10 ESL games for LARGE classrooms
There are 400 million people learning English in China alone. According to estimates, there are ‘only’ around 250 million English teachers working around the World. This overdemand sadly causes classrooms to grow in size. It’s not uncommon for a Chinese or Vietnamese classroom to house 40 or 50 students. And if managing a group of 15 second-graders is already a challenge, just imagine having 3 times that on your plate. If you’re one of the heroes, braving such insanely overcrowded lessons, this article is created for you. Hopefully, the 10 exercises below will make your job a little bit easier.
Guess the Rule
Level: A2 and above
The procedure:
1. Tell one student (or a group) to leave the classroom. No eavesdropping!!
2. The rest of the class comes up with a Rule. At first it might be hard for them so it’s best if you suggest the initial few rules.
Here are a few examples:
People with glasses say YES, people without say only NO.
Elbows on the desk say YES, elbows off the desk say only NO (which means they can alternate).
Boys say YES, girls say NO.
If you smile you say YES, if you frown you say NO.
3. After everyone is 100% clear on the Rule, invite the students back in. They must walk around the classroom asking only closed questions. The rest must answer according to the Rule, no matter the question.
It’s funny how teenagers will always ask about love crushes.
4. If the Rule is discovered, the individual or a group gets a point, if not, they fail and next group leaves the classroom.
Shark Hangman
Level: A1 and higher
My young students are obsessed with this exercise. It’s execution couldn’t be simpler, which makes it my favourite go-to filler.
Setup:
1. At the bottom of the board draw a line of waves.
2. Sticking out from the waves draw the meanest Shark you can possibly create. We’re talking sharp teeth, crossed eyebrows, huge tail and a badass fin.
3. Above the Shark draw an unlucky Guy who’s about to fall into Shark’s mouth.
4. Make the scene super dramatic by saying something like: Oh no! He’s going to get eaten!
5. Then, save the Guy by drawing him a parachute with 5 or 6 distinct ropes that support him.
6. Write the whole alphabet somewhere on the side.
7. Now, lastly, choose a word and convert its letters into underscores: _ _ _ _ _ (house).
It sounds like a lot of work but, honestly, it only takes 1 minute to do.
The procedure:
1. Ask students for a letter, e.g. P
2. Make a mark next to P on the alphabet to show it’s been used.
3. Then, with a lot of suspense and tension building, either add it to your word or remove one of the parachute ropes supporting the Guy.
4. Repeat.
Students can’t resist and get super involved in saving the poor stickman, it’s mad. You’ll never see the whole class more engaged than during this high stakes game.
5. If the students haven’t managed to rescue the Guy and the Shark eats him I often start running towards them pretending to be the Shark trying to eat them. Students run away laughing and we all are having a total blast.
Tongue Twister Duel
Level: A2 and higher
For this activity use the PDF attached below.
The procedure:
1. Divide your class into two teams with 4 – 5 members each.
2. Display the first tongue twister on a big screen.
3. Explain that each group member will be representing their team. Moreover, make sure your students understand that each next TT is harder to pronounce than its predecessor.
4. After 5 minutes of practice invite the first contestants to the front.
5. Each of them will attempt the tongue twister, the one with the best pronunciation wins a point for their team.
In order to decide on the best performance, assign each corner of the room to each contestant and ask your student to go to the corner of the dualist they believe was the best.
6. Display Tongue Twister nr 2, and so it goes.
Bingo!
Level: A1 and higher
For this activity you may use the PDF attached below.
Setup:
1. Give each student a piece of paper (or, alternately, they can use their notebooks).
2. Instruct them to draw a 4 x 4 grid. Unless you’re working with total beginners, in which case 3 x 3 is enough.
The procedure:
1. Provide students with a topic they can associate many words with, i.e. animals, school objects, vehicles, sports.
2. Instruct them to fill all the tiers with a different word in each.
3. Read aloud words from the topic, one by one.
4. Every time a student will hear the word they’ve written down they can cross it.
5. The first one to cross a row of 4 (vertically, horizontally or diagonally) gets 5 points.
6. After the first Bingo each row of 4 gets only 1 point. The first one to get all 16 words gets 5 points.
Finish the game or play again with a different topic.
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