Jeopardy - Review time!

A good way to review the course content is to play quiz games. One that I really like is Jeopardy. With this game students choose the cathegory and the "difficulty" of the question. To make sure all students are exercising the same knowledge, ask all of them to complete the task chosen by the "contestant" they can all win points if they answer correctly on a piece of paper, if you don't have boards for everybody.

Mind Maps

Mind maps are great to explore vocabulary, grammar rules and review students' previous learning. There's a good website where you can create and edit mind maps among other resources called examtime.com. But a good way to study is to build an old-fashioned one with your students, specially when we are talking about kids. Take a look at some incredible mind maps ideas searching the internet.

Silent Movie

This is an instigating activity. You simply have to choose a video that has some clues for students (body language, articulated characters, scenario, face expressions, etc). You can play it a first time without the audio and ask students to guess the content of the video, the topic of the conversation, the narrative of the story, basically any information from the chosen video. To make it easier, you can give students options of topics and they have to check the ones that appear on the video.
The opposite activity can also be done: play only the audio and ask students to identify the scenario, the characters, again, anything that seems relevant in the video.

Practicing Comparatives

This activity can be used with different ages. First, the teacher shows the picture and ask students to describe the characters using the vocabulary they know. After drilling the grammar structure and introducing new vocabulary the teacher can create a guessing game using sentences with comparatives: "he is taller than Barney", and students answer: "Homer!". If you feel students are feeling confident with their learning ask them to describe a character the class has to guess.

PLACES IN TOWN

This is a simple matching activity for kids and teenagers to teach vocabulary.

I LIKE BROCCOLI!

Board games are perfect with children and teenagers. I love technology, but we can't simply discard the fact that kids like to touch objects to feed their curiosity of the world. I've got this from a teacher's website like mine and thought it was so cute and useful that I decided to share it. Credits to David Lisgo.

Chain Games

A very well known game in English classrooms us the Chain Game. It's simply asking students to stand side by side and say something following any specific rule. There are some variations:

Memory Chain Game:
When student B has to remember and repeat what student A said and add something, student C has to repeat what student A and B said and add one more information and that continues untill someone makes a mistake.

Counting Chain Game:
Make students to practice the numbers in English by asking student A to start the counting and B,C, D, etc continues. To make it more challenging ask them to skip even numbers or numbers with 7 on them or you can create your fun rule.

Rule Chain Game
This is for the practice of any vocabulary segment or phrasal structure, with beginners you can practice saying their ABC's. When students gain a little bit more knowlledge of the English vocabulary you can ask student tho say something following the alphabet order, therefore student A has to say a word or phrase that begins with the letter A, student B does the same with letter B and so on. These are just some suggestions, you can also make your own fun challenging rule, or you can play it without a rule just asking them to review the vocabulary from last class by each students saying what comes to mind as they remember it.

If you use, have used or are thinking about using this activity in the classroom, you are welcome to share your thoughts and leave a comment.

A ROAD TRIP

This is a very simple and fun warm-up. The teacher writes A ROAD TRIP on the board and ask students to write as many words as they can using the letters of the phrase (with at least 3 letters). For younger students the teacher can leave some hints, put some pictures on the board that correspond to words you want them to write on their list, for example the teacher can show the picture of a PARROT, a RAT, or a OAR.

A similar game you can find in the British Council website
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/pt-br/word-games/wordshake

SCAVENGER HUNT

A fun game to play with children and helps them learn trivial vocabulary. In this post you can find a copy downloaded from the website http://www.crayola.co.uk/sitecore/content/home.aspx which is a great source of printables.

Join the chorus Game

This is a fun game to get students to practice questions and phrasal structure. The teacher has to put a few options on the board, ex:

A. WHAT'S YOUR NAME?
B. WHAT'S YOUR ADRESS?
C. WHAT'S YOUR JOB?

One student is sent outside the classroom while the rest chooses one of the sentences to be the "right" answer. The teacher now has two options: if students are very young, ask them to repeat the chosen sentence in a chorus when the exiled student comes back; but if the teacher wants to make more challenging he/she can divide the question into segments and ask each student to repeat only the designated segment at the same time as the others causing confusion and making it more difficult to unveil the question ex:
STUDENT A: WHAT'S
STUDENT B: YOUR
STUDENT C: JOB



If you already practice this activity in the classroom or intend to, leave a comment with your thoughts.

Trivia Game

This game is best done with more knowlledgeable students with an intermediate level of English. It's basically a regular Trivia game but you can make it yourself. This game takes a while to finish, so it's best if done with  small groups. This is also a good tool to revise course content, the teacher can replace the cathegories with subjects related to past classes. If questions are maintained at a certain level of difficulty there's no need for a huge amount of questions.

Matching: vocabulary - definition

A good exercise to improve and fixate vocabulary are matching activities, they are useful to teach synonyms, to teach vocabulary and to engage and update students with the content of the text they are going to read. The teacher can also ask them to create definitions for the vocabulary (if they have a certain knowledge of English) or provide them with dictionaries and propose a research activity.