Fun classroom activities for ESL teachers intro and activity #1 Rock Paper Scissors.

damnthatbanana (58)in #education • 7 years ago

Fun English Review Activities Part 1, Introduction

by Daniel Spink

I have been an ESL teacher in South Korea, Myanmar and Malaysia for a number of years and have written a paper with a number of fun activities for students in the classroom (Young learners, but many of the actitvities work surprisingly well with adults)

I'll release them one or 2 at a timeand compile a list.

Teching kids.jpg

Why do we use games and activities in the classroom?

To break up a class when kids become bored / tired.
To review words/ phrases from the student's curriculum / woorkbooks.
To appeal to different learner styles (Auditory/ Kinaesthetic/ Visual etc)
To give the students a chance to practice speaking / writing/ reading in a supportive way so they are not afraid to make a mistake.
To give children an incentive to speak English
To encourage the use classroom English to play the games.
To introduce repetition of phrases /words already taught and improve recall.
To help the students and teacher to have fun too , and improve the teacher / student dynamic.
To build class morale.
To encourage team work.
To monitor how much the students have remembered from a lesson.
To appeal to active learners.
To increase participation and energy levels in the classroom.
To bring in simulated real world activities.

How to use the activities

These activities are designed to be quick, easy and effective in the classroom with minimal planning and very few resources.
Good to break up your lesson, or finish off on a fun note.

Whiteboard / Blackboard
Dice (useful or you can download a dice app to your phone!!
Children's books to review (their textbooks)
THAT'S IT - These activities are great for low resource classrooms.

Have fun and please adapt the ideas to your own classroom, remember every class is different and some games will work with some classes and not others. Sometimes L1 may be needed to explain certain rules of the games to some classes, that is fine, but try to keep this to a minimum.

Use a demonstration round with students, where you can show them the activity.

You can then correct any mistakes in their understanding of the rules.

Once you start playing the game the students usually grasp the rules very quickly.

KEEP IT SIMPLE!!!

Always best to use simple phrases and rules in any games, they tend to work better!!!

1 Rock, paper, scissors

ROCK PAPER SCISSORS

Rock paper scissors is good for easy settling of who wins in a game.

Also to practice phrases in a fun way.

The rules

You both say

“ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS”

then present a fist either

Closed (ROCK)
Flat hand (Paper)
Two fingers (Scissors)

To teach you need to show how rock beats scissors (it makes them blunt)
Paper beats rock ( it wraps around the rock)
Scissors beat paper (it cuts the paper)

Explain, then demo a few times with the pupils.

Let them try by themselves.

Very good to practice any phrase.

DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU ARE PRACTICING IN YOUR TEXT BOOKS.

For example, with 2 students:

Student 1"Do you like apples?"
Student 2 "Yes, I do"
Student 2 " Do you like apples?"
Student 1, " No I don't"

Rock, paper, scissors, - Winner. The students then find a new partner.

It makes practising English (or any other topic) fun.

Group activity

Do a group activity where they had to say a phrase (i.e.) “What’s your name? My name is …….” “Nice to meet you”
Then they have to do rock paper scissors and the loser sits down until you have one winner.
This can work for dozens of students in a group event.

Alternative scoring version

You could get them to score a point in their book every time they win a game, and see who has the most points after 5 minutes.
Make sure that they have a phrase to practice

Could be “How are you?” or Do you like….?” Or “What’s your favourite?” or they could choose a question for the year 2/year 3 classes.

SO many variations for this. I believe there are other versions of this which may be suitable, if the kids already know a local version, why not just adapt that with the same rules!!