Teaching Teens

Hi everyone! happy Sunday!

We recently prepared and carried out a couple of workshops where we shared some of the games we use to enhance our students' participation in class as well as increase their motivation.
Below there is copy of our PPT with activities' names, explanations, and some videos so you can see how some games are played.

Enjoy!

Treasure Hunt: this is a very famous game you probably know already. Make a list of "information" your students have to find. It can be whatever. Students can look for irregular or regular verbs around the class. They can look for information such as find the capital if_____ in the map and write it down. How many chairs are there in class n°_______. Have students walk around the class/school/institute/library/computer lab to find this info. They will have a blast!

Shazam: I think you probably know what the app Shazam can do so in this case have your students become the app. Play whatever song (famous at the moment, top hits, or whatever they might be listening) and have them guess the name of the song and the singer or band that performs it.

Hey Mr. Dj: similarly to Shazam, have students choose the song and the class must guess.

Emoji activities rock! students (and teachers) use emojis all the time while texting. One suggestion of an activity could be creating stories and adding emojis just like a text message is written. Have students practice simple past by writing what they did last week and add emojis to their paragraphs.
Another great activity is playing guessing games and having students write the name of movies or songs with emojis. Check out these youtube videos and guess some yourself!
guess the action movies

Jenga: a great way to play Jenga and practice English is by either painting your blocks in different colors or adding numbers to them. After that, on a PPT or the board include questions or challenges for students according to the color or number they chose

Liar: this is the same game as the famous "Bullshit". Students in a group receive a set of cards with pics on them such as bigfoots, dragons, birds (it could be any topic) clockwise students place their cards face down on the table (no one sees the card) and say they have a "bigfoot" for example. If someone thinks the student is lying they say "liar" if the did not tell the truth the get the "nose" (seen in the picture above) if the student told the truth the one who accused him gets the nose.

Ludo: playing Ludo is quite easy and it is a game every one knows. To make it more educational have students answer questions everytime they get a turn. For example: students answer a questions then they get to role the dice and move spaces.

5second rules: this game can be played with the board game (as seen in the pic) or with a timer. Have students come up with 3 words from any topic (3 junk food restaurants, 3 Justin Bieber songs, 3 yellow fruits) and they have to do this in 5 seconds to get points.

Pictionary: Pictionary is known by everyone! and can be played with the game board or with cards made by the teacher. A variation of this game could be having students draw movie names or songs and have the class guess the movie or song the classmates are drawing.

Flyswatter activities: use sight words when playing with flyswatter, paste them on the board or place them on the floor and have student hit whatever word you say. This is a great activity to review verbs in the past or words that have a similar pronunciation.

Chain games: chain games require no material use! the way we used it once is the following: student 1 says if it rains I will not go to the park. student 2 if he does not go to the park he will not meet us, student 3 if he does not meet us he will not check homework... etc. But you can use this with other grammatical structures besides 1st conditional.

Running to the board: Have students practice running dictation. One way to play this is by placing sight words out side the class and having student bring them and placing them on the board or by having classmates dictate something and students have to write it on board. Also, teacher can have students make 2 lines and ask them to write words according to a category. For example: write all the fruits you know, or al the comedy movies you know.

Scattergories: have each group get a paper and write categories such as country, city, color, animals, etc. tell them they will start with letter M and they have to write one word for each category that starts with letter M. Do this with other letters as well.

Charades! Charades is a super fun game that can be played with any group. below I will post a few links so you can see how it works as well as another variation such as HEADS UP. These games are also APPS you can download them and keep them in your phone.

charades with Jimmy Fallon

charades with Jimmy Fallon 2

heads up with Adam Levine

Heads up with Sofia Vergara

Jeopardy or Who wants to be a Millionaire: easy game, make acategories and divide them into levels as in the picture. The smallest number (400) would be the easiest questions and the biggest number (2000) would be the most difficult question.

Enjoy these games!