Question:
I'm looking for ESL games/group activities which require no preparation
and no materials, i.e. "instant" activities. I"m bored with my old ones.
Do you have any favorites?
Answer:
Here's a game I made up that works on just that sort of day. It's not great
education, but it's somewhere on the track.
Divide the class in two to four teams.
The object of the game is to "stay alive." A student stays alive if the
student is able to name an animal (in English with intelligible
pronunciation) that has not been named yet in the game. (I've also used
countries, verbs, and emotion-words for this, but animals seems to work the
best.)
You go from team to team and from individual to individual. With two teams
(which is the way I usually do it) you go back and forth--team one,
individual one; team two, individual one; team one, individual two; team
two, individual two; team one, individual three...and so on.
When it is a student's turn. He/she has five seconds (count it out like a
prize-fight referee). If the student is stumped or names an animal that has
already been named, he/she's out (put your thumb up over your shoulder like
a baseball umpire--Yerrrr out!)
When one team loses all its students, the game is over. The losing team has
to do homework--usually writing a story incorporating 10 or 20 of the
animals on the board. The winning team gets an A without doing the homework.
Students may help other students on their team, but ONLY when it is NOT that
student's turn. (Thus, students can pass the names of animals in writing to
each other, and so on.)
As each animal name is mentioned, write it on the board. (You must move fast
and keep it exciting. It's a bit of physical exercise, this game, but we
teachers usually need it. :-) When students' name an animal already on the
board, circle the animal's name, and call them yerrrrr out!!
Keep two lists of dead students on the board, one for each team. Whenever a
student fails to name the animal, add the name to the team dead list.
It's actually very simple, though I've taken a lot of space to describe it.
It really enlivens a dead group, and on days when you are feeling a little
dead too, and nothing more interesting is getting done, it's an energizer
for all.
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