I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, pretty much any game/activity you can think of can be turned into an ESL learning experience. Here are five examples of just that:
Duck Duck Goose with Phonics
If you don’t already know how to play duck duck goose, here it is: First, have all your students (except one) sit on the floor in a circle. The one student that isn’t sitting starts walking outside that circle, lightly tapping each seated person on the head, all while saying “duck,duck,duck…. GOOSE!” The student then runs as fast as they can around the circle while the person they named “goose” chases after them. Either the goose will catch them and they must walk around again, or they successfully run away and sit in the previous goose’s spot on the floor – then it’s goose’s turn to walk around.
My change to this game is simple. Instead of the words duck and goose, I like to use phonics. This way, students get to practice both their speaking and listening skills when it comes to close sounds. For example I may have them say “bat” and “pat” to help them with their b’s and p’s. For more examples, check out this tiktok I made about this same game:
Musical Chairs
However many students you have, place that many chairs (minus one) in a circle facing out. The students will walk around the chairs until the teacher says “GO!”. Then they will race to sit down. The one student that fails to sit down on a chair is out of the game and a single chair is removed from the circle. If two students are equally on a chair, I have them play rock paper scissors to see who gets to keep playing.
Instead of playing music, I like to have the students either answer the questions they have learned or drill target sentences. Sometimes I’ll even have them drill vocabulary words over and over again until I yell “GO!”
When playing with younger students, I often like to let the ones who have lost yell out the drill – just to give them something to do while the others play. And because they also get to yell “GO!”, they don’t complain as much about losing the game.
Paper Dance
This is based on a game we often played at Filipino parties growing up. The original game, Newspaper Dance, is played like this:
Pairs dance around a single piece of newspaper together. When the song suddenly stops, the two must both stand on the paper without having any part of their feet touch the ground. Players who fail this are out of the game while the remaining pairs fold the paper in half. As the paper goes smaller and smaller, more pairs fail to keep their feet off the ground and often the winning team consists of one really light person and one strong person that can carry them while balancing on one foot.
One of the obvious changes I make is having students use normal scrap paper from the printer instead of newspaper. I also have the kids play by themselves instead of as a team. This helps prevent them from falling on each other. I usually do a countdown as they balance themselves, forcing them to try and stay still for 10 seconds on their piece of paper. Of course, instead of dancing to music I often have the kids repeat target language or answer questions until I tell them to jump on the paper. Unlike musical chairs I don’t play until there is a single winner, rather the students that are still balancing even after five folds can get points. Here’s another tiktok explaining the game:
Red Light, Green Light
Yet another game I’ve changed to include practice for answering questions. The classic game is simple: one player stands at the front of the room while everyone else is at the back. The person in front says a color, green for go and red for stop. When red is said, the person in front turns around and looks to make sure everyone is standing perfectly still. The goal is for the players running to reach the front of the room without being called out by the person in front.
When I play this in class, every “red!” is is followed by a question for everyone to answer. That’s the ESL component. The real major change I make to the game isn’t adding questions, it’s adding more colors. The ones we typically use are:
- yellow – walk slowly
- purple – walk backwards
- orange – spin around
- black – fall down
- pink – jump
Sometimes we also play with the rule that everyone has to walk a certain way. Such as crab walking the whole game or kicking your legs in front of you. This makes it so that the players are in even more awkward positions when stuck in “red”.
Four Corners
In the game four corners, each corner of the room is given a number. One student stands in front of the class, eyes facing the board. The others pick a corner to stand in. The student in front yells a number. In some games, standing in the corner with that number means you’ve lost and must sit down. In other versions, standing in that corner means you’ve won a point.
Instead of numbers, I like to match the four corners to whatever my students are learning. For example, when they are learning adverbs of frequency the corners have notes taped near them saying, “always, usually, sometimes, never,”. The students playing ask the one in front, “How often do you…….?”. Then they have 10 seconds to pick a corner. The student in front answers the question and the students in the correct corner get a point.
Some more examples of how to label the corners are:
- love, like, dislike, hate – question: “How do you feel about……..?”
- morning, afternoon, evening, night – question: “When do you…….?”
I hope these games are useful to you! Enjoy!