Category — ESL Games

Have your ESL students practice their writing, spelling, and problem solving skills by playing Battleship!

Skill Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Materials: Battleship playing board (available to download here). The Battleship board I’ve created has a small grid (better for intermediate classes) and a large grid (better for advanced classes).

Instructions: Rules for Battleship can be found here.
In ESL Battleship students hide words rather than ships on their grid, and working in pairs they try to be the first to find and sink all of their partner’s words. If a student thinks she knows her partner’s word rather than guessing coordinates she may guess the entire word (”Is the word at C5 ‘apple’?”), sinking it if it is guessed correctly.
My experience has been that it’s important to give the game a “theme”–types of things (fruit, vehicles, feelings), parts of speech, word beginning with a certain letter, and so on. Also, depending on the skill level of your students it can be a good idea to make some rules about what words they can use–require the words to have at least (or no more than) x letters or require students to use different letters of the alphabet to start words.
Sample requirements for an advanced class could be: Write six words, one three letters long, two four letters long, two five letters long, and one six letters long. Use each of the following letters once as the first letters of your words: A, C, N, E, D, G.

Use this game in your ESL classroom to test vocabulary comprehension & reading ability.

Skill Level: Beginning and Intermediate students.

Materials: Chalk board.

Instructions:
Make a list of the day’s vocabulary on the board and choose one student (or use your TA, if you have one) to be the Official Word Picker. Students line up and come forward one at a time. The Official Word Picker points to a vocab word and the student asks, “Mother, may I _______?” If you say, “Yes, you may” the student must correctly act out whatever the vocab word is.
The game can be made into a competition by seeing which students can read read & act out vocab without making any mistakes.

Practice numbers, asking the time, and telling time (and give your kids a chance to burn off some energy) with this fun game for the whole class.

Skill Level: Beginning students.

Materials: A large, open space.

Instructions:
Prep: Begin the game by reviewing the hours of the day. Ask the class what time they usually eat dinner. Take a common dinner time and write it on the blackboard.
Game: Students line up against one wall of the classroom and the teacher (in the role of the Wolf) stands against the other with her back to the students.
All together the students ask, “Wolf, wolf, what time is it?” The Wolf responds with an hour (”It’s four o’clock!”) and the students take that many steps towards the wolf, counting each step out loud. If the Wolf says either “It’s dinner time!” or whatever time the class said that they eat dinner (e.g. “It’s six o’clock!”), the Wolf then chases the students back to the wall where they started the game. Any students who are caught are eaten by the Wolf for dinner. (”Yum! Yum! Yum!”)
The winner of the game is the be the first student to touch the Wolf, at which point the game resets and the winning student gets to be the Wolf.
Note: Do what you can to keep the kids from touching each other while running back to the wall–if there’s shoving the game can get dangerous!

Keep your advanced classes on their toes with this fun story telling exercise. Ideal for use as a warm-up or as part of a full lesson for discussion of Western fairy tales and folk tales.

Skill Level: Advanced.

Materials: None.

Instructions:
To use the activity as part of a full lesson plan, first explain to students how Western fairy tales are structured. Typically, fairy tales start with “Once upon a time…” (or something similar identify the story as taking place in a strange, fantastic place), have a clearly defined hero and villain, contain a message, etc.
Then, read a fairy tale to read to the class. (If necessary, re-write the story before class using Simple English.) Discuss the message of the story, identify structural, thematic, and plot elements, and ask the students to tell any similar stories in their native language.
After having discussed fairy tales, it’s time to play The Never-Ending Story [Read more →]