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Back to the Top Teaching Blog. Grades PreK—K, 1—2, 3—5, 6—8, 9— Grades PreK—K , 1—2 , 3—5 , 6—8 , 9— Download the PDF from here. Teacher Tips and Strategies. Do they deserve a special reward for a job well done? The lesson and project ideas below are meant to fill the bill for Friday afternoon fun and learning. Some are simple games or activities that will reinforce skills as they offer a nice break from structured learning.
Others are project ideas to be completed over multiple Friday afternoons. Click a link below to explore any idea in more detail. Adapt it to your needs. And have some Friday Fun! Profile Posters Learn about students' interests from the "profile posters" they create. Charting a Year of Growth Older students and younger buddies team up for yearlong fun. A Week in the Life of A yearlong project creates a great end-of-year memento. Chain Gang A colorful chain promotes teamwork all year long. The Alphabet Game Use this lively, team-based game to reinforce spelling skills.
Wax Museum Biographies This engaging lesson in history could be used as a Halloween alternative. Pop Up a Card This art activity offers monstrous Halloween fun. A Math Card Game Practice math facts using this easy-to-play card game. Four Corners Students burn off steam in this fun game; a nice reward after a week of hard work. Measure the Mayflower Take students on the playground to "map out" the size of the Mayflower. Create a Book on Tape Students create a great school resource. A nice community-service project idea too.
Can your students find more? Pass the Chicken A fun, fast-paced game; a great way to reward a class for its hard work. Micrography and Martin Luther King Jr.
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Students' signatures create a larger-than-life image of Martin Luther King. Figuring the Mean, Median, and Mode Count candy by color and then calculate mean, median, and mode. Valentine Battleship Candy hearts replace battleships in this fun coordinate-math activity. Who Works at Our School? Students interview members of the staff and create a bulletin board display.
A Critical-Thinking Activity Students make and defend their choices in this interesting activity. Dictionary Deception This fun game builds vocabulary and creativity. Magic Sum Students learn a math "magic" trick as they practice 2-digit addition. Drawing Lesson Improves Communication Skills. Get-In-Line Math Challenge students to create a human number line. A Game for Small Groups Adapt this active game for any math skill you are currently teaching. What's the Mystery State?
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Use the clues to learn which "mystery state" is being described. Anagram Family Time Unscramble the four anagrams. What do they have in common? A Month With No Holidays? This is absolutely fantastic. Teaching in a low-level high school in Korea with large classes almost all of these will work wonders. Ahhhh thank you for these! I teach at a Thai high school, and I need more than hangman and hot seat to keep these huge classes entertained.. I am currently teaching M1 and M4 at a Government School in Ayutthaya and the large classes can be seriously difficult to control at times!
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Thanks for the help. Lately cards and UNO have been an absolute saviour!! The work books for the kids here absolutely suck, the flash cards are nonsense and the overall style is frustrating I am not a fan of the parents constantly sticking their noses in the classrooms! I really loved all these games. Working with large groups are always a challenge, and most of the games that I use in class only works with smaller groups. I have 60 students in every class in China so these are a lifesaver, you are a great teacher!
Thanks for sharing these games. Thanks for sharing these ideas Kevin. I will most certainly be adapting some of them. I will be moving to Thailand in a few months to teach English and was struggling to think of how to keep such large groups motivated. However, these games should not only keep students motivated but also encourage full participation.
You are a star!! Thank you for your awesome attitude and helpful posts! Who requires a teaching job, please send inquiries to tedesco. These will be really helpful! This has been so helpful to me in the past. A nice selection of classroom games. Thanks for posting that for teachers everywhere. Hey Kevin thanks so much for this excellent selection of activities! It will be very helpful for me when I start teaching ESL soon! Nice list kevin Thanks i work in Thailand to Ive got a few good games that i created too ill try post them Thanks again.
I tried a few of these in class and kids loved it. Activities that get students speak in english and have fun make learning and teaching so exciting. Thanks so much for sharing! I keep getting thrown in front of giant classes in Vietnam. These are some really great ideas here. This is a decent list and many of these games can be modified to cater to different age groups. It totally shows that you taught in Thailand. I currently am and have used some of these before. Kids definitely like competition between teams in the classroom.. There have been times when i actually had to plug my ears because the kids were going so crazy, but they were using English at the same time which made it a success.
I will surely use some of these to take a day off from the textbook. Some great games here, thanks a million. Will try these out in my next lessons!!
I usually split my classes into groups of roughly six. I just thought it might be good for others to be aware of the difficulty in managing and engaging large classes when only a couple students are actively involved in what is happening. Again, Just my two cents…. Hey Kevin, Ive been teaching at a language centre in Vietnam these last 4 years. This is new for me. Im so thankful to see some new games that are also suitable for big classes.
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The fact that they are great games that require little to no preparation is music to my ears. I just wanted to let you know that these games have worked really well for me. I teach first year college students and run an English club in Indonesia. My biggest challenge is engaging multi-level students at once, and the sentence jumble especially really helped my students use English.
So I started splitting them into more groups. Good luck with all your work! Hi Kevin, thank you so much for sharing! Just started to teach a large college class here in China, 70 students, so hoping to use some of your games! Hey Kevin, You have some great ideas. Hello Kevin, Thank you so much for posting your ideas. I am an ALT in a Japanese high school.
At times, working with a class full of students can be exhausting. These games are exactly what I need. I think my students are getting tired of my usual games. Time to spice things up a bit! My forty-four students liked it! Couldnt wait to try moreeeee games from you. What do you think of the sentence below? Really nice how you share online here without charging a fee for your lessons. You should never force a student tup to the front of the class to read to the rest of the class.
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Not every kid I outgoing and confident. Those who have never had this fear or experience which, I guess, includes yourself can not possibly understand the sheer horror for a shy, socially anxious person to be centre I attention. It is very cruel. And before anyone supposed it as some sort of exposure therapy: Best to let people never challenge themselves and remain silent. You must never have experienced it. The terror of anxiety is awful. You should make it an option not force people to get up.
Its a game to you and rest of class, but not them. Not everyone suffers from chronic social anxiety. Most, given enough practice, become more comfortable speaking publicly. Will be using some of these today! Kevin, I have been teaching ESL classes for the last 5 years and its not easy! The only way I get my class to be more interactive is to play games and I loved each and every one you ahd listed. Thanks a bunch for taking the time to list them!
For the record, it depends on where you are teaching. I went for an interview in Saigon-Vietnam for a job teaching, They asked me about a degree but I told them what I had. I also keep receiving emails asking me to cover classes all around the city. I have thought about teaching abroad…but I am deathly stage fright. I know it is not really a stage but for me it is the same. I homeschooled my own child after he endured bullying and school became traumatic. Everything had to be fun or feel like a game or he was not receptive.
This entire page is full of great ideas!!! Dear Kevin, have you ever been employed as an actual ESL teacher? How can you say this, Bob? To say there is no actual teaching involved is ludicrous. It helps that I have a Chinese assistant in my classroom with me, but I make sure the students learn as best they can. Being a teacher back in New Zealand prior to teaching in China has obviously helped me too, but I have utter confidence that my students come away after each lesson with a better knowledge of English.
Are they actually learning? I teach at a college that has an ESL program. Yes, some of these people actually have post-secondary degree in Education but they made the mistake of going overseas where there is no accountability, no professional development, and no standards for foreign teachers, so they learned nothing themselves and developed little.
I tweak things a little at times, but these games have been a life saver for me when trying to teach approximately 60 students per class in a public elementary school. These games and activities are much better than a lot of the other stuff out there on the internet in my opinion, especially for very large class sizes. Hence, the title of the blog post. Thanks Kevin, great ideas. I have tried some of them with students in China and they loved them. Some, I have changed a bit according to content and students level.
Lord of the flies perfectly sums up my 45 kids in a class strong in Phrae, Northern Thailand! Connect four and the story telling particularly! Thank you so much for the help! I saw you taught in Nan?
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Games make any lesson go well. Really makes grammar easy. Introduction Games ——Game 1——— A perfect game for the first day of school. Break the class into 4 to 5 teams. After you recite the story, ask the class questions about specifics from your story. The team who answers the most questions correctly wins. Ask the students to come to the front of class and read their list aloud. Read the full story about it here. Word Relay Break the class into 2 teams, each team forms a line to the whiteboard. The first student in line writes a word.
The next student in line writes a word that begins with the last letter of the previous word. Turtl e , e lephan t , t ur n , n eighbo r , r ea d , d ra w , … until every student from a particular team has written a word. Make the game difficult by changing the variables 4-letter words only, nouns only, 5-letter words only, etc. Tongue Twister Showdown Prepare a list of tongue twisters and print off two copies of each one.
Have at least 15 tongue twisters prepared. Cut out each tongue twister onto a slip of paper, each with 2 copies. Break the class into 2 teams. Have one student from each team come to the front of class. Hand each student the same tongue twister and allow both of them to try to pronounce it correctly. The student with best pronunciation earns their team a point. Pictionary Prepare a list of vocabulary words that the students should be familiar with. One student from each team comes to the front of class to draw. Teams guess what their teammate is drawing. Enforce a strict hand-raising rule, otherwise all hell breaks loose.
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