Playing games in the classroom is a fun and effective way to get students engaged in the material. Many activities involve getting up and moving, which engages students’ total physical response while stimulating their minds. Using both sides of the brain, these games help students memorize vocabulary and phrases. Other popular activities for the classroom include musical chairs and Action Race. If you want to use games in your classroom, read on for some great ideas.
Action Race
The most popular of all Action Race classroom games is the one in which the player must race to complete a task before their opponent does. The game starts with the teacher standing behind the board with his face hidden from the class. Each student has to make a correct sentence and the team with the shortest time wins. Students can learn about time and sentence structures by playing the game. Whether you’re teaching elementary students or advanced adults, you can easily find a suitable game for your class.
In addition to being fun, Action Race is a useful language learning tool. It can be used to introduce new vocabulary, practice language structures, teach grammar, or even improve core skills. It also works well to warm up your class before the lesson and to end a productive lesson. Whether you choose to play this game in the classroom or in a social setting, it will be an excellent way to engage your students and keep them engaged for the entire lesson.
To play this action-packed game, students must divide into teams. In each team, one person should sit in front of their teammates. The other team member has three minutes to read the word written on the paper. The first team to reach the letter A wins. After each teammate has read the word, they must act out the word with synonyms or descriptions. Once the teams have completed the list, the team that wrote the longest word wins.
These games also promote communication and group cohesion among students. These benefits are apparent even without the language barrier. Action Race classroom games for teaching English are an excellent way to create genuine connections among students while learning new words, phrases, and proverbs. Moreover, they are also fun for everyone and are a great way to break up a long lesson. The author of this article is Stephen Seifert, a freelance writer and editor, who enjoys traveling to new cultures and seeking inspiration for writing.
Hands on head
Using hands-on-head games in the classroom is a fantastic way to teach students about vocabulary and listening skills. The following hand-on game will help you build your vocabulary and enhance listening skills. Students place the cards face down in a random order. One student turns up two cards. The other student tries again. This continues until all the cards are gone. Using a variety of objects and descriptions, your students will quickly learn new words and concepts.
Role-playing games are a great way to improve speaking and listening skills and test grammar and paraphrasing skills. The game can also be fun for the entire class and helps students develop social skills. Some games are even aimed at testing students’ attention spans. Role-playing games are also an excellent way to test the students’ skills in writing and speaking. They can also be used to review and refresh previous learning.
Another hand-on-head game that can help your students learn the alphabet is the classic “A to Z” game. Students rotate through the letters, using flashcards to help them. The winner is the first team to complete all of the letters. However, this game can get a bit boring if played for too long. Try playing it with a smaller group of students and rotate them every 5 minutes. Regardless of the number of students, these hand-on-head games are great for practice.
For a more challenging game, assign the students different categories. In each group, students will listen to a group. When a word from one category is spoken, students must put their hands on their heads. When the timer runs out, the students must work together to come up with as many words as they can before time runs out. In addition, the game can be modified to add more challenging categories, such as the four-letter words and the alphabetic order.
Preposition Treasure Hunt
If you’re unsure what prepositions are, preposition treasure hunt games can be a fun way to teach the subject. The students can create their own treasure maps, filling them in with various landmarks. At the end of the activity, they can mark where they started and where the treasure is buried. Depending on how complex the game is, they can even modify the game to teach different categories of prepositions, sentence formation, or comprehension.
To play the game, have students move their desks and chairs into a circle. The teacher begins by telling the story. Each sentence must start with a prepositional phrase. Students can’t repeat the same phrase. They can also put the clues in hard-to-find places, such as under chairs or behind curtains. This way, the students can practice describing their locations and their prepositions at the same time!
This game is great for teaching prepositions of place to your students. Each team writes a sentence about an object and then gives the cards to the other teams. Then, they need to match the sentences with the correct pictures on the dominoes. To make the game more fun, you can let students take turns leaving the classroom while the objects are hidden. Students will have to answer yes/no questions with prepositions of place to find the objects.
Another fun game to play with students involves a ghostly activity. For the ghostly activity, the teacher will need to prepare the classroom by moving some objects around. A book under a student’s seat, a marker pen on the window sill, a clock on the teacher’s chair, and a CD player behind a door. All of these objects will need to be put back to make it a fun game for everyone.
Get up and move
This warm-up activity is a classic. Students stand in a circle and act out a word or phrase. In this version, students act out the word by holding an object, such as a pen. When the teacher calls a new vocabulary word, students must act it out to the correct pronunciation. If the word is difficult to say, students must repeat it several times. Alternatively, they can act it out with body language.
The basic idea behind get-up-and-move games is to engage students in a physical activity. Not only does physical activity boost students’ attention span, but it also increases test scores. Students don’t have to be young to love ESL games; even adult students can enjoy energy-intensive games to learn new vocabulary. In addition to providing an engaging learning environment, students can also retain new information by playing these games.
A similar game is Pictionary. Students act out words and draw pictures to spell the word. To win, the last student is standing. This activity is a popular choice among English teachers. Using the widget library to create games allows teachers to customize them according to the needs of their students. The examples of these games can be found on the widget library of the English Language Teaching Center. The templates are easy to customize and provide endless opportunities for creative teaching.
A total physical response warm-up game can be an effective way to get students up and moving in a class. Students are divided into groups based on the categories they fall into. They are then instructed to put their hands on their heads if they match a certain category. In addition to boosting students’ physical activity, total physical response games help improve the learning environment. If you’d like to add some excitement to your lessons, try out these ESL games.
Charades
Using Charades as a classroom game for English language learning is an excellent way to introduce students to new vocabulary. Students work in teams of two or four to guess the objects, and the team with the most correct answers wins points. In addition to the obvious fun factor, students can also adapt the topic of the game to current language topics. While this is a popular activity for younger students, it can also be used to teach older students about new words and phrases.
The primary goal of the study was to evaluate whether a charade game can increase students’ vocabulary. Students were recruited from Islamic elementary schools and participated in a pre-experimental, one-group pretest-post-test design. The researchers also collected data from the students’ actions and reactions to clues. The researchers used a t-test formula to test the participants’ knowledge of the words.
While using charades as a classroom game for teaching, be sure to involve all students. In addition to ensuring that every student participates, note down any mistakes that students make. You can also hold a post-game session to assess the game and discuss any problems the students encountered. The teacher can lead the discussion to provide feedback to the students. A good lesson plan includes a post-game evaluation session.
Using charades in your English classes can be a great way to increase students’ vocabulary and improve their listening skills. This fun activity also helps to increase students’ confidence. Students will be able to use their language skills as they act out the words. They’ll be delighted and learn a lot about new words. And if the students enjoy playing the game, it’s not hard to find ways to use charades in the classroom.