Color Pattern Game: Try letting students play the game and then review colors between rounds. Start out by playing as a class and asking students to call out the next color then decide where to go from there!

Feed Freddy: Match the letters to feed Freddy! Bonus - you can change from letters to numbers, colors, shapes & more!

Frogwise: Turn the frog to blast the flies. Have students call out numbers or have them call out the time on the clock that the flies emerge from!

It's June! Students and teachers are ready for summer! Sometimes your classroom needs an energy boost to push everyone a little closer towards the finish line. Try out these classroom energizer ideas to get students up, moving, speaking and refreshed.

Body Letters & Spelling: Call up groups, do it as a class or individually - give students a word and have them spell it out using their bodies

Red Ear: Students must find an object in the classroom and touch it with one hand. The other hand should touch the body part called out. This one can get crazy so keep it safe and under control.

Blobs & Lines: This one is a classic ice breaker that works well as an energizer, too. Call out a topic for the students, have them ask and answer each other's questions, then finally form either a blob or a line based on the answers. For example, if you call out line up in alphabetical order by your favorite food, students would need to ask each other's favorite food then form a line based on the answer. If you call out group up by favorite color, students would need to ask each other's favorite color and group, or 'blob,' up based on their answers.

YouTube-Based Energizers:

Thinking While Moving: Pretty easy, just call out a movement while students review vocabulary or sentence patterns. Check out the video for an example using times tables.

Yes, No, Stand Up, Sit Down: Again, very simple. Yes = stand up. No = sit down. Ask yes/no questions and have students say and act out answers. Try having students take turns asking question.

Illnesses: If your students have already learned illnesses, try this one out. Big shout out to Racel who shared this video and sparked the idea to share some energizers!

Bingo is one of the most versatile, fun and easy games to bring into the classroom. Here are a few adaptations and resources to help you design and play Bingo with your students.

Adaptations:

--> Replace words with pictures or mix words and pictures

--> Turn Bingo into a listening exercise: read the textbook dialogue or a short story, when students hear a key word on their Bingo sheet, they mark it off)

--> Bingo for Classroom Management: List positive behaviors and words on a big Bingo sheet and play as a class. When the whole class gets a Bingo, give them a reward! OR play Bingo for annoying teacher behaviors. Have your students ever said you say, 'OK' too much or that you always drop your markers? Turn these into a Bingo game that encourages students to pay attention to you during class!

--> Introduce a critical thinking element to the game. Don't call out or reveal the answers that are on students' Bingo cards, instead read out clues, definitions, translations, parts of phrases or other prompts that require a bit of figuring out to reveal which square it is.

--> Bingo as a scavenger hunt: Just choose your target content, make sure kids are familiar enough to play the game and then let them loose to find the objects. These could everyday classroom objects like stationery or clues that you hide around the classroom - try playing in pairs or teams with students trading off sitting and searching.

--> Q & A survey activity: Give each student one of the possible Bingo answers and require students to ask and answer questions to reveal the answer the other has in order to mark it off on their card. For example, if the language focus is transportation vocabulary, give each student a word (e.g. car, scooter, bus), then require them to ask each other, "How do you get to school?" The answer to the quesiton would be the vocab word each student has. After they ask and answer, they can mark each other's words off the Bingo sheet. 

--> Find someone who Bingo: This one works great as a review game. Fill out each square with possible answers to questions and students need to find someone whose answer matches the square to mark it off. So if the square says 'yellow,' the question could be "What's your favorite color? or What color do you like?"

--> Bingo for a Gallery Walk: Run a Gallery Walk activity in which posters, pictures or other info is posted on the classroom or hallway walls. Students need to view each poster - reading and thinking about the content. To make this a bit more fun, have bingo cards made up that connect to the posters on the walls. This should encourage students to pay closer attention to the posters and absorb more of the target content. Ideally, the posters, pictures or whatever you put on the walls could be made by your students!

Ways to spice up the game:

--> Swap cards halfway through

--> Multiple winners based on pattern (up-down, side-side, diagonal, cross, X, etc.)

--> Use Wordwall's 'Open the Box' activity to call out the answers

--> Play Pictionary Bingo: students come up, draw the clue and when their classmates shout out the word, it can be marked off the sheet

--> Play Bingo Charades style, similar to Pictionary except that students act out the clues instead of drawing them

--> Optical illusion Bingo: Can you find a Magic Eye picture or other optical illusion for each square of a bingo card?

Resources to make your own Bingo cards:

Bingo Baker: This one is great because you can mix images and text

My Free Bingo Cards: Make customized cards with different numbers of squares

Canva: Canva now has a free Bingo card generator

Among the many things that go into creating successful games and activities in the classroom, guessing elements are one of the most surefire ways to ensure engagement and drive interest. Consider these guessing games as starting points and see if you can adapt them or adopt elements of them into your own classroom activities.

Yoga Guessing Games: Especially great for young learners, play a version of charades that uses yoga poses instead of acting. To add on to this idea, you can create your own alphabet of yoga poses, create your own yoga poses that look like letters of the alphabet or try creating stories that include yoga poses. Adapt stories from Kids Yoga Fun or create your own.

Pictionary: An oldie, but a goodie; there are lots of ways to play pictionary in class. 

• Slo-mo Pictionary: Only let students draw one 'line' or one 'piece' at a time, it's like slow reveal pictionary - only the added suspense increases engagement! Teachers can ask a question between each piece drawn or let the class shout out guesses.

• Skribbl: Try it with iPads or tech - Skribbl is a free online multiplayer drawing and guessing pictionary game. (Thanks to Advisor Will for showing me this one!)

• Can you find it?: A bit like reverse pictionary, this is a calming, winding-down type of game to play in the class, the teacher simply describes objects in the classroom and students try to draw or guess what they are. You can play it low-prep style with small whiteboards (students write or draw the object once they think they know it) or create handouts of varying complexity (students choose from a list of pictures, have a word bank, need to order the objects, etc.).

Blind Guessing: Use the small flashcards students have in the back of their book, and as a review activity, break students into groups of 3-4, have them lay the cards out on a table and take turns guessing. Have one student close their eyes and another student randomly point to a card, the student with their eyes closed needs to guess what the card is. If they guess correctly, they can keep the card. Whoever has the most cards at the end is the winner. This one is kind of like the memory game in that it starts slow, but once it gets going it gets easier to guess and more competitive.

Guessing to Score Points in a Game Hmmm, sounds complicated - don't worry, it's not! Just play or run any type of activity you normally would and have a guessing element be the way students or teams accumulate points.

• Shell Game: Students or teams complete a language task and then need to guess which shell or cup the ball is under. Create your own in class version or play online. Also try any other game of chance (which hand, 3-card Monte or any other)

• This or That?: Show 2 pictures (this or that), have students guess which one it is, then show them the answer and assign points. The answer could be the flashcard the teacher is holding behind their back, a predetermined order of PPT slides or any other createive way to drive interest in an game. 

There are also many more guessing games listed below (Mystery Box, Slow Reveal, Blindfold and many more!)

Many thanks to Janice from Taichung who first showed me this activity!!!

Soundboards: Just what they sound like- click the image and it plays a sound. Consider loading this page on an iPad you carry with you to play different sounds during games & activities

• Soundboard: Cube for Teachers

• Soundboard: Classtools

• Soundboard: ESL Kids Games

Daily Calendars: Begin class with a quick review of the day's date, day of the week, weather and more with these online calendars

• Online Calendar: The Sprinkle Topped Teacher

• Online Calendar: ESL Kids Games

• PPT Calendar1 & PPT Calendar 2 (Be sure to download before modifying!!!)

All you need is some sort of blindfold (or very well-behaved students who won't peek) to play this one. As a guessing game, the premise is simple: the student wearing the blindfold tries to guess which one of their classmates is speaking. It can be a team game for points, an individual game for fun or can even be played as students vs teacher.

The possibilities for this one are endless...have two students wear blindfolds and two students read/have a dialogue- one student guesses the questioner and one guess the answerer. The blindfolded students can guess who's singing, guess from a group of 3 or 4 (multiple choice style) or have students disguise their voices to trick the blinfolded student.

Simple activities like this can add the elements of guessing, intrigue and suspense to the classroom and thereby increase student engagement and participation. Give blindfold a try and share any similar ideas you have!

The following are 2 ppt templates that can be used as whole-class activities. Try following them up with an individual or small-group speaking activity such as the Sticky Note Game below:)

Tron Speed Reading Challenge for grade 6 (Follow Me 7, Unit 4)

Letters & words fly across the screen at high speed. Students try to guess the words or sentences. Be sure to test it out before playing, I've adjusted the speed to make many words & letters slower, so you may need to do the same. Speed can be adjusted by opening the animation pane, right clicking on an animation, going into the timing section and changing the duration.

Soccer Champions for Grade 5 (Wonder World 5, Unit 4)

A question and answer game that lets the winning team of each round kick the ball towards the other team's goal. Lots of flexibility in how you use this one. It can be used as recommended with the pictures or you can just use the soccer element of it in your own game.

Original templates can be downloaded here:

Tron Speed Reading Challenge - This one is from Tay's teaching toolkit. The site has lots of cool ppt games...check them out!

Soccer Champions - This one is from Adam Zero's Games. This site also has some cool ppt games. Give the site a look over and share any cool ones you find!

This activity works with just about any subject matter that requires students to ask an open-ended or yes/no question. Basically, the teacher will write, or write and draw, one vocab word per student on a sticky note (it's OK if there are some repeats). Then, each student sticks their post-it on their back without looking at it- use tape if they aren't sticking to clothes. Next, students will go around the room and take turns asking and answering the target question. If a student guesses an answer that corresponds to their sticky note, then they are finished and can sit down. The game can work by having students 'guess' their note by either guessing their vocab word in response to a classmates' question or guessing the word in the form of a yes/no question they ask.

For example, for drinks, students could either ask 'What do you want to drink? / What would you like to drink?' and then guess their own sticky note by answering the question or they could try and guess their drink by using the question 'Do you want some ______?' If their question contains the vocab word on their back, they've done it. Either way, there's no peaking and classmates need to be honest when they look at their partner's note and tell them if they got it or not!

Level up!

If you want to make the activity leveled or differentiated, you can assign different questions or content to students based on the color of their sticky notes. 

This might be tough on the first go around, but if you like the game, you can consider giving one color to advanced students and one color to struggling and have them interact with students with the same color sticky note during the activity.

I'm not sure on the name of this one, but it's a TEFL classic. Gatekeeper is essentially an information gap/communication game in which one student stays in the classroom as the writer while their partner, the runner, goes outside the classroom, finds an answer and reports it to their partner the writer waiting inside. It's called Gatekeeper because one teacher stands at the door and makes sure that the runner repeats the question on their way out of the room and the answer on their way back in. If they can't clearly state the question or answer, students are asked to either go back to their partner to hear the question again or go back outside to check the answer again. This can be a really fun, engaging and effective way to allow students to practice all four communication skills. It's also a low-prep activity that fits with almost any content. Gatekeeper also lends itself well to a co-taught classroom because one teacher can man the door while the other circulates the room helping the writers both write answers and read questions to the runner as well as helping the runners practice pronunciation so they can make it past the gatekeeper smoothly.

To prep this activity, you'll need a list of questions with spaces to either write, circle or draw an answer as well as a set of questions that you'll tape in the hallway to serve as answers. In preparing students to play, it can be useful to model the activity and let students see how it is run rather than giving a lengthy explanation. Also, be sure that students know they will need to switch roles halfway through (ie the writer will write questions 1-3 and then they'll switch roles and their partner will be the writer for questions 4-6). The top image on the left is an example of a student handout (4 questions is very short, make yours longer if you'd like). The image below it is an example of an answer prompt that would be taped in the hallway.

The images below are also examples of a student worksheet and answer prompts. To begin, the writer would read the question to the runner (without showing them the paper- no peeking!), then the runner would go to the door, repeat the question to the teacher and the teacher would grant permission to go outside f the question was correct. Then the student would find the answer, say it to the teacher and be allowed to go back in if the answer was correct. Finally, the runner would say the correct answer to the writer, the writer would then write it down and the process would be repeated for question 2.

Similar to the Concept Graphs activity, Spectrum Sorts allow students to sort examples along a spectrum. The difference is that in this case, students only sort examples along one axis. The example on the top right shows a student sorting animals by how much she likes or dislikes them (Cats are no. 1!). The second example (apologies for image quality) shows a sort of various items along a want vs need spectrum.

Examples of spectrums might include least to most, want to need, don't like to like or agree to disagree. What can be fun about this activity, is that you can use your classroom, hallyway or whiteboard as the spectrum and have students get up out of their chairs and stand along the spectrum to show their answers. For example, have one corner of your classroom represent want and another represent need. Show students vocabulary words and have them line up along the wall between want and need. You can provide sentence starters for them to explain their answers and use the activity to prompt a structured class discussion. The example of want vs need would work well with everything from different kinds of food and drinks to stationery to cell phones and other tech items.

Other variations on this activity include giving students post-it notes and having them post their answer along a spectrum or having them create their own on small whiteboards or scrap paper and present them to the class or a group. 

Note: Spectrum Sorts are an engagement strategy from a teaching approach known as Concept-Based Inquiry. If anyone would like to know more about Concept-Based Inquiry get in touch with me or check out the book Concept-Based Inquiry in Action (Marschall & French, 2018).

Concept Graphs are an activity in which students sort examples across two concept axes. In the first example to the left, students are sorting stationery based on how often they use it (a lot vs a little on the X-axis) and how much they like the object (I like it vs I don't like it on the Y-axis). You can see that students in this case used books a lot, but didn't like them (so sad!) while also using book bags a lot and really liking them (who knew!). In the second example, students will be asked to sort transportation vocab based on both how long of a journey we use the form of transportation for as well as how often we use it. 

Concept Graphs can be a fun, engaging way to introduce new vocabulary while discussing it at the same time. If you're looking for something more than just having students repeat vocab after you, try this strategy out. They can be done as a whole-class activity, in small groups, pairs or individually. If you plan to have students make their own, it's best to model the activity by doing it as a class. Then pass out a pre-labeled concept graph, cut-outs of the key vocab they'll be sorting and a glue stick to each group or pair.

 
Note: Concept Graphs are an engagement strategy from a teaching approach known as Concept-Based Inquiry. If anyone would like to know more about Concept-Based Inquiry get in touch with me or check out the book Concept-Based Inquiry in Action (Marschall & French, 2018).

Choose a template, customize or use as it, pick up a set of dice from the store and you're ready to roll!

Gamifying your teaching is a great way to make lessons more engaging, interesting and plain old fun. Board games are a fun way to allow students to practice language in small groups. Set up the game by writing prompts or questions on the whiteboard, on the board game template itself or on cards to be printed and cut out. Add some of your own personality and rules to the game (I love adding 'swap places,' 'make a chicken noise' or other silly squares to board games) and model how to play for students. While students are playing in small groups, walk the room assessing progress and providing support where needed. Using board games in the classroom might not be new or revolutionary, but it is a low-prep, fun and effective way to let your students practice interacting with one another in English.

You can find board game templates all over the internet, but to help get started I've shared a few resources below.

50 PRINTABLE BOARD GAME TEMPLATES

10 Blank Board Game Templates

Canva Board Game Templates (Print as is or filter for 'free' templates to edit)

Finger Twister is a highly-adaptible classroom game. Students can play individually while following along with the class or they can play in pairs. There are two Finger Twister templates below. One is a PPT which can be used as a class (from  the Tekhnologic website) and the second is a blank pdf (from Sandy Tsai) which the teacher or students can fill out for use in pairs. 

For the whole-class version, you can edit the ppt below and follow the instructions found on the Tekhnologic website. Basically, you need to print finger twister sheets, come up with questions/language content for the game and lead the game using the ppt.

For the pdf version, you'll need to either write in key words or phrases on the blanks or have students do this. Students can then play finger twister any way you'd like- by going freestyle and placing their fingers anywhere, including blocking other players, by rolling a die that corresponds to which finger they should place next or any other way you see fit. Be sure to monitor students and make sure they are using English while playing. Each space should correspond to a language task which could as simple as reading a word or as complex as using a word to make a sentence or questions. Also, it might be best to fill the sheet out before hand and possibly use less spaces, it can take quite a while for students to fill it out on their own.

Check out the templates, adapt them, make them your own and share how it went!

Finger Twister ppt

Finger Twister pdf

One more version with simple pics for ideas on how to play

This is an activity for 3rd graders or anyone else who's working their way through the alphabet as an emergin English leaner.!
The video to the right is a guessing version of Stephen T. Johnson's classic book Alphabet City. Consider showing your class the video and encouraging them guess each letter before it is revealed on the screen (you're going to have to skip around or screenshot it into a PPT so it doesn't go in order). Following the video, you can recreate the book by asking students to work in pairs, individually or in teams to take pictures of 'letters' they find around the classroom. 

This activity is inspired by Stephen T. Johnson's book Alphabet City and Matt A's interpretation of the book.

The premise for this activity is simple. Each team needs to flip a tile to reveal a word and then read the word aloud, make a sentence using the word or complete whatever task the teacher decides. What makes the game interesting is that each team only gets a point if the color of the item matches their team color. In the example game (follow the link or QR code), the red team would only get a point if they flip a tile that reads 'red _______'- if they flip a blue item, they don't get any points.

To design and play the game, you'll need to use the Wordwall platform and the flip tiles template. The game shouldn't take very long to create and students should enjoy playing it. To make the game better match your needs, consider adding more teams (add more than two colors) or adding in bonus tiles that swap or resent point totals. 

Red vs. Blue Stationery Game

If you're looking to add a little spice to almost any activity, try these chance games from onlinestopwatch.com. 

"These games may appear to use skill - but they are all completely random - just pure chance! There is no way to predict what the result will be, and no way to gain any advantage using logic."

Slow reveal activities can be a fun way to inject a bit of suspense and mystery into lessons. As a method to introduce or practice vocabulary and sentence patterns they naturally focus students' attention and level the playing field between students of differing ability levels. The downloadable templates below have instructions for how to insert your own images, but it's up to you to decide how to use them in class.  For a tech option, Wordwall has a great slow reveal feature (called Image Quiz) that is easy to set up and use in class.

Slow Reveal PPT Template (dropbox)

Slow Reveal Google Slides Template 

(Special thanks to Adrian and the MEC crew for helping develop the template)

Also, try googling 'animal sounds' or the sound of a specific animal. Google has a built in animal sounds feature that is easy to access for use in the classroom.

Everyone's liked Exploding Kittens so much that we are back with more from Tay's Teaching Toolkit. Thanks to Felecia for sharing some of the games she's adapted and will be using for summer camp. Follow the links below to download the templates. Each game comes with a short Youtube video to explain how to edit the template and how to play the game.

4 Corners Sonic Dash

Bomb Squad

Seashore Shuffle

Exploding Kittens is a kitten-themed game of Russian Roulette. Download and adjust the template to play. The examples shared are year-end reviews for Grades 4 & 6. Enjoy & Thanks to Kathrean for sharing this resource from Tay's Teaching Toolkit.

Click here for a Dropbox link if the Google Slides version has issues.

Here's an example of a crossword puzzle that can be made using using the Crossword Maker on TheTeachersCorner.net

This one is for Dino 6. Thanks to Rob for sharing!

Prepare some small plastic Easter eggs. Put students in groups and give them a task for the lesson. Show students the egg before you begin, they'll know that the group that wins will win the contents of the egg.

The beauty is that the egg is opaque, so the students don't know what they will win. If they know, they might decide they don't want it and subsequently not get involved in the lesson.

As long as you keep the prizes different and unexpected, it keeps them interested. I've given my students sweets, stickers, novelty erasers. Once it simply contained a slip of paper saying the winning team didn't get homework.

A mix of things is usually best, as the students then have to negotiate with each other as to who gets what. It's good social development.

Just don't do it too often. We do want intrinsic motivation first and foremost.

From @James 老師 in the MOE FET Line Group