When I taught in Korea, I was very lucky to have access to a projector room. There I could showcase educational videos, do online ESL activities, and play some fun games with my students. One of these games we played was the Sims4.
The Sims4 is a life simulation game. You create a character (a Sim) and control them as they live their life. You can build/design their homes, decide on their life goals, and watch as they succeed or fail. I find this game highly addicting – I must have clocked over 1000 hours on it.
This game is rated T for teens. This is because the characters can partake in adult activities – though they do blur everything. For this reason, I don’t actually do a play through with my students. Instead I’d play around with the other features of the game. These can be used as fun ways to practice previous vocabulary with students. So here are some easy ESL activities you can do in the Sims4.
Home Showcase
A very simple activity is loading a house for your students to look at and talk about. Press the tab key while in game to have better control of the camera. Then you can move the camera around the house as if you are walking through it in real life. As you walk through each room, ask them to name the room and the various objects they see. This is great time for low level students to practice sentences like, “There are two sofas in the living room”.
After going through the house you can discuss with the class whether they like the building or not. Would they want to live in a place like that? What adjectives can they use to describe it? What can they remember about it?
Build-A-House
Instead of showing your students an already built house, start from scratch. Let them dictate everything, from the size of each room to the decorations on the wall. You can easily spend a whole class doing this – and some arguments may arise. I recommend giving each student one thing they can control. Maybe one student gets the final say on wall colors while another can pick wall art.
To make the process even faster, you can have the layout of the house built already. Then give the students a particular theme for the general look of the house. This will help them focus more on the decorations and furniture. And you can hope that the final creation will be more cohesive.
Since you are the one controlling the game, the students get to practice directing you with sentences such as:
“I want the brown sofa. No, not that one. The one to the left of the metal bench.”
As you can tell, this is a great way for more advanced students to practice their vocabulary and grammar. Even the debates students have on decorations will be productive English practice.
Create A Sim
In CAS (create a sim) mode you and your students can discuss body parts, clothes, and patterns while designing a character. You can even make each student in the game; it’s best to do that with a small class (my class only had three students). For bigger classes, I like to have them recreate a beloved character – and if we have time, we can make an entire family.
You can declare it finished once the Sim has clothes and a name. If you have the time, you can also go over their character traits and pronouns. This is a great opportunity to discuss personality adjectives and to discuss gender.
Where’s Yoda?
One of the decorative objects in the game is a baby Yoda figure – you can probably guess where I’m going with this. Build a room and add a ton of clutter to it. Then, place the Yoga figure somewhere. After loading the room, press tab and move the camera around. Don’t move too fast so that when a student spots Yoda, they can stop you with, “I see Yoda! He is under the giraffe behind the sofa!”
Honestly this and the remaining activities on this list can be done without the Sims4. It’s easy enough to create a printable image with something hidden in it. Having said that, it’s a lot of fun doing it in game. The novelty of it means your students are more likely to stay engaged.
Memorize This
Build a house or take a pre-made house from the gallery. It’s best if the house has only one floor. Showcase the build to your students and let them look all around the house.
Then, when they are done, hide the build and ask them some questions about the layout. Have them describe as best as they can where each room is. You can also put them into teams and give each team a piece of paper. Tell the two teams to roughly sketch out how the house looked. The team with the closest drawing wins points.
Who Would Live Here?
This is just another way to create a writing prompt for your students. After showcasing a house to your students, have them speculate on the type of person/people that would live in that house. You can have them work in teams to create a list of attributes before discussing this hypothetical person with the whole class. Then have them individually write a paragraph or two about that person.
If they are learning about daily life you can prompt them to write about the character’s routine. If your class is more advanced you can have them write a short story about that character. It’s easy to adapt the prompt to fit each class’s needs.
If I’m being honest, sometimes I will plan these activities for the excuse of playing more Sims. I love this game SO much. I hope you game enthusiast teachers also enjoy this list of activities. I’m sure you can think of many more, so feel free to contact me about it.