ESL Classroom Games: 180 Educational Games and Activities for Teaching ESL/EFL Students

By Louis McKinney and Denise Scott

It's time to make both teaching English and learning English fun and engaging again. Be a successful and effective teacher with ESL Classroom Games, a book that is jam-packed with 180 challenging English language games and activities.
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The book features a wide variety of reading, writing, speaking and listening games and activities which are suitable for teen and adult learners alike. You will enhance your teaching arsenal with focus on warm-up, repetition and drilling, team-based, spelling and grammar, speaking and pronunciation, memory and concentration, turn-based and one-on-one games.

It's broken down into games for beginner, intermediate and advanced level students. The activities are specifically designed to improve students' motivation, confidence, enjoyment, language retention and have been proven to get better results. And the best part is that as the students focus on playing, you will be presented with the perfect opportunity to drill, and recap grammar and vocabulary from your lesson.

INCREASE STUDENT ENTHUSIASM AND PARTICIPATION

Well now you can boost the energy of your classroom and get all of the students active and speaking, even the shy ones. Every teacher knows that students are prone to forget elements of what they have been taught in the previous lesson, and how it can be frustrating. With this book you won't have to worry about your teachings going in one ear and out the other because it solves that issue by making learning, drilling and repetition fun.

With assistance and feedback from a variety of experienced, and qualified English teachers, Andrew William has put together an excellent collection of ESL games and activities for the classroom that has already received a great deal of acclaim from schools around the world, and have sold over 5,000 copies since 2017.

SAVE TIME ON LESSON PLANNING

Additionally, this book will ease the pressures of a busy schedule and eliminate planning those tricky lesson plans during your next lunch break by using this activity-filled resource. Save time planning, free up your personal time and preserve your energy for the classroom. After all, teaching is what you do best, so use this aid to increase your students' capacity and eagerness for learning.
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Here is what you will get from this book:
 

• Easier, quicker lesson planning
• 180 fun language games and activities for learning English
• Assistance with enhancing students' confidence and motivation
• Games for reading, writing, speaking and listening
• Make learning fun again
• Ready-to-use classroom management strategies and activities
• Increase your popularity and relationship with your students
• And much, much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hi ESL
• Release date: Jan 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781393230595

Book preview

Introduction

Preparation

The key to a successful lesson is always to be prepared. It will improve the quality of your teaching and ensure that your students are learning effectively. Being prepared will give you a clear idea of what you want to accomplish in the class. It will also help to avoid those awkward moments that every teacher encounters at some stage when the lesson is taking a bit of a nosedive. You'll also be surprised by how observant your students are. They are likely to notice if you are unprepared. 

Lesson Planning

The most important element of your preparation is to create a lesson plan. Break the lesson plan down and designate a chunk of time for each task that you will complete as part of the lesson. Making a lesson plan at the first few attempts might seem time consuming, but rest assured, you will be able to plan lessons more quickly and effectively as time goes on. It's a good idea to have a ready-to-use template on your computer. Then it will just be a case of inputting and reviewing the material and choosing which games you would like to use in the lesson. 

Types of Games

Which game you will choose to use will depend largely on what you are trying to achieve as a learning outcome for the students in the respective lesson. Some games will tend to work better than others based on the situation. The games in this guide have been divided into the categories provided below. Of course, some will be applicable to more than one category, and even more than one level, as they can be adapted. 

Warm-up Games

A good way to start a lesson and to get the students engaged is to introduce a warm-up game. Rather than just requesting the students to open their books straight away, a warm-up game can be used to recap a previous lesson or to introduce a new topic. In this category you will find some fun activities to get the students excited and ready for the lesson ahead. 

Repetition/ Drilling Games

Repetition is important if students are to retain the language. It's particularly useful for teaching young learners. There are lots of fun and easy games that can be used to make language easier to memorise.  

Team Games

A great way to get all of the students involved is to divide them into teams and play a game. Most students enjoy the competition. You can give points to regulate the game and maybe even some sort of reward for the winning team. 

Spelling Games

Spelling is a massive part of learning any language, so it's always a good idea to have some spelling games in your teaching arsenal. If you want to keep this type of game to a minimum in your classroom, you could turn some of the spelling games into exercises of word repetition for instance. 

Speaking and Pronunciation

To gain mastery of English it is crucial to practice aurally. These games can help students in correcting one another and making themselves understood in practical settings.

Turn-based Games

These games are typically aimed at higher-level students. Turn-based games are more complex as they are focused on increasingly difficult material and require individual thought. 

One-on-one Games

You may want to fill up a one-on-one tutoring session with games. It's yet another way to make the lesson fun and interactive. There are a variety of games suitable for just one student, or you might adapt some of the other games generally used for larger classes. 

Basic Level

These games range from old favourites to fresh and fun. They help you cut down preparation time and find new ways to get students interested in speaking, reading and writing well. Although the games in this section are for beginners, the exercises can easily be adapted for more advanced students.

Warm-up

Hangman

Type: Warm-up

Materials: Marker pen

Probably one of the most renowned warm-up games in the classroom, and one of the most effective for beginners. Think of a word, or get one of your students to think of a word and on the board draw a hangman's gallows and spaces below for each letter of a word or sentence that the students will try to guess. 

The students should try to establish the word by guessing one letter or one phrase at a time. If they get the correct letter, write it in the appropriate space. If they are incorrect, write the respective letter on the board so the students can keep track of the letters they have already used and add a body part to the hanging man for each incorrect letter given. 

What Sounds Can You Hear?

Type: Warm-up

Materials: Marker pen

Give the students a few minutes to list down as many sounds as they can hear. This activity is good for practicing vocabulary at a lower level. Then ask the students to compare their lists to find out who has come up with the most sounds. 

Association

Type: Warm-up

Materials: None

Seat students in a large circle. Let one student start with a word that comes to mind. The next student should immediately reply with a related word. Every subsequent word must always be related to the one just prior to it. This can become challenging and the game calls for concentration. Let the next student in the circle immediately reply to the last word s/he heard. The game might go like this:

A: Dog

B: Wolf

C: Hunt

D: Gun

E: Kill

Everyone should have at least one turn.

Group Dialogue

Type: Warm-up

Materials: None

Let one student start by making a sentence. The next student should respond to that sentence with his own complete sentence as if they were engaging in a discussion between only two people. For example:

A: How are you Betty?

B: I am well Alex. How are you?

C: I'm not doing as well as I would like to do.

D: What happened?

Keep the dialogue going in a normal way until the last students in line conclude the conversation with a realistic-sounding goodbye.

Bingo

Type: Warm-up

Materials: Blank Bingo grids

Instead of making the Bingo grids yourself, have your students make them. Prepare review questions from the text book or even trivia your students would most likely know.