Plays like a regular game of bingo. Students find a partner and janken to see who goes first. Use the practiced question format to ask ‘When is your birthday?’ and mark off either the day OR the month on the bingo sheet. E.g.” My birthday is March 27th” students can mark either the “March” box or the “27-31” box.
Plays like a regular game of battleship. Students mark their four ships on the large grid, keeping them hidden from their partner. They then take turns saying different sound combinations to try and hit their opponents ships. The smaller grid is used to track your calls so you don’t accidentally repeat. Game finishes when one player loses all of their ships. If time runs out, whoever has the least hits is the winner.
Wait until they’ve had some practice with phonics to try this game. I start the activity by reviewing the alphabet and the sounds of each letter. Projecting into to the screen during the demonstration works well with getting the rules across.
Students keep the sheet in their folders to take out whenever we play scattergories for a warm-up activity. The ALT chooses a letter and the students write the letter in the center of the grid. Students then have 5-10min to write a word for each catagory that starts with the chosen letter. I let them use their textbooks/dictionaries to help. For scoring points (if you want to), students share their answers and anyone with a unique answer gets 1 point.
See rules for timer game / ohajiki time. The rules are the exact same but students to choose a colour instead of one of the vocab (in this case numbers). If the ordinal number called last is one of the ones in the row they chose then they get a point.
Students make pairs and each get game board with a soccer pitch on it, and a ‘soccer ball’ card. They also get a set of cards with the vocabulary on them. They shuffle these and put five on to the game board. First they janken. The loser asks the question. The winner answers. The winner moves their ‘ball’ one space towards their goal.
If one student wins enough times in a row and moves all the way to their partner’s goal, they score one goal (get one point) and the ‘ball’ goes back to the centre, while shuffling a new set of cards onto the board.
After a few minutes, pairs can change.
The students first get a worksheet that has 6 random letters. The students draw the letters in the squares using whatever colour/design they like. When they’re finished, they cut them out.
The students then get a sheet of paper with their name on it written in English, and six letters which were made in the previous lesson (they don’t need to be the ones they made originally). They use the paper to make pairs and ask for letters. If their partner has the letter they asked for, they give it to them.
When they have all the letters to make their name, they can glue them (in the correct order) to their paper.
After class, students can add their own design to the rest of the paper, and glue it to their new name card to use for the next year.
In groups, students pick 3 out of 6 animals shown at the top of the ‘tree’.
Starting at the bottom square of the tree, the students ask the teacher if they like the vocabulary in that square.
If the teacher says yes, the students go up and one square to the left. If they say no, the students go up and one square to the right.
If the final square has one of the animals they picked, they win one point.
The students change the three animals they want to pick, then the next round starts.
This can be changed into a production game, by having the students ask a volunteer to give their answer. If so, it is best to give some thinking time each turn, so the groups can decide the answer they want. The teacher then picks one group (by using a dice, pulling a card and so on) to give the answer.
Each student gets a worksheet. The worksheet is a 9×9 grid with a vocabulary word in each square. The students make pairs. Starting in the bottom left, they ask each other question based on the vocabulary of the current square.
Their partner can pick either yes or no for their answer. If their partner answers ‘yes…’, the student moves to the space above the one they were on. If they answer ‘no…’, they move to the space to the right.
When they reach the top or right side of the grid, they will win a certain number of points. They then return to the bottom left space and continue.
Students write a number between 1 and 20 next to each fruit on their worksheet (they can’t use the same number more than once).
They then make pairs and ask each other ‘how many [fruit]?’. Their partner guesses a number. If the guess is below what they wrote for that given fruit, they say ‘up’. If the number is above it, they say ‘down’. The first student to guess their partner’s number wins.
Students make pairs and a Connect 4 Dice worksheet. Each student takes turns rolling a dice. Depending on the number the dice lands on, they can pick a space in the matching column and sayi the associated target English that matches the picture. They then put one of their ohajiki on that space. The first student to get an unbroken line of 4 ohajiki wins. Students can ‘block’ their partner by putting their ohajiki in between their partner’s line.
