Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[thailen]

I'm teaching a group of 9-12 year old Thai,Mynnmar,Laotian and Cambodian students basic English. We began with numbers, colors, body parts and fruits and found that games are a great way to get max participation, enthusiasm and confidence. Problem is we only have one game - blackboard football. We're thinking of adding Hangman, but are at a loss for others. Any suggestions?

[ieltsonly]

What about "buzz?" The students count in turn but multiples of 3 have to be replaced by the word "buzz." If a student says the multiple of 3, a life is lost. All students have 2 or 3 lives. It goes something like this:

Student 1 : One
Student 2 : Two
Student 3 : Buzz
Student 4 : Four
Student 5 : Five
Student 6 : Buzz (.... and so on.)

This "game" ensures that your students are listening to each other and are following the numbers and what is going on.

You can extend this by adding multiples of 5 : students say the word "fizz." This becomes fun on multiples of both 3 and 5, such as 15. These students have to say "fizz buzz." You can insist on a direction change whenever "fizz buzz" is said.

This works better in smaller groups so once the class has demonstrated understanding, break into groups of 10 to "play." Once the game is becoming a little routine (maybe the second time you play?) you can insist that the students say recently learned vocabulary from specific lexical sets instead of "fizz" and "buzz" e.g. fruit and body parts.

I hope this is of some use.

Stephen
www.ieltsonly.co.uk
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