Today we’re taking a look at my favorite ESL games that are fun for kids in the English language classroom.
Don’t worry; these games are low prep and low tech. So let’s get started.
Throw the dice
Activity one is perfect when you want to review language with your students, and I call this game Throw the dice. All you’re going to need to prepare for this activity is to get some flashcards or prepare some questions for your students. You’re also going to need a die and something to throw the die in, so either a basket or a bin. You can put the students into two teams, and what they have to do is throw the die into the basket.
Now, if they throw the die and it lands inside the basket, they get 10 points. If they don’t land the die in the basket, they get the number of points that the die shows, from one to six.
But before they can throw the die, they need to answer your question. When I use this in my class, we’ve been studying the comparative structures. So what I did was I got two pictures of two animals, and I got the students to create or produce a sentence that compared those two animals. If they did it correctly, they got to throw the dice. Don’t put that basket away yet; you’re going to need it for this next activity, which is Activity 2, which I call listening paper balls.
Listening Paper Balls
Now, if your students like throwing things, then this next activity is also going to be really fun for them. This is going to be a listening task. To prepare for this activity, you’re going to need to look at the tape script for any listening activity that you’ve got planned for your class and cut up some small pieces of blank paper. Each student is going to have 10 pieces of blank paper, and you’re going to dictate 10 words to your students.
Now, six of these words are going to be in the listening activity, and four are not. Once the students have written down the 10 words onto the blank piece of paper, divide them into teams. You’re going to give them team names, simply team one, team two, team three, etc. On the back of each piece of paper, they need to write the team number.
Tell the students that some of these words are going to be in the listening, and some aren’t. Tell them that when they hear the word, they have to pick up that word, make a ball, and throw it into the basket. When the listening is over, you as a teacher are going to check how many pieces of paper are in the basket. And when you turn over the piece of paper, you’ll see the team number. You’ll then count up all the points for each team, and remember, only the words that were in the listening count.
Usually, listening activities can be quite boring for students. So introducing this fun physical element to the activity makes the students enjoy it a little bit more. You can put the basket or the bin and the paper away for now.
Banana
This next activity is called banana. So to prepare for this activity, you’re going to need to think of a word that you’re going to replace with banana. Before you do that, take one student and take him or her out of the classroom. Close the door and speak to the students in the classroom. Tell them that you’re going to replace one word with the word banana. In the last time I did this, I used the word fish. So I got all my students to think of a sentence about fish but replace the word fish with banana. For example, bananas swim in the sea. When I go swimming, sometimes I see bananas. One of my favorite films is about a banana called Finding Nemo.
All the students have now prepared their sentences replacing fish with banana. And now that student that’s outside comes back in and starts to listen to all the different sentences. When the student has an idea about what is the missing word, they lift their hand up and say, “Teacher, is Banana Fish?” And that student would be correct. Keep repeating this by replacing one different word for banana.
What’s Changed?
If you like sending your students out of the classroom, then you’re going to like this activity, which is Activity number four. And this activity is called What’s Changed. All you’re going to do is ask again one student to leave the room. But before they leave, you’re going to tell them that the students are going to change ten things about the classroom. They’re going to move things like books, chairs, tables, but even something more subtle like changing the position of the teacher’s chair. If you’d like to make it easier, you could send out more than one student so they can work as a team to find out the differences.
Once your students have changed ten things in a classroom, ask those one or two or three students to come back into the classroom and tell you what’s changed. This activity is perfect when you’re practicing prepositions of place, so using phrases like behind, next to, between, etc. When I did this activity, I was practicing the prepositions of place. So I had the students change positions of objects that would encourage students to use prepositions of place. For example, I had Pablo change seats so that now he was sitting next to Julia.
Fruit Salad
Activity 5 is one of my favorite activities to play with my kids in the English language classroom. It’s commonly known as fruit salad. All you need to do is set out a circle of chairs but have one less chair for the amount of students you have. So for example, if you have 10 students, they’re going to have nine chairs. Before you start, you need to assign a fruit to each student. But remember, there must be one or two of the same fruit at least in the group.
So you go around the students tapping them on the shoulder, saying banana, pineapple, apple, banana, pineapple, apple. And there’s always going to be one student in the middle that’s not going to be sitting. You need to assign this student also a fruit. So you’ve got in a group of ten about three bananas, three pineapples, and four apples, let’s say. And you, as a teacher, you need to call out a fruit. You call out banana, and all the bananas have to stand up, and they have to sit in a different seat. But the student in the middle has to try and sit down as well.
So what happens is all the students start chasing each other and trying to get to the free seat. Repeat this for each fruit, so for banana, apples, and pineapples, until all the students have an opportunity to stand up and try and change seats. Then you say, “Fruit salad.” Fruit salad means everybody stands up, and everybody tries to change seats and sit down in a new chair.
Teaching children or kids can be one of the biggest challenges for most English language teachers. That’s why I put together this post which takes a look at 10 helpful tips for teachers working with children.
We’re all different
Activity number six is called “We’re all different.” All you need to prepare for this activity is to give students a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and maybe some colored pencils too. Get them to draw themselves, and you as a teacher are also going to draw yourself. Once they finish drawing a picture of themselves, you’re going to collect them in and stick them up on the wall, but you’re going to stick them up in pairs. You’re then going to ask the students to compare the two pictures and tell you what’s different. Ask them to find five differences between each picture.
Put the students into pairs or teams and get them to study two pictures of two students that are not themselves. Remember, we’re teaching kids, so we’re going to keep this nice and simple. So the structure is going to be, “I have got” or “I have.” For example, “I have got long hair, but Alicia, Pablo has got short hair.”
Alternatively, if you don’t want to focus on the things that are different but focus on the things that are the same, then you can do the same task but ask the students to look for similarities.
Numbers and questions
Activity 7 is a good activity to practice not only the vocabulary that you’re going to teach in that class but also numbers. For this activity, you’re just going to need a set of flashcards. You’re going to ask one student to come to the front and sit down with a pile of flashcards in front of them. One of the other students is going to say a number between 1 and 10 or 1 and 15, depending on how many flashcards you have. The student sitting at the front with a pile of flashcards is going to hear the number, and it’s going to count through the flashcards until they reach the number that that student says.
So for example, if that student said the number five, that student’s going to go one, two, three, four, five, turn over that flashcard, and ask the students a question.
For example, you could pick up the fifth flashcard and show the rest of the students and say, “What is it?”
You, as a teacher, are just monitoring this. You can let the student at the front leave the activity, and you can let the other students say the numbers and respond to the question.
If you’re looking for more flash card games or ideas for your kids’ classes, then don’t forget to check out my post right here with all activities.
Globos
When you’re teaching children, it’s so important that there’s a physical aspect to the task and this activity is no different. Activity 8, according to my students, is called “globos,” which is Spanish for balloons.
To prepare for this activity, all you need is some flashcards and some balloons.
Ask the students to stand in two lines and take one student from each line and ask them to sit on the other end of the classroom. Give them a set of flashcards. This one student with the flashcards takes the first flashcard and shows it to the line in front of them. The student in the line, once they see it, before they can answer the question about what is it, they must get from the line to the other side of the classroom but all the time keeping a balloon from dropping on the floor, only using their head.
You could do a similar activity with a book. Put the book like this on their heads, and they have to move from the line to the other end of the classroom without the book falling. Once a student gets from their line to the other side with the balloon not falling, they answer the question, and the student with the flashcards gives the flashcards to the new student, and that student goes back to the end of the line. Repeat this until all the students in each line have had a go at answering a question about the flashcards.
Emotions
Activity number nine is a great activity to get students practicing emotions and numbers. All you need to prepare for this activity is some pictures of faces that express emotions. Remember, keep it simple, so think about some basic emotions like happy, sad, tired, angry, etc. These faces, you need to think of a way of assigning these emotions to the students.
They could hold the cards or they could clip the cards to their t-shirt. You’re then going to ask the students to count from 1 to 10, 1 to 20, or even one to thirty but with the emotion of the card that they’re holding or have clipped here.
If you have a grammar lesson coming up, then try out this fun classroom game here.
Musical Statues
The final game that I play with my students that is again one of my favorites and has the physical aspect is musical statues. As you know, I’m sure how to play this game. All you need is some music and ask the students to dance, and then when you stop the music, the students have to stay completely still. The way I use this to practice some target language or review some vocabulary is that the student that does not keep still I then call to the front of the class and ask them a question about flash card or some vocabulary that we’ve been studying.
Again, super simple, but it’s just a way of tricking my students into answering my questions.
Thank you for reading this post on my favorite games for kids in the English language classroom.