As every teacher knows, sometimes just getting your students engaged is half the battle. The following are some tried and tested activities for English classrooms – or remote learning experiences, with some slight modifications – that should wake up your students and get their creative juices flowing.
In Charades, the teacher writes down a couple of words and divides the class into two teams. One person from each team will choose a word and act it out. A team receives a point for every correctly guessed word. A variation of this – that might work better over Zoom – is Pictionary, where students draw the word instead of acting it out.
Board Race is a fun game for revising vocabulary. Divide the class into two teams. Draw a line down the middle of the board and write a topic at the top. Students must write as many words related to the topic as they can in a relay. The first student writes the first word and passes to the next. Each team gets a point for each correct and legible word.
With Taboo Words, create a PowerPoint presentation with a familiar noun on each slide. Have one student come to the front of the room and sit with their back to the screen. The rest of the students take turns describing the words on the slides, and the student at the front must guess what they are.
A favourite game among teachers for generations, Hangman can be used at the start of a class to warm up students and get them active. Think of a word and outline the number of letters in it on the board using dashes. Then, ask students to guess a letter. If it appears in the word, write it in all the correct spaces. If the letter does not appear in the word, write it off to the side and begin drawing the image of a hanging man. Keep going until students have collectively guessed the word, or the poor man has been hanged!
These activities should warm up your class and get them ready for thinking about words in a new way.
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