Specialised education of uzbekistan the uzbek state world languages university the english teaching methodology department

Hot seat

This is a great activity that can be used as a warm-up at the beginning of a class, or as a game at the end of a lesson. It’s suitable for any class size over 4 students and requires minimal preparation. Divide the class into two teams and have two chairs at the front of the class, set up to face away from the board. Have one student from each team come and sit in the chairs and tell them not to turn and look at the board. The premise of the game is for you to write a word or expression from your lesson on the board, and have the students facing away from the board guess what it is. Give each team 10 points to start with and tell them if they break any rules, points will be deducted. The rules must include no miming (you want students to give verbal clues) and no use of their own language. Other students call out clues and whichever of the students at the front guesses correctly first gets the point. Have other students replace them each time. This is a fun game that can get quite noisy. You might want to exert some control by giving each team 15-second chunks to give clues. Develop your rules as you see fit.

2. 
   Beat the clock
   

This is a similar activity to hot seat, in that students must guess words or expressions from your lesson and/or previous lessons. It’s faster paced so you will need more vocabulary to use, although each expression can be used more than once. Have the words on slips of paper or card in an envelope or box. With this game, you will need to set the class into teams of about 6 maximum, but you may find slight adaptions make it suitable for either smaller or bigger classes. Have one team come to the front and have one student from the team pick out slips from the box and give clues for the rest of the team to guess, or vice-versa. Award points for the number of expressions guessed within the allotted time. Each round should last no longer than 30 seconds so that you even up contributions and involvement of each student. Allow weaker students to put back any expressions they feel unable to give clues for and take out another by saying “pass”.
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3. 
   Crosswords
   

Crosswords can be used very effectively in the ESL classroom, and there are plenty of free easy to use crossword makers on the internet. Because you can so easily make your own, they are very versatile in terms of both level and length. Print off two copies without answers or clues, and write in all the down answers on one copy and all the across answers on the other. Make copies as needed for the class size, assuming one set per 2-4 students depending on how you choose to conduct the game. The idea is for students to give each other clues for their pairing to complete either the down or across answers. Give one pair of students in each group the copy with the down answers filled in and their opposing pair the copy with the across answers. Make sure they can’t see each other’s sheets! They then ask “What is (number) across/down? The opposing students then create clues for them to guess. Have a wrap-up at the end by asking students to give you clues they’d used for specific words.

4. 
   Board games
   

The beauty of this idea is that it can be used with just about any board game you might have that involves moving pieces after throwing a dice such as Snakes (Chutes) & Ladders. You will need enough sets so that students can play in groups of around 2-6 players. Have a stack of cards with target language from the lesson on. You can have different colored stacks to match the variety of squares that you might land on when moving around the board. Each stack will have different types of task, such as to speak for 20 seconds about the vocabulary on the card, solve an anagram, make your team-mate guess the word, or create a question using the word. Students move their pieces around the board after throwing a dice and must complete the task on whatever card they pick up depending on what colored square they land on. If they can’t, they go back to the square they came from. You could also adapt this idea to suit the popular “Jenga” game by writing on the wooden blocks with a pencil or erasable ink.