remember an old one from ages ago when i was a kid.
was more about memory but i guess you could turn it into an english game.
the first person would say
"my name is sally.
next person.
"her name is sally my name is john
"her name is sally his name is john my name is jesus."
perhaps not exactly in that fashion or names but something along those lines like animals. things they like in english or something that reinforces some sort of english with memory and repetition will help them learn it faster.
i cant find a way to explain it differently hopefully you understand what im trying to portray?
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On January 10 2011 11:19 TyrantPotato wrote:
i remember an old one from ages ago when i was a kid.
was more about memory but i guess you could turn it into an english game.
the first person would say
"my name is sally.
next person.
"her name is sally my name is john
"her name is sally his name is john my name is jesus."
perhaps not exactly in that fashion or names but something along those lines like animals. things they like in english or something that reinforces some sort of english with memory and repetition will help them learn it faster.
i cant find a way to explain it differently hopefully you understand what im trying to portray?
Actually that was what I was talking about.
I didn't even explain it. LOL.
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On January 10 2011 11:15 GenesisX wrote:I made a blog about the same thing... kinda. Maybe some of the replies will help you like it helped me Enjoy!EDIT: Except it will be teaching to many people, not just one person
yeh thanks, sorta a different situation but still some ideas in there. I will definitely use a lot of videos and such. that is always a good way to keep kids' attention. haha
On January 10 2011 11:16 Raeleigh wrote:
Ice breaker games. You know the ones where you all sit/stand in a circle, and you say your name and a word?
Like, Awesome Ashley, or Crazy Charlie(Idk lol) ? Something like that is fun. My sister played it when she was younger in preschool to learn different words.
Or, a game where you say a word, and the next person has to say a world that starts with the letter that the last word ended with. You know? xD
Simple word games =P Good for when you're just starting, IMO.
haha, I actually am planning on using that same exact name game for tomorrow as it's the first day of class. And yeah, word games can always be fun and you learn a lot of vocabulary from them.
I do know a lot of games and such, the thing is is that this class is everday for 3 weeks so it seems like after a while it might be hard to come up with new stuff. A friend told me an idea of a game that's like beerpong, except instead of beer you have an English word or phrase in the cup and you have to sink the cup and use the word some way to get a point for your team. haha. this will be an interesting class..
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It depends massively on the ability of your kids. But one thing I like to do is give them a word search where the answers are thier names and they don't have the answers. They then have to go around the class asking each other 'what is your name?' form a list of the names of everyone in the class and then they can complete the word serach. obvioulsy works best with large classes of poor ability.
just copy down thier names into this website.
http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/WordSearchSetupForm.asp
maybe thats a bit easy for high school kids, but its a good time filler and they need to learn each others names.
Memory games are great just put a load of random pictures in a powerpoint document and then see how many they can remeber. If you're doing a certain topic then use related words. Creating this is time consuming though.
Most of the other stuff I do is probabbly well below the ability of your kids.
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I taught in Thailand this past summer teaching English. Heres a couple quick tips from my experience.
-Photobook, put together a photobook of your family friends and your hometown. It will be very useful in showing them your culture and teaching simple words such as "mom" and "dad"
-Start by teaching them a greeting, "like whats up dude" then have them practice with partners next to them.
- Use formulated approaches such as this with connector phrases so they can say a variety of things
Ex. (draw this on the board
My favorite food is _______ Pizza
Hamburger
Chicken
My favorite Sport is _______ Soccer
Football
Baseball
First model each thing for them, I usually act out the sports so they can associate action with the word representation. Then 1 by 1 have each kid say the main phrase "My favorite is" then point to the word choices and have them pick one out.
Make sure when you have them say things you make the entire class do it , not just a few. All of them will be kind of embarassed and shya the start so making everybody have to do it will break the ice completely.
One last thing, the biggest help is to find out how to say "repeat after me" in the students native language. That will open many doors.
Good luck, this experience will be so rewarding.
EDIT: My connector phrases thing got messed up. Your also supposed to put a line in between the phrase and choices.
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OMG guys. High school students. If they are impressed or enjoy these simple games or if you think they are impressed or enjoy these, I think I understand why school is so pathetically easy.
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Wondering not wandering. Why are you teaching English again?
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Have them go on forums for their video games and interests. To my current knowledge, there are a good amount of Europeans on TL that have improved their English vastly by just reading and posting about SC and such.
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I've been an ESL teacher in China for 7 years now, I have like a million activities. Rather than type all of them I'll just give you some examples because I think the greatest joy of being a teacher is in designing your own games and activities. At first of course it's hard to gauge difficulty level and time usage though that comes with experience. What you want with your activities is to get the students really communicating with each other in the target language (English). To do that, here are some guidelines for designing good activities:
1: Every activity should give students who are not speaking a reason to listen; this could be as simple as asking questions about what was just said afterwards, it could involve some kind of guessing game, or it could be something really funny that people will want to listen to anyways.
2: Every activity should give students a chance to use their creativity/problem solving skills in general, but also require them to use the target vocabulary/grammar point that they are supposed to be learning in that lesson.
3: Every activity should incorporate some kind of evaluation/measurement so that students can have some idea of how well they are doing and where they need to improve. Feedback is key. Of course feedback should always be positive and encouraging, but at the same time honest.
Example activities
1: After every student introduces themselves/gets to know each other a little bit there are a number of fun guessing games you can do with the students. Some things I like to do: Have every student write or say a short introduction for another student without saying their name, the other students can guess who it is. Another one, introduce themselves, but include 1 or 2 sentences that are lies; the other students have to guess what the lie is. Obviously the target language would be introductions (in first or third person).
2: Picture descriptions can be a lot of fun. One thing I like to do to to turn picture descriptions into a game is to hand out a bunch of similar pictures (I have a set of postcards with pictures of penguins on them I like to use for this), 1 to every student. The student must then write a short description of their picture without showing it to other students. Collect the pictures when everyone is done, then have a student read out their description. The other students listen carefully and try to choose the correct picture. On a correct guess be sure to reward both the writer/speaker and the guesser so that you are encouraging the writer/speaker to be as accurate as possible. If they just write 'there are some penguins' then that's a useless description because every picture has some penguins on it.
For a more advanced activity you can have students work in groups of two; one student looks at the picture and describes it in English while the other student tries to reproduce the picture as closely as possible by only listening to the description without looking at the picture.
These kinds of activities are perfect for practicing 'there be', prepositions, adjectives of appearance, and progressive tense: "There is a big penguin standing on the snow beside two baby penguins..."
3: Market games are great. What I like to do is break the students into small teams, 2-4 is great. Each team is given a set amount of 'money'. (I use photocopies of canadian money, you can print out monopoly money too or whatever you want). On the team there will be some shoppers and some sellers. The shoppers must make a shopping list (selecting from the target vocab of course--I find fruit/food items or clothing are perfect for this activity) while the sellers will make a list of things their store has for sale. The lists shouldn't have any overlapping items (so you can't buy stuff from your own store). The teams also should not tell each other in advance what they are shopping for/selling. When every team is ready, the shoppers go and buy what they need from the sellers of the other teams. All prices negotiable of course. The team with the most money left after purchasing everything on their list wins. This game can get intense so I'd suggest having a rule where if they speak in their native language you will fine them some of their play money.
This activity is great for reviewing their target vocabulary as well as numbers obviously.
4: Theatre games can be a lot of fun once the ice has been broken. Basic level games include things like charades, where students just act out certain words (works great for basically any action verb set, or for sports or housework vocab sets). Slightly more advanced you can have 1 student acting while another student describes what they are doing in real time which is great for practicing progressive tense. Or you can practice imperative by having a student give commands to another student who must do what they say. These kinds of activities can be very funny with a good set of students.
5: The killer is another fun game in which the students all sit in a circle. One student is randomly chosen to be the secret killer. All students then close their eyes and you then tell the killer to silently indicate who their victim will be. The students then all open their eyes and you tell them who the killer has killed. Then all students take a turn guessing who they think the killer is. People accused of being the secret killer have a chance to defend themselves. After some discussion, hold a vote, and whoever gets the most votes is hung by the mob. If 4 innocent people die without the killer being caught, the killer wins. This game tends to be good for more advanced level students and can illicit language points concerning uncertainty, denial, hypotheticals, etc.
6: More basic general language games are things like 20 questions, I spy, etc.
Anyways, that should be enough material to get you started and once you run through those activities you should have come up with an idea of your student's language level, learning preferences, and what you think they need to work on most, and then design appropriate activities specific to them!
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On January 10 2011 12:59 Blisse wrote:
OMG guys. High school students. If they are impressed or enjoy these simple games or if you think they are impressed or enjoy these, I think I understand why school is so pathetically easy.
Could you do these kinds of games in your French class that easily? I recall my high school French class the teacher was happy if you could just say stuff like 'Comment ca va, ca va bien, comment appellez-vous? Je m'appelle Nic,' lol.
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Given that I learned English this way there were some fun things I remember...
Contests! Give students a semi-complicated word list of 30-40 words? a couple days to study them and ( assuming they are in a classroom) divide them in teams by columns... So they take turns going up to the board and you say 1 word in spanish and they have to write it in English.
The scoring format was:
1st 6pts
2nd 4pts
3rd 2pts
4th 1 pt
the rest get nothing
If this is feasible, I remember it being one of the best things in English class from 4th to 11th grade If they know the words it becomes a matter of who writes faster LOL...
Also... look up songs so they fill in the blanks? Good songs that they may not have heard of? Old school rock could work fine...
Hmm 20 questions was also fun to play ^^!
Best of luck :D
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thanks guys, there are some good suggestions here. Some suggestions seem a little low for the students' level but activities can always be adapted.
so the class has only 3 students in it, haha, so that is awesome. my school is great and only has a max of 8 students per class. Today we played some ice breaker games, played 20 questions, looked at a music video and its lyrics and discussed some random pictures I pulled off of reddit. The students are at a pretty high level actually, and this intensive conversational summer camp will hopefully boost their English to the next level. It will be a fun class I think, especially since there is no material or grammar I have to jam down their throats. The hardest part of this class will be coming up with new games to do everyday.
On January 10 2011 13:32 KrAzYfoOL wrote:
Wondering not wandering. Why are you teaching English again?
I always have sucked at spelling, but I must say that spelling is one of the least important parts of learning a language.
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On January 11 2011 06:58 Treeship wrote:
I always have sucked at spelling, but I must say that spelling is one of the least important parts of learning a language.
^THIS
I remember correcting one of my teacher's spelling quite a few times
Just give them a heads up about it so they don't trust you 100% with it.
Also... Are your students' on TL?
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EPT
