I”ll guess your birthday Magic Trick

Ask your students to do the following, calculating for their own birthday. Go slow and repeat the instructions so they follow along. Use the board to show an example.

• Enter the number 7 (7)
• Multiply by the month of your birth (7×6=63)
• Subtract 1 (63-1=62)
• Multiply by 13 (62×13=806)
• Add the day of your birth (806+8=814)
• Add 3 (814+3=817)
• Multiply by 11 (817×11=8987)
• Subtract the month of your birth (8987-9=8978)
• Subtract the day of your birth (8987-8=8970)

Now the fun! – Ask a student to tell you their result. In your head, quickly do the following

• Divide by 10 (8970/10=897)
• Add 11 (897+11=908)
• Divide by 100 (908/100 = 9.08 )

Tell the student their birthday!  (for example, using my own – Sept. 8th).

They will be amazed! Tell a few more students when their birthday is. For homework ask them to try and find out how you did it! They’ll come up with some creative answers!

There are a lot of amazing science and math tricks that teachers can learn easily and which offer very powerful engagement AND language learning activities.

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

Any time students are performing an activity: dialogue, discussion, task etc… train them to “pass the pen”. After speaking, the student passes the pen to someone else. If you have the pen, you then must “add to” the activity. It’s your turn.

The simplist way to introduce this to students is to put some questions on the board or in a worksheet. Students randomly ask a question and “pass the pen”. That student replies and asks a question and “passes the pen”. You might even just use the “Spin the Question” game on EFL Classroom 2.0.

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

PASS THE CHICKEN!

The prop is the most important element to this game : ) To begin, all students sit in a circle. Select one person to be IT. That person holds the rubber chicken. The teacher or a “caller” says to the person holding the chicken, “Name five animals. Pass the chicken!” As soon as the caller says, “Pass the chicken,” the person holding the chicken passes it to the right. Students quickly pass the chicken around the circle. If it returns to the original holder before he or she can name five animals, the holder is still IT. Otherwise, the person holding the chicken when IT finishes listing five animals is the new IT.

A nice part of this game is it really doesn’t matter if the topics are easy or hard… it’s pretty random who is going to be IT next : ).

Some Easy Topics

• animals
• fruit
• famous people
• songs
• books
• clothing
• weather words
• holidays
• countries
• languages

Anything that fits your curriculum!

This post was submitted by Ellen.

Students in groups pass around a piece of paper while music plays. When it stops, whoever has the paper must answer the question or do a specific task.  In this game - finish the Christmas Carol.

Pass the paper is an excellent interactive way to review the lesson / curriculum.

Get the powerpoints and more games like this HERE.

This post was submitted by David .

Students take turns describing the faces and others guess who it is . One guess / person so they have to be sure!

Good for practicing, He’s got… / She’s got…..

This post was submitted by David.

Required items:

1) Index cards, or pieces of paper

2) A large drawing surface (whiteboard, blackboard, a big piece of paper)

This is a fun activity to help students use the prepositions of motion they already know.

First, get a pile of index cards (preferably ones that you cannot see through). Divide the cards into two piles — one pile will be prepositions, the other will be nouns.

Write the preositions of motion [over, through, under, around, into, out of, . . . etc.] onto the cards in one of the two piles. On the other pile of cards, write nouns or get your class to suggest nouns [my nose, the library, a tiger, my brother, the teacher, Jupiter, . . . etc.]. * These nouns must be concrete nouns — nouns that one can see and touch, i.e. not “my personality” or “justice” etc.

For the game, get 1/2 of the class at a drawing board (white board, black board, big piece of paper), and the other students at the other side of the classroom. Give the students at the drawing board markers or chalk, and give the students on the other side of the classroom the cards. (You should mark on the back of the cards which cards are nouns or prepositions . . .  you can do this by color).

Have the students place the cards facedown on a table, and choose 1 preposition card, and 1 noun card. They will then tell the students at the drawing board what to draw:

For example: “into” “the garbage“

“The gumball went into the garbage.”

(The student who is drawing should draw a gumball going into the garbage . . .  the next students will continue the chain).

This game is really fun because the results are unpredictable with the random selection of nouns and prepositions. Students really enjoy it if you allow them to come up with the nouns.

As a wrap-up, you can get the whole class to repeat (or tell) where the gumball went.

This post was submitted by Mandy.

ie. (name) loves dancing.

However, there is another option and one that even is stronger cognitvely and pedagogically. (Go here for an explanation and part 1)

Give students a bingo card with pictures. Or even better, get them to draw/label the pictures into the boxes. Use my Bingo Powerpoint if you want.

Students go around the classroom asking people the target question (on the board) or as in this example – Do you like…….?  If the student answers yes, they write in an O, if no, an X. They also write the students name.

If they find 5 in a row (either O or X), they get bingo and can sit down.

Finally in groups, they make sentences using the names to make statements about classmates. ex.  Jennifer likes (O) / doesn’t like (X) watermelon.

This is a great visual and student created content way to play FSW!

This post was submitted by david .

Transl8it.com allows the teacher to enter English text and then get the “text message” equivalent. Simply copy this and handout to students. The students look at the text messaging and “decode” this into proper English. After they are done, ask the students to turn to the page in their book that you took the text/script from and check their answers! (or give them a handout of the original to check against / or get a student to put it on the board).

I have made several Transl8it.com games. The most popular being the “Pop Song” version where students decode song lyrics, then check and listen to the songs. Get them HERE on EFL Classroom 2.0.

Use text messaging to help your students with their writing skills.

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

Simply generate with the class your vocabulary list. It can be recent vocabulary from your book/lesson/unit.

Then, the teacher describes one thing/place/person on the board and students try to guess. Only one guess / student or team ( or you will have some students just saying a hundred guesses!). Erase or mark out each correct guess and play until all have been guessed.

Finally, let the students write down the vocabulary and do the same in small groups or pairs.

Other variations include snap (where the teacher says a word and students must be the first to “snap/slap” the word) , pictionary (some students draw and others guess the vocab item), charades (students act and other students guess the vocab item).

For more vocab groups like the above , see these powerpoints  Lots of great wordlists in picture form…

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

You can put in groups of words and then display them in a “cool” fashion. Your teenagers especially will love this personalization.

I designed a quick game of random wordles – What The Wordle?!. Students make guesses and if correct get points. If they add more words to the wordle, they even get more points. I’ll be making more and putting them up on EFL Classroom 2.0’s resource pages. Go here for them and the work/scoresheet.  Go Here for a cool Picasa webalbum version, a great way to display your student’s creations…

Get your students using wordle, a great way to practice vocabulary!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.