Every student is given 100 imaginary dollars. They can be pieces of paper or points on the board. Then tell them that you will make three statements.

After you make a statement the students can bet a certain amount of their choosing as to whether the statement is true or false. If they are right, they double their wager, if they are wrong they lose it.

After the three rounds are complete the player with the largest amount left is the winner.

True/False betting

Read a passage to the students. They have to shout ‘stop!’ every time you say a word that corresponds to a grammar point you asked them to pay attention to, for example past tense verbs.

Stop!

Make little flashcards for the students of vocabulary they already know. Make one set per student. Then have them work in pairs facing each other with a book or something between them.

One student says the order of the FCs as she’s placing them in front of her and the other student listens and does the same without looking. Then they can see if they have the same order and reverse roles.


Arrange with me

Draw a monster on the board with you students’ help. Say you are drawing the face first. Ask the class ‘Do you want a big face or a small face?’ and draw accordingly. Then ask, ‘Do you want long hair or short hair?’ and so on. Continue with different body parts and adjectives

Can also practise numbers with something like ‘how many arms?’.

Draw a monster

You can record your colleagues giving some simple definitions to the words from the previous lesson.

Your students listen to the recordings and write down the word they think it is.

Recording a definition game

Instead of making bingo sheets with numbers use letters instead. You can combine this activity with any random word generation activity like Shiritori or categories.

FYI I hate bingo and think it corrupts the soul.

Bingo

In this exercise you give a description of a ‘wanted criminal’ to the students which they have to draw as you go along. Descriptions vary based on the class level.

After everyone is finished put all the drawings together on the board before you reveal the real picture. Ideally choose someone famous the students will recognise. You can also draw your own simple face for lower level students.

Wanted Dead or Alive poster

Write on the board an activity like "brush your teeth." Pick a student to come to the front of the class. Then show the student a card with an adjective written on it like "slowly". The chosen student then does the activity in the way of the adjective. The other students have to guess the adjective.

The one who guesses right gets a point and mimes the next action which the teacher writes on the board. To help them you can give them a list of options, if you think they need some help.

Adjectival Action

The students sit in a circle with their reading books. The teacher starts and everyone reads one word at a time around the circle. Can also do two or three words at a time or one word loudly one word softly etc.

Tennis reading

Requires basic reading.  Make a set of cards.  On half of them put a picture of a subject (for example body parts, food, furniture etc) on the other half put the word relating to each picture (ex. nose, mouth, lips, eye...).  Laminate if possible.

Place all cards face down on the table.  The first player turns two at a time (or three for the very young) over to match the word to the picture.  If they match, the player can keep the pair. If not, the cards are returned and then the next player goes. Digital versions of this game are great and easy to deploy.

Concentration

The teacher writes the whole alphabet on the blackboard in a scramble of letters here and there, but low enough that the students can reach. Split the class into two teams and  have one student from each team play at a time. Call out a letter.  The person that is able to find and circle it first wins a point for their team.

To make things harder have capital and small letters.  Even more challenging - have four teams all looking for the same letter.  The kids just love it.  You can do it with numbers and also words.  

Board Scramble

In this creative activity you give the students an introductory sentence and they must construct a story using fortunately and unfortunately alternately twice.

Example:
You give the students this sentence:
One day, Tom lost his job…
The students take over, using fortunately/unfortunately twice.

‘Fortunately he has some money in the bank.
Unfortunately the bank collapsed.
Fortunately he can sell his house.
Unfortunately his house burnt down.’

It’s best to give the students some time to complete the story after you give them the starting sentence(s). Then say the stories they came up with to the whole class so everyone can enjoy them.

Fortunately, Unfortunately

You can choose different vowels and consonants depending on where your students have difficulty. For example ‘pat’ can be ‘1’, ‘put’ is ‘2’, ‘pet’ is ‘3’, ‘pat’ is ‘4’ and ‘pit’ is ‘5’.

After practising for a bit give them a sequence of words and they must tell you what number it works out as. So if you say ‘pat’ ‘pat’ ‘pet’ ‘put’ they must reply 1 1 3 2.

Pit pat put

Say for example one of your dictation words (or word the students need to find) is ‘EARLY’. You make a sentence and say it to the class where the target word is replaced by ‘BANANA’.

Example: I wake up very BANANA in the morning to go to work.

This activity works well in a dictation setting as there are only a few words to choose from and there shouldn’t be many options that fit. Always check your students wrote the dictation words in the order you asked for and aren’t just memorising them and writing them as they learnt them.

Banana dictation

Give the students the lyrics to a song from which you have blanked out a few words here and there. Have the students listen to the song and fill in the blanks.

Make sure to give them an easy song with good pronunciation. You can pick any children’s song for the little ones and The Beatles for the older ones. ‘Hello Goodbye’ is a favourite of mine.

Song Lyrics

Same as Simon says. The teacher gives certain commands. If the command is preceded by ‘Teacher says’ the command must be followed. If it isn’t, those students are out. If a command is not preceded by the magic words and it is carried out the students are also out.

The range of the commands depends on the level of your students and the available space. Common commands include stand up / sit down, hands up / hands down, touch your…, open / close your book.

Teacher says

Go to your school library for this one or bring some books to the class. There are two versions to this game depending on the level of your students.

In the first one you give the students a few words beforehand that they must locate in a book.

In the second version you give them a set of letters. The students need to find words that start with those letters and write them down.
In each case they must show you where in the book each word was found.

ESL Activities Megabook