1.

Warm-up game: 20 questions

You think of a person or object and your siblings have twenty opportunities to ask yes/no
questions to determine what object you are thinking of.
2. Communal story
Start with one sentence on the board. Have your students take turns coming up to the board
and adding one sentence to the story. Each person will be able to use his or her creativity to
further the story, and the whole class can make sure the grammar is correct with each addition.
3. Why/because
Give each person two index cards or two small scraps of paper. On one card, each person should
write a question that begins with the word why. Then on the second piece of paper, each
person should answer his or her question starting with the word because. Then collect all the
whys in one pile and all the becauses in another. Mix up each pile and then read one why card
with one because card. The combinations can be very funny, and then after reading all the
random match ups you can have your students match the correct answers with the correct
questions.
4. Heads up
5. White board slam
This activity will increase your students vocabulary as well as fill time at the end of class. Start
by writing a word on the board that contains four letters. You can start with anything. Then,
challenge your students to come up and change only one letter of the word to make a new
word. If someone has an answer, have him come up and make the change. Then have another
student come up and change the word again. See how many different combinations your
students can come up with by changing one letter at a time with no word repeats. Also, give
them the opportunity to ask for a definition of any of the words that they may not know
throughout the activity.
6. Articulate
Split your class into groups of 3. Have each group come up with a team name and write them on
the board. Decide which team goes first. The first player comes to the front of the class and rolls
the dice; the numbers correspond to the different categories:

Objects
Nature
People
Places
Actions
You choose
If students roll a 6 they can choose whichever category they like. The player than has 1 minute
to describe as many of the words on the cards to their team-mates as they can. Teams score 1
point for each word correctly guessed. If the describer doesnt know the word or their team are
struggling to identify it, they can pass but they can only pass 3 times. Play then passes to the
next team. Play at least 3 rounds so that each member of each team has a go at describing.
 The rules to describing are:

You can only pass 3 times.

No miming.
Strictly English only.
No spelling words out.
Silence from other teams while one team is playing.
The game is a perfect opportunity to practice different structures such as relative clauses,
adjective order and many more.
7. Pictionary rules
Prohibition:

Mustnt/cant/not allowed to

You mustnt run in the classroom. Youre not allowed to use your mobile phones in class. You
cant smoke in school.

Obligation:

Must/have to

You have to study. You have to be at school at 9am. You must bring your gym kit for PE.

Lack of obligation:

Dont have to (careful with this one, ensure they understand the difference between mustnt
and dont have to)

You dont have to come to school on Saturday. Children over 11 dont have to wear uniform.

Once you have brainstormed all the different rules, ask the students this:

Which rules do you follow?

Which rules do you break?

Which rules annoy you the most?

Do any teachers let you break the rules?

 Split the class into teams of 3-4. Tell them they are going to play pictionary. However, some of
the rules are a little strange. Give students time to think of a team name and invite the first
person from the first team to the board. They have a minute and a half to draw as many rules as
they can for their team, for each rule they guess they get 1 point. The winning team is the one
that gets the most point after 2-3 rounds. If you run out of rules, get students to come up with
new ones for the other teams to draw and guess. Encourage them to make them as strange and
difficult as possible.
8. Picture description
Ask students what they can see in the picture.

Whats in the background?

Whats in the foreground?

Go through the following vocabulary on the board:

In the background/foreground we can see..

On the left/right

At the top/bottom

Hes wearing..

Hes facing left/right/the camera

He looks happy/sad/ etc.

Prepositions: Next to/beside, above, below, in front of, behind.

Now tell students that you are going to describe a picture and they have to draw it. Tell them to
draw quickly, also remind them about perspective (things in the foreground appear bigger than
in the background)

Describe the following picture to them:

woman running

Try to give as much detail as possible. Collect in the pictures and stick them to the board and
then show the real photo. Invite students to comment on the differences and vote for the one
they think is most accurate.
Now put students in pairs, tell them that one person is going to describe and the other is going
to draw. Have them position themselves so that the describer is facing the board so that he/she
can see the vocabulary and the other should be facing them. Be careful that the different pairs
are spaced out so that they cannot see each others pictures. Give them 5 minutes to describe
and draw. Once the 5 minutes are up collect in the pictures and invite comments and votes
again. Have students swap roles and repeat as many times as you like. There are several pictures
in the handout with different degrees of difficulty.