7 Easy Games for Your ESL Classroom

The following games are things I have personally used in my classrooms in the last 2 years of teaching ESL in China. You will have to judge for yourself if they will fit with your classes.

No look!: Make two teams and place one student from each team in front of the whiteboard, facing away from it. Write a word on the board and the students have to explain that word to their team member without saying that word itself. The first student to guess the word wins a point for his or her team.

Balloon Up: Take a ball and get the students in a circle and have them randomly toss a ball to each other. Each time a student catches the ball that student must say the word or be “out”. Last man standing wins.

Chair of Doom!: This is basically musical chairs to review grammar. Set up your chairs in the middle of the room. Place cards on various chairs, labeling them ‘past simple, past continuous’ etc. One of the chairs should be labeled THE CHAIR OF DOOM!! Students step up, eight or ten at a time (this is probably better for a smaller group) and circle the chairs as you play the music. Once the music stops, if they are sitting on one of the labeled seats, they must give you a sentence using the correct tense. If the student is sitting on THE CHAIR OF DOOM, they must perform a dare of your choice (or choose a number from your prepared list). Take away one of the unlabeled chairs after each round has been completed.

Catch me if you can: Have students sit in a circle. After reviewing the chosen set of flashcards, place them in a pile in the center of the circle. Take the first card and show it to everybody. Have one student walk around the outside of the circle saying words from the specific subject – like fruits or days – while touching each student’s of the circle on the head. When the “magic” word is said, the student whose head is touched at that time, must stand up and chase the student who touched them around the circle. The first one to sit in that spot remains seated and chooses the next “magic” word. The student standing begins again; “Sunday…Monday…”

Dual Swatters: First choose the appropriate words that you are going to use and write them on the board. You need to select paired words. Such as workers and places of work, or verb and noun combinations such as brush/teeth – wash/face etc. Divide the class into two teams and write the team names on either side of the board. Students take turns each time one from each team comes up and stands about 3 meters in front of the board. They are holding two fly swatters (clean ones!) each. You then shout one part of the set e.g. brush and they must hit the right combination e.g. brush and teeth, using both swatters, saying “brush your teeth.” Give a point to the student who hits the right combination first. In the end the team with most points wins.

Sleeping Tiger: The teacher (tiger) arrays selection of drilled flashcards on floor. The teacher yawns and then lies down just behind flashcards (may shut off lights to enhance “scare factor” if class if familiar with game). The students sneak up en masse, steal all the flashcards and run away as tiger swipes or snarls at them (don’t chase-they are “safe” when out of range). Turn the lights on if off. The tiger is now “fully awake,” searches around for missing cards, looks dismayed, and begins to call out, “Who’s got my…?” The students must look at the cards as they’re called and,individually , return them and say the word (then run away again as tiger growls/snatches cards) until all cards are returned. You can play a couple of times so all students get a chance to steal and return a card.

Line up chase: This one is for very young learners and used as a warmer at the start of class. Have students line up against the wall. The teacher says a question, ex. “What’s your name?”. The students chant back “What’s your name?” The teacher is also by the board and yells out a students name. The student must run to the other side of the classroom before the teacher can catch him or her (the teacher always lets them win). The student that has just run across the classroom then asks the question from the other side of the class, the students against the wall chant back and then the student that has just been chased yells out a name of a class mate, who will then be chased by the teacher.