Game Resources

Game Resources

Games you can play in the class with basic materials.

1. 10 Questions: Make students join groups. Then, use the topic that you are talking about; like celebrities, food, routines or whatever you want; and tell them to pick a job, activity or person within this topic. When they have chosen, make them give you their secret choice. After that, each group prepares yes/no questions in order to guess what their selection was. Each team has 3 opportunities to guess. If both team guess, they will untie with the one with more guesses left. If both learn exactly in the same round it is a tie.

Why do we play this? To practice Yes/No questions.

2. Glossary Game: Divide the students in team, make them pick 10 words from the vocabulary they have practiced or from certain lessons from the book. Then, they have to write a definition for that word. Give like three examples to be clear.

Why do we play this? To practice describing things and paraphrasing. It is also excellent to review vocabulary.

Examples:
Squirrel - Small brown animal that lives in trees and loves nuts.
Speed - How you measure the velocity in which a transport moves.
Red - A very strong color and the favorite in China.

When they are ready, make every team read one by one the definitions WITHOUT saying the word. It is the job of the other team to guess each word in a 10 minute time limit.

3. The Questionnaire: Make students design questions like WHO WANTS TO BE MILLIONAIRE, giving 4 options per each questions; one of the options must be the correct one. The questionnaire can be about general knowledge or it can be about a topic in specific. Each team designs ten questions. When they are ready, each team takes turns to ask an answer. The team with the most correct answers wins the game.

Why do we play this? To practice WH-questions.

Example:
What is the capital of Australia?
Melbourne
Sydney
Canberra (Correct one)
Vancouver

4. STOP: Make students write down 5 categories with spaces to write under them and one final space to count points. The categories to play with are:

Professions - Place - Food - Action - Characteristics

What students are goint to do is to try to fill each category with one word starting with a letter picked by the teacher. The first one to fill that categiry with one word, calls stops and the game ends. If nobody calls stop, finish the game in 1 minute or 2 minutes time frame. When STOP is called or the time is over, check what each persona put in the categories.

Students that get a word without another student repeating it gets 100 points for that word.
Students that get a word with another student repeating it gets 50 points for that word.
Students that get a word with two or more students repeating it gets 25 points for that word.

Every letter picked is a round. Play as many rounds you think useful. Then, every students counts up the point. The one who gets the most wins.

Why do we play this game? Just to play around with vocabulary.

Games to play online

Boggle: Make students find as many words with three letters or more in three minutes.
http://www.wordplays.com/boggle

Kahoot: Design questions for the students to answer.
To host:
https://getkahoot.com/
To play:
https://kahoot.it/#/

Guess the word game: Put two students looking at the screen and one behind. Students looking at the screen have to make the student sitting guess without spelling or saying its name.
https://quizlet.com/146117732/guess-the-word-lvl-6-flash-cards/

Riddles: Make students think hard trying to answer these riddles.
http://www.doriddles.com/

Trivial Pursuit Questions: For playing some game similar to Trivial Pursuit.
http://www.classicweb.com/usr/jseng/trivi.htm

Games for ESL: A series of online games with a vocabulary objective in mind.
http://www.eslgamesplus.com/classroom-games/

10 games to play in the classroom
https://www.gooverseas.com/blog/10-best-games-esl-teachers

A series of games to explore
http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?Games