Giving the students the words and letting them arrange the sentence is an oldie but a goodie. This game adds some movement and the element of recall to make it more fun and competitive.
The concentration game is a game of memory and recall. The students have to remember what has been said before them, then they have to recall the English vocabulary of the lesson (or previous lessons) to add their own word.
Students challenge their partner to see who can say the most things. The person who can't think of something to say within 5 seconds loses and the game is over.
This blackboard writing challenge works best in small to medium sized classes. Students are running around, writing letters on the blackboard, and competing against the other team(s) so there's a lot of movement and a lot of energy. Everyone loves this game!
The relay gesture game is a combination of running and gesturing as a group. It is a fun game to competitively practice any vocabulary or phrases that can be gestured.
Guess the number is a fun game, useful for practicing numbers one to one hundred. The good thing about this game is it gets the kids to think of the numbers they want to say in English.
When you get to the "have vs has" lesson with your 1st grade junior high school students, here is a nice game to give them lots of chances to think about which word is the appropriate one to use with each pronoun (I, He, She, They, etc).
Students play a new variation of janken but instead of winning with paper, scissors or rock; they win by doing some simple math the quickest.
This is straight out of the elementary school textbook. Place an eraser in the middle then beat your partner to snatch it away and get a point.
Last letter first letter, more commonly known here as shiritori, is a game I am sure we have all played at some point and it makes a great warm up game for junior high classes.
Memory is a match the cards game I'm sure we all played as kids. As a child, I played with playing card but in an elementary English class, vocabulary card sets work better. If you have them, this game can be used to drill vocabulary.
The parachute team challenge is a junior high English class warm up game but can also be used in elementary schools. The winner of each round remove a point from another team and the game ends when one team has no points left.
Instead of just listening, students must run to get the numbers from you before returning to tell their groups. This adds physical action and speaking to the old classic English number lesson game.
Row racing uses the rows of desk as groups and the element of competition to bring some excitement to new vocabulary or dialogue practice.
Bulrush is a game your elementary students will love. It involves running, chasing and a bit of English and the best part is you can play it with them!
Each group tries to complete the English word challenge you give them by writing words that fulfill the requirements you set. For example - Six words ending in "e".
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