Teaching English games
Hello. I'm Shelley Ann Vernon and I specialize in teaching English as a second or foreign language through English games, short stories, songs, plays and more. I have already helped over 15,000 teachers take the stress out of teaching and put the fun back in. Now I'd like to help you too. I am here for you. I offer you personal support to get the best out of my resources. Every email is answered. (My website uses cookies and 3rd party analytics to track the use of my website. This way I know how many visits a particular page gets and so on. I never use this data for marketing purposes. Check out my privacy policy here.)
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Useful ESL tips to solve teaching problems
This blog contains an hour long lesson plan to teach the present perfect with games and my skit Ready Steady Go (source of skit is here). Target language:Present perfect: I've forgotten my...Nouns: bag, jacket, sunglasses, hat, gloves, keys. This vocabulary may be adapted to your preferences or syllabus.Phrases: Are you ready? Are you sure? Yes I'm sure Language games to learn the vocabulary Listening Games: Introduce the key nouns using flashcards or real objects. Play the listening game Jump the Line, where kids jump back and forth depending on which side of the line the flashcard or item is that you name. Click the link for a full description of Jump the Line for one pupil but it's the same for a group or class.Then you could play Rapid Reaction, where kids race to slap their hands down on the flashcard you name. If you can't get all your kids around the pictures in a group then make four lines in front of the board. Say "touch a bag" and the 4 kids at front race to touch the bag flashcard, and then go to back of line. There's no need to score points, but if your kids love competitive team games then you could score. Simply award a point to whichever team is fastest each time. I don't bother point scoring with this game as it can be pretty hard to tell who was first, unless you use fly swatters, then you can see which one is underneath!Depending on the age and ability of your pupils, the above two games may be enough. If you need more continue with Find Me before I count to five. Spread little flashcards all around class, more than one copy of each. "Find me some sunglasses! 1,2,3,4...5." Check my Preschool Games book or Primary School Games book for more. Speaking Games: Which one has gone? Place the vocabulary flashcards face up with the kids around you. With a big class, use the board. Ask kids to close their eyes, or hide their faces. Remove one (or two) flashcards and ask which one has gone. Kids open their eyes and tell you which picture you removed. If the same kid answers every time, have him or her remove the pictures. Start with just a few pictures and add more, or duplicates, to make it harder as the game goes along. Teaching the phrase "I've forgotten my sunglasses." Demonstrate the concept by laying out some sunglasses, a bag, and other items. Wave goodbye to the class and head towards to the door. As you are leaving, stop suddenly and say, "Oh no! I've forgotten my sunglasses." Go back to the items, pick up the sunglasses and leave again. When you reach the door stop and say, "Oh no! I've forgotten my bag." Return for the bag. Continue until the kids have the idea. Of course if you speak L1 you can translate the phrase to the kids as well.Practise the phrase "I've forgotten my..." with a game, like Board Bash. In pairs kids choose an item, say "I've forgotten my bag", and aim at the bag flashcard with a rolled up pair of socks or other suitable missile. Make small groups for this if you have a big class. You don't want kids sitting around waiting a long time for a turn because it is boring for them. Relay Race is a good speaking game to drill full sentences like, "I've forgotten my keys" while passing down the flashcard of keys, or real keys. Click here for a full description of Relay Race. Teach the concept of "Are you ready?" Demonstrate the idea of being ready via a runner ready to start a race. Take a ball, ask a student, "Are you ready?" He/she says, "yes", and you throw the ball. Use a dictionary if necessary to translate "ready". Have the class ask you in unison, "Are you ready?" Look ready and then say, "No! I've forgotten my bag." And pick up your bag. Repeat through the items. Play a game in pairs to practise "Are you ready?" Demostrate this with one of the best students first, who is likely to understand quickly. Place one hand out in front of you. Your student places a hand on top of yours. You ask, "Are you ready?" The student says, "Yes". Next you wait and then suddenly try to tap the top of your student's hand. He or she has to move his/her hand out of the way so you miss. The first time you will hit the student's hand, obviously, since he/she doesn't know what to expect. So repeat until the demo is clear for everyone. Now put students in pairs and have them play, the person doing the tapping has to ask, "Are you ready?" each time. Writing: It would be useful at this point to have students copy all the vocabulary and key phrases into their notebook. Some students need to see how things are written to help them memorize. There are plenty of writing games in my Primary school games book (but none in the preschool games book). Click here for an example game, Writing Race. Now it's time to start putting the skit together. The first time through you play the role of the driver and have all the students as passengers. If you have a student who is way ahead of the others, make him/her the driver on the second time through. Talented students need to be stimulated or they get bored.It may be that after two or three times through the skit, your class will be able to perform it perfectly, bar the odd student, inevitably there are one or two who don't learn well, and you can't wait for them to get it because if you do, the entire rest of the class will be tearing their hair out. It's just the way of things in a classroom. Give the slower ones extra help if you can, outside of class time. If you can, make an audio version available online for students to listen to at home. With my skits book you get some videos included (I don't have a video for every skit yet, but the collection is building.) Kids could have access to these to help them learn outside of class time.It may be that you take several lessons to put this skit together. It depends on the age and ability of your pupils. I spend one full lesson on the skit, as described above. After that I continue to rehearse the skit at each lesson, for 5-15 minutes (again depending on the level of students). And I do something completely different for the rest of the lesson. This prevents the skit from becoming stale through over-exposure. When you see the skit is ready, be sure to perform it to another class, to the school at assembly, to parents...or at the very least, have another teacher come in to watch. If possible, video the skit and play it back to the kids. My experience with this lesson:I used this lesson in Nepal with 9-year-olds and it was a resounding success. The kids were super enthusiastic and delighted to be using English in context rather than just yelling phrases out of their book at the teacher. One of the permanent English teachers came in to watch and the kids were thrilled to perform to him. The next day all the kids were begging me to give them another lesson. My Nepalese kids were quick learners so we put this together in one lesson. The best student made a confident driver, but the two weakest students could not manage their sentence, "I've forgotten my..." alone, so the other pupils helped them. In contrast to these fast learners, when I taught 5-year-old beginners this skit, we spent a full hour on drill games and then rehearsed it for 10 minutes over at least six lessons. They were then able to perform it fluently to parents at the end of term show.The younger or slower your learners, the more language games you need at the outset, to drill the vocabulary and key phrases. Other games I had on my lesson plan, in case of need were: All Change, Run and Fetch, Clapping Games, or use any games from my games books. Relevant ResourcesYou may download the full skit free from here.Enjoy my 30 skits for kids with this book in instant download. (You can get it as a paperback from Amazon or your local bookstore, but the PDF version is handy for printing a skit should you want to.)All these games are in my book of grammar games ESL Games: 176 English Language Games for Children. Available in instant PDF download Kindle, and paperback
Preschool children are spell-bound by stories. A Quick plug for my stories:That's why I created 40 stories, with lesson plans, flashcards, songs and workbooks, and these are brilliant teaching tools for busy teachers who want to give fun lessons and engage their preschool pupils. My stories are brought alive by the lesson plans made of games, that make it possible for 3-6-year-olds to learn English as a foreign language.Fantastic story books:Here are some of my other favourite preschool storybooks. Some of these have withstood the test of time and still beat most of the new story books that are written hands down!Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.Wow, I remember this captivating book from when I was a child. It's over 50 years old but is still one of the best preschool children's books ever. It won the Caldecott medal in 1964 but the illustrations are totally appealing today and the emotional journey Max goes on just as relevant! Max starts being naughty, chasing the family dog with a fork and getting up to mischief. He talks back to his mother who calls him a wild thing and sends him to his bedroom without any supper. Furious in his room, Max's imagination turns his bedroom into a land of wild things, where he becomes king and is worshipped. He gets up to lots of mischief as king of the wild things but then he feels a desire to go to the place where he is most loved. He ends up back in his bedroom where supper is waiting! Buy it with the author's original illustrations from Amazon.com here.Peter Rabbit by Beatrix PotterHow cute are the illustrations? Any children age 3 and up still adore Peter Rabbit. Like the wild thing Max, Peter gets up to no good running about in the forbidden garden where tempting lettuces abound. He gets chased and narrowly escapes being caught. Breathless and frightened he makes it home where he goes to bed with a camomile tea to calm him while his well-behaved sisters eat a scrummy dessert! As well as enjoying the story you can talk about boundaries and safety, and what can happen if you go out of bounds to places that parents say are not safe. Peter Rabbit probably won't go into the garden again and learned his lesson! Tip: Watch out which edition you buy. There have been modern illustrations put to the original story and they are sooooooooooooooo lacking in charm compared to Beatrix Potter's own drawings. She was, after all, a natural scientist and conservationist as well as an illustrator and writer. Buy Peter Rabbit original version here. Winnie the Poo by A A MilneLovable Winnie the Pooh and his Tigger, Eyeore and Rabbit. Full of wit and wisdom from 1926. If you don't know Winnie the Pooh, it's time you did! Please share these cute tales and beautiful philosophy with your preschoolers (not for complete beginners). E.H.Shephard did all Milne's illustrations, so if you want the originals, look out for his name in the book details. Get the complete tales of Winnie the Pooh, original text and illustrations here.“How do you spell ‘love’?” – Piglet“You don’t spell it…you feel it.” – Winnie the PoohAnything by Norman ThelwellFor hilarious cartoons and uncanny insight into children, dogs, cats and above all...ponies. Timeless humour. Try Brat Race for a humourous look at children. There is very little text if any, but the pictures say a thousand words and are good talking points. Get the hardcover here for $6.The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric CarleAnother classic. According to Wikipedia, it has sold the equivalent of a book a minute since it was published...way back in 1969!I know there are a lot of great new books out there, but sometimes I find they are a bit bland, striving to please all peoples and all views, or too moralising, or the pics are boring because too much personality might displease someone, somewhere. But PLEASE please add your favs to the comments box below for all of us. The best of the best must-haves...we would love to hear what your favourite and most successful story books are. Here is the link on amazon.com.Teaching PointsEven though the above story books are not designed for young English language learners, but native speakers, the pictures are explicit and it's easy for children to understand what is happening from them alone. That said I recommend that you pre-teach the key vocabulary for each story beforehand, and use my games for this. Then you can read the story and do post-story activities just as with my ready-made resources. If you have my story resources you'll find post-story activities suggested with every story, and these are adaptable to any story. Some ideas are:role-playing,putting story pics in order,making a puzzle out of a story picture,playing hide and seek with story props or flashcards,drawing objects or people from the story,making a story poster,making puppets of the story characters,making up actions for key moments in the story,making masks of story characters,using props during story-telling,playing games relevant to the story thememaking up a rhyme with actions around the story theme,and plenty more!I hope you like these classic books and if you need me for anything, please just ask!All the bestShelley Ann VernonTeaching English Games
Sometimes schools organize an English day, as a celebration of all things related to learning English. The United Nations celebrates English Language Day every 23rd April, (William Shakespeare's died on that day). To quote the UN website, "language Days at the UN aim to entertain as well as inform, with the goal of increasing awareness and respect for the history, culture and achievements of each of the six working languages among the UN community". That said, for greater variety and flexibility, English day doesn't have to be about English, England, the States or wherever. English day could be about anything, just presented in English. One of my teacher friends did this:Our theme was TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD. In the morning we started by raising the flags of several countries and we then presented a lot different wonderful things around the world. Next, the students ran a quiz in teams, asking and answering questions about all the different countries and facts they had researched for the day. After that, we organized presentations in different classrooms, one for each continent and a specific country for each stand. Each group of students prepared a stand. Each one had displays on the country they were to talk about, including geography, culture, gastronomy, famous people, and touristic places. These topics were shared out among the students for that country.In the afternoon we had a Talent Show. Here any students who wished to could show their skills in dancing, singing, reading a poem, performing a short skit, juggling, doing some gym moves, or any other talent they wished to feature. It was great to see our students present it." To make the juggler or dancer relevant to the English day theme, have the student introduce him or herself in English, explaining what he or she will do. If he or she is too shy or reluctant then another student may introduce the participant instead.Most people like finding out about the world around them. But for all students to be motivated, allow flexibility. You might outline the overall theme for the day, but if you can let students choose their own aspect, something that appeals to them, you'll be more likely to have greater student participation and motivation. So let students cast a wide net around your theme. If your theme is the USA and a student is really into music, he or she could present, in English, on a favourite band. Another student might like to present on American fashion designers or the Ford motor company. Some students might be into preparing a stand on the greatest sportsmen and women of English-speaking countries. Others might prefer to present their top ten movies where English is the original language of the film. You don't want to force students to look up famous monuments and towns if that is a dry topic for them. The important thing is that your students enjoy and relate to what they prepare and present on the day.English day themes that can include a vast array of topics are things like running a film festival day, where each group of students selects their top film (it has to be an English language film). Students can find the poster for it, show the trailer, act certain key scenes in groups, say why they like it. Then run a film quiz where students identify famous lines or name characters from the movies.Or how about a day where you go back in time and live in the 70s, with wigs, flares and 70s music. Kids could learn words to different classic songs from the time and perform them with basic choreography. Tracks from the movie Grease are classic and appeal just as much now as then but there is plenty to choose from!Throw a themed party in the style of a specific country and time. Divide students into groups to research the party theme and content. This might include dress code and fashions, typical food and drink for the occasion, music, a guest list suitable for the time, i.e. Winston Churchill, film stars from the period, singers, artists, writers... Students can dress up as a key figure from the time and come to the party as them.If these ideas are too much work or would make too much mess, have a day with presentations, a quiz, an hour for table games, and a show with songs and skits.Table games for small groups can be Boggle, Battleships, board games in English like Cluedo or English monopoly, or grammar games like snakes and ladders. There are printable board games included with my stories for kids here.Presentation idea: To help students feel more at ease talking in public, have them play a role or pretend to be someone else. Say the student loves Soprano, let him or her prepare a short speech as Soprano, talking about who he is and his music or ideas. Students can present on a job they would like to do and act a scene where they do that job. Students often feel more confident when they are not exposing themselves, but hide behind the identity of a character. This can be even better if students dress up as the character, or failing that, have at least one prop to represent him or her. If students can get online they can search for podcasts by or on their chosen personality, and use those to help construct their presentation. Performances can be karaoke songs, songs with a simple dance routine or actions, a flashmob, and these easy plays and skits. Each class or group performs something in English for the other classes. The whole school watches. Parents can be invited too. Here are ideas for an end of term show, and these can be used on English day.https://www.teachingenglishgames.com/tips-for-end-of-term-show
The English Language is delightfully quirky. Here are some fun facts about it to use as a base for classroom activities with intermediate and advanced learners. Fact One: English changes all the timeLanguages evolve and English is no exception. One-quarter of the words in the full Oxford dictionary are classed as obsolete. Strewth! That only leaves about 175,000 for everyday conversation. Fact Two: Foreigners can find English hard to understandGood luck trying to translate this without a good slang dictionary. English is enriched by slang, and I say enriched deliberately since it's colourful and fun, although not perhaps everyone's cup of tea, and certainly one would endeavour not to use it in the presence of the Queen. I was down the pub having some nosh when I noticed this nutter going in and out the loo. I said to my mate: "Bet you a tenner there's something well dodgy going on there." "I should mind your beeswax" he replied, "I'm off to Bedfordshire." Just as the nutter was going back into the loo, Bob's your uncle, the Fuzz arrived. Gobsmacked, my mate fell off his stool (actually I think he was plastered). "Keep your hair on," I said. "The coppers are here for him, not you." A classroom activity could be to work on different paragraphs like the above in small groups and provide a translation in proper English!Classroom activitiesFor a classroom activity, let students guess and rewrite this passage, then read out their version to the class. The class vote for the funniest rendition, or the best, or the most imaginative. Next, let students use dictionaries to work out the true meaning of the passage and share with others.Less radical than slang for the English language classroom are metaphors and similes. The English are champions for quirky metaphors. While the French say it's raining ropes, the Spanish say it's raining jugs, the Italians say it's raining like a shower, all of which give a good visual on very heavy rain, the English say it's raining cats and dogs. Where did they come from? Call my bluff definitions is a fun language game to work with metaphors and help expand a student's knowledge of English. Check the resource box for a link to language learning activities. Fact Three: It gets worse...even native speakers can find English hard to understandIf slang wasn't enough the English language has further ways to confuse the intrepid learner. While French has 'Verlan', where words are said backwards, so femme becomes meuf, English has rhyming slang, a language understood by some East Londoners and a few other people in the know! If you don't want to die stupid use your loaf and take a butcher's at Wikipedia, where rhyming slang is explained in full. Words that rhyme are used instead of the original word, so wife became trouble and strife. The longer phrase is then shortened to just the first word, so wife became trouble. The phone became the dog and bone, and that in turn became the dog. So if you plan to spend longer than planned down the pub, for Pete's sake get your trouble on the dog and let her know! Fact Four: Much of English is foreign anyway.The English Language is an eclectic mix of Indo-European, old Norse, Greek, Latin, German, French...(and other sources). Many every day words come from afar, such as jodhpurs after the Indian city, chocolate from Aztec, anorak from Eskimo, aficionado from French, embargo from Spanish and so on. To this day new words are being added from diverse sources and goodness only kwz if txt language will be added, OMG I hope not, TIME, CU Wordsworth. To think that the rest of the world are also using these acronyms, I mean can't they think up their own? Fact Five: English spelling and pronunciation can be maddeningWith as many exceptions as there are rules good luck to the teacher trying to explain why the same letters 'ough' have three different pronunciations. 'Go through the pigsty and put the feed in the trough under the bough.' Fact Six: English is only spoken as a native language by 5% of the world.Should we all be learning Chinese and Spanish before English? Not according to the UN, at least for the moment, where English and French are the working languages, even though only 1% of the world speaks French! LOL! To help your students have more fun lessons, try my best-selling classroom activities book. There is plenty there for every teacher wanting to get students more involved. You can get my book in paperback (see Amazon for book reviews) or directly from me in an instant PDF download.
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Successful author and ESL teacher Shelley Ann Vernon has a passion for helping teachers make their job easier and more fun. Having been a dedicated teacher herself, Shelley knows exactly what it's like to spend hours preparing for a lesson, trying to make it fun and interesting for the students. She has shared her extensive experience as a fun, effective ESL teacher. She has two highly rated books on Amazon, plus other outstanding resources for teaching children. She always responds to fan mail and questions. Shelley speaks at conferences such as IATEFL Cardiff 2009, YALS Belgrade 2011, UCN, Hjorring, Denmark 2014 and Barcelona in 2015. See her upcoming events on author-central for the next opportunity to meet her.
Shelley Ann Vernon, BA, BAMus
