ESL Communicative Games for Classroom Learning
Here are a list of games to help create more fun and excitement in your classroom. This list is a complication of the best games found on various ESL resource sites. For a list of ESL websites that help with lesson plans and materials,
please click here.
Hot-seat : A lifetime favorite for most language teachers, this game has long been the cornerstone of most ESL classroom speaking activities and games. It is quite easy to play yet it gets a lot of language out of students if well thought out.
How to Play
With hot-seat, a student seats with his/her back to the board or to the teacher. The teacher displays a word or a flash cards. Other students describe what is one the card to enable the student guess what it is. For higher level students teachers can make hot-seat more challenging by writing a number of TABOO WORDs on the board. For example if a teacher shows the students a flash card of say a HAIRDRESSER. Taboo words could be words likes CUT & HAIR. Students cannot use these two words to describe hairdresser.This forces the students to find other ways of describing the word without the taboo words. Taboo words are most often words that can easily make give away the word of the flashcard.
What's this? : A Vocabulary guessing game with flashcards
How to play
First the teacher introduces the vocabulary by showing students the cards one after the other. Then later, holds the cards to the chest, making sure students can't see. Draw a big smiley face above and about 6 small smiley faces below. The big face represents the teacher and small faces represent all the students. Students try to guess what card the teacher is holding to his/her chest. Every time they make a wrong guess, the teacher gets a point. When they make a right guess, the students get a point and the teacher pretends to be disappointed that the students are gaining a point. Keep playing until you have exhausted the cards. The students love to beat their teacher. Lots of fun with this!
Mallet Mallet: A fun game for practicing vocabulary and sentences.
How to play
Bring two chairs to the front or center of the class and put them back to back. Split the class into teams. Choose or let students volunteer to come sit back to back. Tell them what the rules are. The students will say words related to a group of words. For example you can tell them to say animal words or words related to animals. When the teacher raises the mallet over a student’s head s/he has to say an animal.
Chinese whispers: A fun game for listening and getting correct pronunciation of words.
How to play
Split the class into two or more teams. Whisper a word into the ears of the first students in each row. They whisper the word into the next student’s ear in their row until the whisper gets to the last student in the row. The last student in the row has to say out the word. The team or teams that get the pronunciation right scores a point. This game is fun because by the time the word or sentence gets to the end of the class it is distorted.
Competition in this game can be so serious that when a team says a word wrongly, team mates start throwing blame on a student they thought got it wrong. Time to tell them the game is not over yet.
Miming games: Excellent game for eliciting description of actions and adjectives.
How to play
Most often used to practice present & continuous tenses with prompting questions like, “What’s he doing?” Or to practice gerunds using questions like, “What does he like doing?” Miming games are also good for lessons about daily routines. For example mime your day and get students to describe what you are miming.
The teacher starts by miming an action and getting the students to guess what he is doing or what the action describes.
- After miming a few actions ask students to take turns miming actions and get the other students to guess. You can go as far as miming a story. This will blend in well with story adlibbing.
Fly swatting: A vocabulary practice game with speaking and pronunciation practice.
How to play
With fly swatting games teachers can teach, practice and review any type of vocabulary using picture cards or words. The teacher puts flashcards in a circle on the floor or sticks them on the walls of the classroom. Then the teacher makes a sentence using one of the words on the cards. Students have to run to the word or card and slam it with their fly swatters. To get the necessary reward or praise, the students must say the word they hit with the fly swatters or repeat the sentence the teacher used with the word. Teachers can also just describe the word on the picture. For example "It is an animal with a long nose." Students run and slam Elephant.
Requirements:
At least two fly swatters and a number of word or picture cards.
Steal, Swap, Bust and Number Card Game : A Fun Game for the class.
How to Play
Cut out the words and numbers on the grids below to make cards. Put the cards in a box or bag and shake the box so that the cards are shuffled. Start the game by splitting the class into 2 teams( depends on class size- teams could be increased to 4 or more). Award every team 100 points to start the game. A team captain meets the other team captain and do STONE, PAPER, SCISSORS. The winner starts the game. The teacher asks the student a question (questions could come from the topic of the lesson or it could just be general review) . If the students answers the teacher’s question, that student then draws a card from the box for his/her team. If a student cannot answer a question, s/he can get help from team members. Students cannot look into the box when drawing a card. If the card is …
NUMBER CARDS : The number cards represent points that the students can get. If a student dips his/her hand into the box and picks out a number card , they get the number of points shown on the number on the card picked.
STEAL CARDS : If a student picks a card with this word, their team will steal all the points of another team and add it to theirs .
SWAP CARDS: if a student picks a card with this word, their team will swap points with the another team. For example, if Team A had 150 points and Team B 100 , that means Team A swaps 150 and gets 100 points.
BUST CARDS: If a students picks the card with this word, it erases all the points of their team so they end up with zero points.
Student puts the card back into the box after each draw and teacher shakes the box to shuffle again.
Click here to print the cards needed for this game.(in PDF format)
Get Rich or Die Trying : Great Fun Game! Combines several game ideas in one game.
How to play
This game is played with playing cards, a dice and this
game guide(click here to print)
Print the guide and paste it on the wall or where students can see.
Explain the rules to the students. Tell them that the teacher will shuffle the cards in his/her hand and place them up side down. The students will pick a card. if they draw cards with the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, they get awarded dollar points according to the number.
If they draw a hospital card with the number 6 or 7, that means they can bring back someone from their group to life. If 6, they can bring back one person from their team to life and if 7 they can bring back two people from their team to life. If no one is dead in their team, these cards are of no use.
If they get 8, they role the dice twice and the numbers that show up, represent the amount of dollar points they will get.
If they get a card with the number 9, they get to choose and kill one person from the other team. (That person cannot participate in the game until their team gets lucky to draw a 6 or 7 to bring them back to life.
If they get a card with 10, they kidnap one person from the other team to join theirs.
If they get a J, they kill one from the other team, but the killer has to also die, so the killer kills but also dies.
If they pick out a Q, that person dies until their team draws a 6 or 7.
If they get a card with K, that person who drew has to die with one other person in their team that they choose . Again they may come back to life if a team member draws a 6 or 7.
If they get A, they win 20 dollars.
The first team to kill all members of the other team wins. If by the end of the game or class time, no team has killed all members of the other, the team with the highest amount of dollars wins.
How to put language into the game : You can practice any language skill with this game. You can ask questions before a student picks a card or you can ask them to do something. For high level students I prepare a card with three words and they get to talk non-stop for one minute, using the 3 words as prompts.
Note : sometimes at the start of the game, students may pull out a 6 or 7
POSSIBLE ISSUES : The idea of killing and dying is a taboo in some cultures and in others, it is not politically correct. Remind your students that this is just a fun game and not something for real life. Also know you cultural environment before using this game and any other games.
Freeze!or Stop! Ball Game: This game can practice any language point and it is very easy to set up.
How to play
Bring picture cards or word cards to class which you want to practice. Refresh the students’ memory of the vocabulary on the cards
Pre-teach the words: “Stop” or “freeze” and make them know if they hear that, it means they cannot move. They must be still.
Next, tell students they are going to play a game. Ask students to sit in a circle. Put the cards face down in the middle of the circle.
Tell them they will pass the ball around the circle very quickly until you say “stop”. Warn that no student can hold the ball for more than two seconds. As the ball is being circled around, the teacher randomly shouts “Stop”.
The student who is holding the ball when you shout “stop” cannot pass it to the next. S/he remains still with the ball. Ask the student to pick up a card from the pile of cards facing down. The student reads or tells the other students what is on the card. Depending on their English level, s/he makes a sentence or more with the word on the card.
Ask questions to prompt weaker students. If the student cannot make a sentence(s), s/he should hand the card to another student to help, or simply ask any student to help. Then the game continues until the cards are finished.
Variations:
You can make it more competitive by giving points to any student who makes a sentence with the card or word which is picked up.
N: B- This is a flexible game, so it can always be adapted depending on the levels of the students.
Dice Game : A great communicative game to practice almost any language skill, by rolling the dice.
How to play
The teacher brings a large soft dice to the classroom. Students sit in a circle and take turns rolling the dice. Each time, the student who rolls the die uses the number that shows up on the die to say a some things about himself or herself. For example, if the number 2 shows up, the student will have to say two things about himself or herself. Another variation would be for the student to ask the class the number of questions according to what number shows up on the die. If you are practicing a grammar focus, you could ask the student to make the number of sentences according to a particular grammar point. For example, let’s say you were teaching the simple past tense, you could ask the student to make the number of sentences using the simple past-asking him or her to say the number of things s/he did yesterday, last year, last summer etc.
Students take turns rolling the die and making sentences until the teacher fills they have had much oral practice in that language area.
The advantages of this game lie in the fact that teachers do not need to prepare much and also any language focus can be practiced communicatively.
Number Game: This is a listening game usually used as a warmer using numbers.
How to play
Write down numbers on the board as follows:
1, 10, 11, 6, 17, 80
2, 20, 12, 7, 18, 90
3, 30, 13, 8, 19, 100
4, 40, 14, 9, 60,
5, 50, 15, 16, 70
With the numbers on the board go through the pronunciation of the numbers with the class. Make sure they understand the difference between confusing numbers like SIXTEEN & SIXTY. In other words emphasize numbers that might sound confusing. After this make two teams and explain that the teacher will say a number out loud and they will have to race to the board and find the number and cross it out wth the marker or chalk they have. The student who gets it right scores a point for his/her team. Take turns doing this until all students or most get a chance.
Guessing Game : With this game cards are stuck behind a student's back and he/she asks questions to guess.
How to Play
Stick a card- Word Guessing Game:
With this game the teacher splits the class into two teams and calls up a student from one team to the front of the class. The teacher sticks a card or word on the student’s back. Make sure the other students sitting down know what is on the student’s back, but not the student standing. The student standing has to ask the others many questions to guess what is stuck on his/her back. Needless to say that other the students can’t tell the student directly, what the word is. Also, discourage the use of the mother tongue in helping the student guess. Any student looses a point if they try and tell the student directly or use the mother tongue.
Students can help him/her guess the word by giving him/her only verbal clues, but only after the student standing has ask a question.
For example if the word
PIG was stuck behind a student’s back, s/he should ask questions like this:
“Is it a person?” ,
“ Is it an animal?”. Then the class says
“Yes it is animal.” The student standing can follow up to ask
“Is it a farm animal?” .
The student asks questions until s/he has guessed the word correctly and scores a point for his/her team. Set a time limit if need be.
Swap Seats: This seat swapping game gets kids very excited. Kids sit in a circle. Prepare some word or phrase cards and put the up side down in the middle of the circle.
How to play
This seat swapping game gets kids very excited. Kids sit in a circle. Prepare some word or phrase cards and put the up side down in the middle of the circle. When teacher says SWAP, students have to stand up and run to another seat(change seats). The teacher tries to find a seat also. There will be one student standing. That student will have to pick up a card and use it to make a sentence. After that the game proceeds until you sense they have gained much speaking practice in the lesson focus of the day.
This game is good for all revision activities in ESL kid’s classes.
Variations: Simply ask questions to the student standing if you don't have time to make cards. You can ask questions related to the topic. For example if I was teaching Weather and Seasons. I would ask the one standing questions like:
- When is winter in your country?
- What's the weather like in the winter?
- What do we wear in the winter?
Musical chairs:
How to play
Bring some nice kids music to class. Put chairs in circle and make it short by one chair. Students listen to music and when you stop it they sit down. The one person who remains standing answers a few questions. Game continues.