259. Just for our everyday struggle

(picture from www oldskoolanthemz com)

Ok, you win. Here you are. I hope this long list of games be any helpful. I'm convinced we teachers have to help out one another.

This is the work result of quite a nice number of years teaching.

Excuse me for the formatting errors: I copied from a Word document.

Updated April 9, 2010

Apéndice 6

Games for classes

Aunque hay un apartado de este libro dedicado a la explicación de cada juego, en castellano, me ha parecido conveniente componer este guión de juegos. Ahora los coloco por orden de dificultad, o prefiero decir de desafío, para los alumnos. Se puede aprender una lengua jugando. El juego es una imitación de la vida, y más en el caso en que los chicos tienen que utilizar inglés para comunicarse en clase.

They are really fun, both for the teacher and the students. Besides, they practice real communication in English. Give them points for the scoring. They are just set on a list ---further developments and variations might be applied. They cover from basic English up to proficient learners. The protagonists and actors of the following games and challenges ought to be the students themselves. They practice from simply words or spelling, up to long presentations or speeches. A strong point: most of them do not need extra preparation before the class!

Explain the game in English. Have fun!

1. TPR (Total Physical Response): fulfilling instructions said by the teacher or by a student.
2. Soccer-players position on the field (or “pitch”): In Spain most kids support either of these two teams: Real Madrid or Barça. Ask them: who is the goalkeeper? The defenders? The midfields? The offensives (or “forwards”).
3. At any level: a warmer (or warm-up): a starting quick fun game or just questions to plunge the students into the class-period of English, after the math class-period for example.
4. Dictionary. The teacher writes a new word on the blackboard. The student who finds the meaning first, one point. Very helpful to practice looking up words in a dictionary. Every activity can be done individually or in pairs or in groups of three. In different levels or different ages.
5. The teacher writes words beginning with the same letter. The students have to order those words as they are in the dictionary: belong, believe, beneath, be, beep, bend, bachelor, believer.
6. Who knows an object of the classroom? Who knows a means of transportation…? Who knows a color in English? Who knows... ?
7. Simon says… They really enjoy this one!
8. Hangman. With words and also to construct sentences.
9. Spelling words written on the blackboard.
10. Writing words on BB from someone's spelling.
11. Reading numbers and years.
12. Many possible games with the alphabet. One example: once the alphabet is on BB the teacher taps on one letter, with his chalk, and they say out the pronunciation of that letter. Can be a lot of fun.
13. Similar; they usually confuse the pronunciation of the vowels a e i.
14. You write the consonants of some words and they have to give the vowels.
15. Making up as many words as possible with some given letters.
16. Questions addressed to one single student (identity items, his family, his soccer team, his favorite color…).
17. Words guessed from a picture drawn on the blackboard by the students. Everyone wants to go to the BB to draw!
18. Competitions of words between two players, about a given topic. Fantastic.
19. Matching words with meanings, on BB.
20. The same but orally. Can be difficult.
21. The teacher writes one sentence on the BB. You all repeat it as a chorus... And then you erase the sentence, and they have to recall it. Pair-work, or individually, or the class as a single team versus the teacher.
22. Competition of vocab: all the class-group vs the teacher.
23. Guessing a word from its meaning, explained by someone.
24. Unscrambling words.
25. Mental calculation with several math operations. Start with plus and minus.
26. Word-nets by eliciting words of the semantic field of “the street”, “the airport”.
27. The students say names of colors or whatever topic. The teacher writes them on the BB. The students have to memorize the words, for one minute. One student turns around and says as many words as he can remember.
28. Chained words, either orally or on the BB.
29. Filling out blanks of a text. Many varied possibilities: one missing word, missing some substantives, a blank every 8 words…
30. Brainstorming of words of a topic. One student has to make a full sentence with one word the teacher says.
31. The teacher asks someone or a volunteer to give a letter. The teacher writes the letter on the BB. The students have to say 20 words beginning with that letter. Or 5 words, according to their level.
32. Guessing a word from a student’s miming and acting out.
33. Memory dictation. The teacher says a word. One student says another word. One student says the word the teacher said, and so on.
34. Broken telephone: one student says one sentence to a classmate, both out of the classroom. (You told the sentence to the first student, also outside). The second student says the same sentence to a third one. This one to a fourth one..., always the two students outside.
35. Guessing the celeb I’m talking about.
36. Telling about your family. First the teacher tells and they listen. After that the teacher asks the students questions about the teacher’s family, using the relatives’ names also.
37. One student speaks about his or her family, etc.
38. Figuring out or recalling classroom language.
39. Unscrambling sentences.
40. Making sentences with stripes of paper.
41. Competition of letters of the alphabet. When one student makes a mistake by pronouncing a letter wrong, he gets eliminated.
42. Writing the possible longest word on the BB.
43. Or the longest sentence!
44. The teacher writes three sentences on BB, with errors. They have to say these errors. The grammar or vocab they are learning those days.
45. The teacher writes a secret word on his notebook. The students ask him or her, questions so as to guess the word. For example yes/no questions.
46. The students have to guess one word of the semantic field they are learning lately; the teacher says clues about that word.
47. Defining a word. First, the teacher gives examples or molds how to explain the meaning of a word: use for, description, examples, opposites, material, shape, mimicry, color… Then the students have to explain the meaning of one given word.
48. Guessing the meaning of a word from the context, in one quite-long sentence.
49. Playing with a new word. The teacher writes a new word. He or she teaches how they can learn it: putting it into a sentence, spelling, grouping, comparison with a Spanish cognate. The point is to use it, also revising it on following days.
50. Sentence exploitation: questions with wh- words to be answered with phrases (sintagmas, partes de la oración). In other words: the teacher asks wh-questions referring to each part of the sentence: where, when, who, why, what, which, how, how long, how far... Useful for practice of present simple and past simple.
51. Now... one student asks wh-questions to exploit a sentence. A good grammar game. And challenging.
52. The teacher him/herself learns new words s/he: keeps on learning words. He or she can keep writing a list of the words, on a notebook. S/he can share this process of learning words: s/he sets an example to the students. Also s/he utilizes one new word in the classroom, with the students. And this makes the teacher familiarize and interiorize the new words s/he is learning. The teacher shares the process of learning with his/her students. And these ones become aware that they are learning new words also, and they may reckon they are actually learning words in the classes of English.
53. They try to figure out how to say names of countries in English. Or cities, or capitals.
54. Five columns of words on the BB/WB: smell, see, hear, taste, touch.
55. A small guessing game: “How would you say perforar? (piercing)”. Just for the kids to be aware of the origin of this so common word.
56. Practical questions to the student, to be answered with the new grammar point.
57. Passive sentences from active sentences. Or active sentences from passives.
58. One story among all the students. The teacher says an intrigue and suspense beginning…
59. Setting scrambled sentences of a story into the right order. For example with stripes of paper.
60. Setting scrambled steps to correctly use a device, a machine…
61. Orally completing sentences: “Chuck started to swim into a very dark cave and...”
62. Three objects you’d take to an island, after a shipwreck, and why.
63. Giving opposites.
64. Giving synonyms.
65. Defining, for example “car” by using “vehicle”, “4 wheels”, “transportation”. His/her classmates have got to try and guess the word.
66. Translating from L1 into L2, from sentences to whole texts.
67. Two sentences joined by conjunction linkers, like however.
68. The teacher says one obvious statement: “A table has four legs.” The student makes a question for that statement: "How many legs does a table have?"
69. Describing a photograph, either by the teacher or by the student.
70. Network with words, as explained in one game above, but with a follow-up exposition or speech about the topic.
71. Detective investigation. So useful to practice questions in past simple. Some police detectives ask questions to a suspecious guy, who might have committed the robbery in a bank, last night.
72. Competition: speaking for the longest time, about for example “knife”.
73. The teacher writes two imaginary titles, for two novels. The students have to say or write the beginning of the stories.
74. The teacher says the meaning of a new word. The winner: the student who will say the corresponding actual word next day.
75. The students plus the teacher fire questions to a student that has thought of a word or a celeb. The questions are of the yes/no type. But the student can’t say “yes” or “no”. This student can say things like “I don’t think so”, “That’s true”, “That’s not quite right”, “Hmm”, “I do”, “She does”, etc. From www.mansioningles.com.
76. Movies exploitation. They understand more than you may expect.
77. They invent a story from visualizing a picture with a person on it.
78. Learning and retrieving the states of the USA, in different levels of difficulty.
79. Two bad experiences by the same student, or by two students. From www.mansioningles.com
80. The last seven things you did before leaving your apartment this morning. From www.mansioningles.com
81. Places you’d visit if you won three plane tickets. From www.mansioningles.com
82. Collocations: “hard-working”, “good-looking”, “dire straits”, “weather forecast”.
83. All kinds of listening exploitation, from a text in their coursebooks to extracts of talk-shows taken from radio stations from the Internet. Trying to understand just words, or the topic those people are talking about.
84. Debates between two parties or groups of any kind.
85. Texts exploitation.
86. Read the beginning of an unabridged novel. You can discuss varied points about the comprehension of that passage with your class.
87. Interpret the publishing and copyright stuff at the beginning of a novel.
88. Role-plays. Acting out with previously learned vocabulary.
89. Defining for example “vast”, but without the words “big”, “huge”, “enormous”, “large”. Or “car”, without “vehicle”, “4 wheels”, “transportation”.
90. Phrasal verbs: joining two parts of a sentence to make a single one. The splitting gap is between the verb and the preposition or adverb.
91. Trying to sell an old junky second-hand car.
92. A candidate-for-primary-elections speech and his or her proposals. Even bizarre promises.
93. Making up a list of words and expressions for surviving situations, like in the airport, or if lost in Manhattan.
94. Orally continuing a tale or story. By a single student or by the class plus the teacher.
95. Orally translating one sentence from L1 to L2.
96. Composing emails to complain or to apply for a post, or just one kid to his/her parents.
97. Questions about general culture. Orally or by writing.
98. Composing essays. Option: introduction + development + conclusion.
99. Eliciting Christian vocabulary, from “Dios” to parts of a church, or architectural items. As well: virtues, pieces of the Christian faith.
100. Repeating long sentences, said by the teacher, from backward to the beginning, chunk by chunk. Very challenging.
101. Recognizing words from phonetic transcriptions.
102. Songs exploitation.
103. A presentation of a topic their choice.
104. Composing and defending a résumé (CV).
105. A job interview.
106. Teaching a class of English.
107. Designing and labeling a website, or a blog.