Teacher's Survival Kit

1. Sentence Race
A good game for large classes and for reviewing vocabulary lessons. Any level.

1. Prepare a list of review vocabulary words.
2. Write each word on two small pieces of paper. That means writing the word twice, once on each paper.
3. Organize the pieces like bundles, 2 bundles, 2 sets of identical words.
4. Divide the class into 2 teams. get them to make creative team names.
5. Distribute each list of words to both teams. every student on each team should have a paper.  Both teams have the same words.
6. When you call a word, 2 students should stand up, one from each team. The students must then run to the blackboard and race to write a sentence using their word.

The winner is the one with a correct and clearly written sentence. This is always a hit with kids. For more advanced students, use tougher words.

2. What's the Question?
An activity to review question forms previously studied in class, for practising both listening and speaking skills. Any level.

1. Form two teams (three will work, but two seems to add just the right amount of competitive tension).
2. Explain the game, with a few examples of answers in search of questions. Ask, 'What's the question?', and get students to correctly say the corresponding questions for your answer.
3. Have two players--one from each team--come to the front. Style it like a game show if you like, with the students standing side-by-side. If you have access to bells or buzzers, it's even more fun.
4. Read an answer to a question and say, 'What's the question?' The fastest player to respond wins a point for her/his team. New contestants come to the front for a new round.

Rationale: This game forces the students to think backwards a little, so they must provide a grammatically perfect question. All too often, they are used to answering rather than asking questions, so this is challenging and useful as review.

3. Intonation Fun
An activity addressed at underlining the importance of intonation. Basically, it gets students to say the words in quotation marks in the contexts that follow. Any level.

• Say 'Hello'

-to a friend
-to a friend you haven't seen for 3 years
-to a neighbour that you don't like
-to a 6 month old baby
-to someone you have just found doing something they shouldn't
-to someone on the phone when you're not sure if they are still on the other end

• Say 'Goodbye'

-to a member of your family as they are going through the boarding gate at the airport
-to someone who has been annoying you
-to a child starting his very first day at school

• Ask 'How are you?'

-to someone you haven't seen for 20 years
-to someone who has recently lost a member of the family
-to someone who didn't sleep in their own bed last night

• Say 'I never go to pubs'

-by a person that totally disapproves of drinking alcohol to someone who often goes to pubs
-as a response to someone who has told you they sometimes go to pubs
-said before: '…but I quite like discos.'

• Ask 'What have you done?'

-to someone who claims to have fixed your TV only that now it's worse than before
-to someone who is scolding you for not doing anything when you suspect the same about them
-to someone who has just done something very bad and has serious consequences

Games & Activities for the ESL/EFL Classroom