Connect 4

One of my favourite games to play at many of the English Camps NAVA organises for the schools that they work with. I also enjoy playing it in classroom sometimes.

If you want this is a good game to go all out on. Draw up a permanent board, get coloured or shaped markers for the places, crazy and humorous flash cards. What ever you put into creating this game you will get back 10 fold from the students.

If you really don't know how to play connect 4 this is how it goes.

• 2 players/teams take turns at placing different coloured markers in a grid.
• The first team to connect 4 of their markers wins.
• The markers can connect horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

That's it really. Simple. If you want to know the mathematical science/art of the game and learn serious how to beat all you friend/students you can brush up your skills with this article/thesis. 

A Knowledge-based Approach of Connect-Four by Victor Allis (yes I am a nerd)

Just like in noughts and crosses you will create 2 language terms. The terms should be first based on the level of your students. Nothing kills the competitive and engaged spirit of students more than the language being out of reach. You want to push their obtainable limit. And naturally it should match what you have been teaching them in class.

A simple idea for this would be to have the horizontal columns as types of transport and the vertical columns as places. The target sentence would be. I go to school by bus. I go to the supermarket by plane. 

You can easily add a 3 element to this by using terms on their place markers as well. For example Time could be used here. i.e I go to school by bus in the morning. I go to the supermarket by plane at 9.45.

Again just let your imagination go wild here. And remember the level of your students here. It's easy to make this too complicated for younger students. 

Noughts and Crosses

Yes that's right noughts and crosses can be adapted into a fun learning activity for EFL students.

And again the variations on this game are only limited by you. I know too many teachers that have used this game and none of them play it the same.

As a simple explanation of how the game can work follows; you draw a simple 3 by 3 grid on the board, the same that you would do if playing noughts and crosses. You come up with 2 sets of terms. 1 for the vertical axis and 1 for the horizontal axis.

for example -

vertical axis       - noun category
horizontal  axis - can be starts with the letter...

then on the top of the 3 vertical columns i would write 3 different categories. i.e

animals

fruits

colours

and to the side of the 3 horizontal rows I would write 3 different letters i.e.

A,    B,    C

Then teams take turns at placing a marker in each square. But first the have to offer a word that fits into the restrictions. So if they want to go in the top left corner they would have to name an animal starting with the letter A. If they want to go in the centre they would have to a fruit starting with B. To go in the bottom right they have to say a colour starting with C.

The terms you create are really limitless. For more advanced students you can have them develop sentences with 2 terms in them. Anything.

Can't think of something to do with it or want some more ideas. Comment and I will add more noughts and crosses ideas.

Memory - Match

This is an easy game to play with as many different ways to adapt and modify it that you could play it a different way every day of the year and still not be done with variations.

In the essence this game is memory. Cards are placed upside down on a table or the board depending on the size of the class. Students take turns to turn over 2 cards. If they match they win a point or however you decide to reward the game.

Now the thing I want to stress and highlight here is you don't need to match a picture of a cat to a picture of a cat! That's for Kindergarten. Use your sentence structure from your lesson. Use connected idea, related terms, use pictures and words. Even use irregular verbs.

Use 2 seperate ideas like a colour and a noun. So you can have the words for colours or the colours themselves and pictures of...lets say animals. Each animal will have to be a different colour. The students turn over 1 colour and 1 animal. and say "It's a pink cow" if it is a pink cow it's a match if not they are turned back upside down.

You can use it for anything. The limit is only your imagination and your ability to adapt the game to work with it.

In the morning            /   I go to school
Picture of the sunrise /    Picture of going to school

Do you get what I'm saying

Want some more examples or ideas for this? just ask I will add more and more until you stop asking.

Angry Birds

Any good teacher EFL or otherwise knows that you have to engage the students on their level and through the things that interested them.

You probably are all way too painfully aware of how popular a group of slightly peeved off birds have been lately. Well I could never get my students to stop talking about them. Flash cards of birds were automatically referred to as angry birds. The flash card for angry was also changed to angry bird. Well I just went with it and adapted a popular throwing game to include angry birds, pigs, and crazy challenges.

This is a team game so you should divide the class into 2 teams first. I usually go for boys and girls as it's the simplest and fastest way to do it. I usually start my classes by drawing 2 teams on the board writing boys and girls and then drawing a simple caricature of a boy or a girl. I am one of the worst artists in the world. But I always try to exaggerate some feature. Tiny head, 1 massive eye, massive head, buck teeth, huge nose, anything to make the kids laugh a little.

Anyway. The basic idea of this game is all the flash cards are on the board and 1 student comes to the front with the angry bird teddy. You say a word from the vocab list and the student has to hit it with the angry bird. I usually give the students 2 chances unless there's lots of students or only a short amount of time. If the student hits the correct flash card they get a point for their team and then take a step back or go to the next row of tables. Where the process repeats except now they get 2 points if they hit the target. Each row or step that they take back increase the points that are played for. I normally make the back wall of the class worth 10 points!

A variation that I play when I don't have much time just allows the students to have 1 shot, but they get to chose where to take the shot from. I can almost guarantee the girls will win at this game. The boys all go for the 10 point shot and miss and the girls keeps taking 1, 2, or 3 points and before the boys realise the game has slipped out of their reach!

Fly swat

This game is an EFL classic. There probably isn't an EFL student that hasn't at some stage played this game or a variation of it.

I will describe 1 simple version of the game and leave it to you to modify to fit into your classes needs and level.

You can play this game in teams with older students or just have 2 students come to the front if they are kindergarten grades. Have your flash card on the board or floor for the little ones and say one of the words. The 2 students have to race to the front and "swat" the correct flash card. So simple. Again modify to fit your personality and be creative with the game. You don't have to use fly swatters. Earlier in the year I was playing this with angry birds and the students had to throw the angry bird at the correct word and another student would throw it back if they missed. The first team to hit the correct flash card got the points.

Again, I can't stress this enough, this is an outline of a game. Where you take these ideas is one of the things that will define you as a teacher. Be creative! Be adaptive! Be enthusiastic! Be child like!

Counting Numbers

Counting Numbers

This game I made up in class one day (but it probably already existed) and slowly developed over time with the students. Remember with all activities and games they are only as fun as you make them.

This game is really simple. it uses the same idea as the frog where students take turns in order to say the correct word. But it's much easier. all the students have to do is count! 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 etc. Then I add a multiple lets say 7. so now on 7,14,21,28 they can't say that number. They have to say a word from their vocab list, or a word starting with A, or however you would like to expand the game. If a student gets the number wrong, says a word at the wrong time, takes to long or get the word wrong they sit down and the game starts again from 1. 

Again it's how you play these games that make them enjoyable for the students. One thing I like to do as my students get better at this game is stop playing it in a predictable order. I often say the person that I point to has to say the next number. And then throw them off by looking at different students to the ones I am pointing at.

The Frog

This is a great game that has been adapted from a Friday night game that I used to play with friends. I call it The Frog it's probably known by other names. I start by writing a sentence on the board. However you have to choose the sentence carefully. It should have 8 syllables preferable in 2 syllable blocks. some examples I have enjoyed using:

I like / to eat / ice cream / yum yum

I went / to the / pet store / today

I go / to school / 5 days / a week

generally I like to have something funny on the end. The original way I learnt this and first started teaching it was: The frog / jumped in / the lake / KABOOM. I had the students who had to say kaboom say it really really loud.

How to play

This can be confusing so bare with me please. Each student takes turns at saying 1 of the 2 syllable sections. i.e the first one say I like, the next - to eat, the next ice cream and the 4th yum yum. simple right. Well now you've completed the phrase 1 time the number of times each section is said increases. So the 5th and 6th students both say I like the 7th and 8th students say  to eat etc. After the 2 students finish with yum yum it increases to 3 times that each syllable has to be said.

If a student makes a mistake, takes too long etc. they sit down and the game start from the beginning again.

It will take a bit for the students to get this but when they do you will see that even the shyest and lease confident students bouncing up and down waiting for their turn to say the correct word. I see my students all the time mumbling the correct words under their breath keeping in pace with the right words. And normally every time someone gets the words wrong the students a laughing and correcting them!

The best thing about the game is that it is so flexible with the sentences you can use. The only limit is how you can make it fit into the syllable pattern.

Simon Says

For young learners

Great warm-up activities will do 2 things: 1 review previous lessons. 2 develop vocabulary over time.It's not just about the game it's how you play it!

I love Simon Says, and there's so many different ways you can play it, there's no materials you need to teach this game or play it. However it's how you play theses games that makes them fun for students.

When I teach the game to kids that don't know it I start with simply 2 words and gestures. Sit down and stand up. I start by asking and gesturing the class to stand up. And when they do I, in an over animated way, shout NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! and pull my hair out etc.  Then I do this again just one more time. The students will be slightly confused and curious about what they are doing wrong. Then I say Simon says...or please...how ever you want to play the game, and stand up. I give thumbs ups to the students that stand up and tell them good. Some students will pick this up right here....but mostly they will need a few more goes. So repeat the same idea for sitting down.

What I like about this is you are presenting the students with a puzzle in English. And they have to solve it! they want to solve it. And when they do they feel a sense of accomplishment and joy which they will bring out every time they play this game.

Every lesson I like to add new words to this games to expand their vocabulary. With younger learners you can have them repeat the words when they have to do the actions.

Giant Leaps in Life Part 1 Coming to Chiang Mai to Study a TEFL Course

Arriving in Chiang Mai:

Arriving in Chiang Mai left me with the familiar yet enjoyable feeling of excitement and apprehension that a new and foreign place often conjures up, only this time with another edge; I was here not to explore, enjoy and move quickly on; I had arrived with the intention of settling, starting a life and hopefully a career here in this relatively alien city.

I had purposefully arrived in Chiang Mai a good two weeks  before the start of my course, I wanted a chance to relax and get to know the city before embarking on what I believed (quite rightly so!)  would possibly be the most intense 4 weeks studying of my life. 

First Days:

The first few days I spent wandering the city, enjoying the sights and adjusting to the change in culture, temperature, language and food among everything else. I enjoyed being a free agent, responsibility free and with my only real main objective being how best to enjoy myself. The only problem with staying in a city like Chiang Mai when of the aforementioned mind frame is that days sooner or later become nights, and nights can very quickly become jolly  and fun-filled, meaning your days usually end up shorter, blurry and incredibly unproductive.

It was Sunday afternoon as I sat sweating in a beautiful riverside café nursing a pounding headache and pondering my existence when it suddenly dawned on me I only had a week before my course would begin. I had got lost in holiday-mode and had almost allowed myself to forget my motive for being here in Chiang Mai.

Preparing:

That afternoon I unearthed the pile of English language related books that I had brought with me and designed to plough through as much as possible in the coming week. When purchasing and packing said books my mind had been full of optimistic images of myself referring to certain pages and using ideas from them for years to come. In reality the books now sit collecting dust on my desk and generally act as an annoyance whenever I move house or decide to travel anywhere. But that said, in the commencing week the books got a lot of use; I was rarely seen outside of a coffee shop, pouring over complicated grammar rules and obscure teaching methodologies.

I allowed myself to grow anxious about the impending course date, was I prepared? Did I know enough? Was I even the right character? I had little experience teaching, and I had never stepped foot in a large classroom when not on the receiving end of education.

Part 2 Coming Soon