7 TEFL Classroom Activities

When teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) games and classroom activities are an important part of the learning process. If you are teaching a class of children, and especially younger children, you'll need to make your lessons engaging and fun.

Games are a great way to keep children engaged while ensuring that your lesson stays memorable. They can be used as a warm-up activity to get minds switched on and ready to learn, or during the lesson when you're trying to make a complex or tough subject easy to understand. Research shows that learning games can increase students’ retention levels when learning new things.[1]

A fun activity may also be used at the end of the lesson as a way of using up a few spare minutes, or as a round-up to the lesson as a whole. There are plenty of games to choose from, and games can be used to test your students' vocabularies, practice speaking, learn different tenses and more.

Fun classroom activities for ESL

Below is a list of common ESL games that every TEFL teacher should have in their toolkit. Aside from being fun, games should help keep your class on track if you do lose control and things get a tad chaotic.

1. Simon Says

This game is particularly easy, and makes a good option for young children. It will easily get them excited and ready to learn, especially if you begin your lesson with it. In some cases, you might have to remind them at some point that playtime is over and that learning needs to start! It's a great option for starting or ending your class, and enables you to see students' vocabulary and comprehension skills firsthand.

Directions

• You'll play 'Simon', as you are the teacher. Stand in front of the class and get your students standing up, too. Give them an action to perform, such as: 'Simon says, put your hands on your head'. Pupils must do the actions you tell them to perform. Make sure you perform the action as well, so children can take a lead from you and copy what you do.
• Keep repeating this process with different commands. The more obscure and silly, the better. This is sure to get plenty of laughter in the room.
• Next, do an action, but only say the name of the action, without prefacing it with 'Simon says'. Whoever does the action and copies you must sit down, as they are out of the game. The winner is the last person standing up, who doesn't get caught out. To make the game more complex for older children, go faster with your actions.

2. Call My Bluff

This is a great icebreaker to use in the early days of teaching your ESL class. It can help you get to know the students better, and will also encourage conversation between them. It is normal for children to be nervous, especially when they are in class together but do not know each other.

This game can also be helpful when teaching smaller class sizes, as it helps everyone to feel more relaxed and comfortable while helping each student to learn things about each other.

Directions

• Write three statements about yourself on a whiteboard/blackboard. Only one of these statements should be true. Students have to guess which statement is true. If they guess correctly, they win.
• Next, get the class to pair up and have children play this game in pairs so that they get the opportunity to learn things about each other. You can extend the game further by getting students to change partners every five minutes.
• After the game, you can bring the whole class together and ask students what they learned about each other.

Call My Bluff is also perfect for getting students to practice their English speaking skills. You'll need to spare a few minutes at the end of each game to notify students of any mistakes they made. This is better than interrupting them while they are speaking during the game, as this could affect their confidence.

It is a great game for students of all ages, but older students may particularly benefit. Be warned – you'll need your best poker face on!

3. Hangman

This is a well-known game that makes for a great round-up either at the end of the class when you have a few minutes left, or at the start as a way to stimulate the mind.

It's a flexible game, and it doesn't matter how many students you have in your class to play it. Young children in particular will enjoy this game, and it gets them to practice learning new words.

Directions

• Think of a word for your students to figure out, and write the number of letters it has on a board, using dashes rather than letters as an indication of how many letters there are. Go round the room and ask each student to suggest a letter.
• If it is in the word you've chosen, write it in the space. If the letter isn't in the word you've chosen, write the letter to the side and begin drawing an image, section by section, of a hanging man.
• Keep doing this until either the students guess the word properly, (in which case they win), or you complete the hangman drawing (you win).

4. Pictionary

This is a great game that tests students on what they have learned, to ensure comprehension. Kids of all ages enjoy it, and for the teachers, it offers a well-earned break. It's a great insight into English vocabulary, and needs just a little preparation beforehand.

Directions

• Before class, write out single words on individual pieces of paper, and place them in a bag. Split the class into two teams, and draw a line down the centre of your blackboard.
• Next, give one person from each team a pen and ask them to select a word out of the bag. They have to draw the word on the board and their team has to guess what it is.
• The first team to get the correct answer receives a point. When a student has finished drawing and the word has been guessed, they select a person from the next team to draw. Repeat this until all the words in the bag have been used.

5. Hot Seat

This game can be used with older children, teens and adults during an EFL lesson. It might not work so well with younger children. It encourages competition, and enables students to practice speaking, listening and creating conversation. Being an EFL teacher, this game will enable you to establish which students may be finding conversational skills more challenging.

Directions

• Put your class into two or more teams, and select one person from each team to be the one to sit in the 'hot seat'. This person needs to face the classroom, with a writing board positioned behind them.
• A word must then be written on the board, and team members must help the person in the hot seat to guess the word by describing it.
• The person in the hot seat only has a short amount of time to figure out the word, and teams are not allowed to write, spell or say the word.
• Once the correct word has been figured out, switch out the person in the hot seat.

6. Solve My Problem

When you learn a language, it is important to cover language and concepts that relate to giving and receiving advice in order to solve problems. In this way, 'solve my problem' makes a good game to fit into a lesson that covers 'advice' language in some way. It is a great assessment to see how much students have grasped and can work really well in any age group, at any level of language competence.

Directions

• Give each student some sticky notes. On each note, write a problem in relation to your most recent lesson and stick the note on the student's back or front.
• Ask the student to discuss with other students in groups how they can get advice to resolve their problem. For older students, you can make things more challenging and reference more complicated problems.

7. Word jumble

This game is suitable for students of ages, and is a great icebreaker if you are working with students who do not know one another. It encourages competition and working as a team, and also offers insight into students' understanding of tense, grammar and writing/reading skills. You can easily adapt its complexity depending on the age and language skills of the students you are working with.

Directions

• Separate the class out into teams. For each team, write out a number of sentences in different colours on a large piece of paper. Each team should be allocated up to five sentences each.
• Cut up each sentence so you have a group of words, then put all the words into a cup or bucket, keeping everything mixed up and together.
• Teams now have to draw out the words and work together to try and put each coloured sentence in the correct order. The winning team is the one that successfully does this first.

Introducing these games and activities into your EFL classroom can not only make lessons more fun for students, but can also increase knowledge retention and enhance the learning experience. You might find there are some games that are more common in certain countries you work in. A TEFL teacher can work in a variety of countries including Japan, Australia, Thailand, and plenty more. So you’ll probably pick up new games from whichever country you’re teaching in.

References

[1] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1090277.pdf