This post was submitted by Ana Maria Menezes.

A simple but fun quick-fire game to liven up a class or as a reward in the final segment of a language lesson.  A student comes to the front of the class, the students choose a topic (for example, ‘Your last holiday’, ‘Your favourite food’ etc), then the class fire questions to the student.  The student has to answer the questions but cannot say the words either ‘YES’ or ‘NO’.  As soon as they do, THEY ARE OUT!  Then the next student takes a turn.

Ingredients:

• A group of students – 1 at the front at a time, the rest play the roles of questioners
• That’s all

Instructions:

1) Explain the rules

2) Call for a volunteer

3) Start the game

You can vary the speed and difficulty of the topic depending on the material you have been covering and the ability of the class.  This game is guaranteed to engage and enliven and group of students!

This post was submitted by David Saddington.

Divide class in two teams, A and B. Divide the board in the middle. Mark each side of the board for each team.  

On each side of the board draw:

• a river with stepping stones for students to get across the river. The winner is the team that crosses the river first. For every correct word they write, mark a stepping stone.
• a ladder. The winner is the team that climbs the ladder first. For every correct word they write, mark a step on the ladder.
• a mountain with climbing points for the teams  to climb and put their country’s flag up on the top. The winner is the team that climbs the mountain and puts their country’s flag up first. For every correct word they write, mark a climbing point.
• an apple tree with a ladder which the students have to climb and pick the apples from the tree. This is suggested for longer spelling and vocabulary homework since the students first have to climb up the ladder and then pick the apples. The winner is the team that picks all the apples first. For every correct word they write, mark a step on the ladder and then an apple on the tree.
• a daisy. The winner is the team whose daisy is wiped out first. For every correct word they write, wipe out a petal and after all the petals have been wiped out, then wipe out the leaves and the stem until the whole daisy has gone.
• an ice cream with 4-5 scoops of different flavours. For example, brown for chocolate, green for pistachio, red for strawberry, white for vanilla, etc. The winner is the team that eats their ice cream first, the whole of it, even the cone. For every correct word they write, wipe out a scoop until the whole ice cream has gone!
• a basket with basketballs underneath. The winner is the team that puts all their basketballs in the basket first. For every correct word they write, wipe out a basketball. 

Call a member from each team up on the board and dictate a word from their vocabulary to them. The students write the word they hear on their side of the board making sure at the same time that the student from the opposite team cannot see what the other student is writing. So cheating is eliminated.
This has proven a very nice and exciting way to check spelling, listening comprehension and pronunciation in a fun way. It also adds a lot of variety in my spelling and vocabulary games while my students’ motivation to learn English is enhanced. My students love it and look forward to their spelling game every time.
One final tip: In case of a draw, I treat the whole class to cookies, lollipops, or chocolates! 

This post was submitted by Barbara Koziori.

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 .