With a new school year just around the corner, I’m always looking for new ideas to implement into my classroom. For some, it may mean spending a lot of time planning lessons, creating activities/worksheets for grammar or vocabulary lessons, or even setting up games for students. As for me, I prefer playing games.
Of course in theory, gamification is always easier said than done; especially when the amount of preparation time is taken into account. In my opinion though, if it’s going to take more than 10 minutes to set up a game, it doesn’t belong in the EFL classroom. Therefore, here are 8 games that can help make your classroom more “gamified.”
Don’t Get Caught
This works especially well with recycling vocabulary from previous lessons. It doesn’t take much time to set up and the students will have lots of fun playing it.
First, if the textbook you are using has a wordlist, you can start by creating cards or have students go through their books to find words that they think are beneficial to know. Then collect all the cards from your students. Next, give each student an equal amount of cards and a topic or two to discuss. Students must then have a conversation and work the words from their cards into the discussion without others noticing.
To make it more difficult, you can make them say the word two or even three times without being noticed. If they can do so effectively, they place the card on the table face up for others to see. However, if they get caught, then they can’t put the card down until the next time that they use it without others noticing or you can have them take a new card if there is a pile of them. The first one to put all of their cards on the table is the winner.
Find the Liar
This is one of my favourite games to play with adult and secondary groups. I don’t recommend this game for primary learners, although it is possible to be adapted.
Each student is given a card. In groups of 6 or fewer, one student receives a card that says “Liar.” In larger groups, I nominate 4-5 students to sit in the front of the class. Each student is given a card and only one of them is given the “Liar” card.
The goal is for students to ask each other questions (or the panel at the front) in order to find out who is the liar. If the students who are not in the front of the class fail to accuse the right person, then all the students in front win, so it’s important that even though only one of them is the liar, the others should try to appear that they are lying in order to fool their classmates.
You can adapt this activity to focus on vocabulary or even grammatical structures. For example, students can only write questions using the first conditional, past simple, etc. I find it best to have students write their questions out beforehand, peer check, and then ask.
Once the students have run out of questions they have written, they should make their accusation and then the round is over. You can also put a limit on the amount of questions one student can ask or a minimum number of questions each student must ask.
This can also a good follow up activity if you use TED talks like this in your EFL classroom.
Hot Seat / Back Against the Board
This is another game that I would recommend more for adults and secondary, or a primary class that isn’t very loud.
The class is split into two teams and choose who will come to the front of the class first. The students are then seated with their backs facing away from the board. Each team should describe the word, collocation, phrase, or sentence to their seated team member. The first person sitting to shout out – or for milder classrooms, tell – the answer gets the point.
Students shouldn’t use any words from the same word family written on the board. For example, if the word is “explanation,” then students should use a word like “explain.” They can, however, use words that rhyme, provide alternative synonyms, some examples, etc.
Taboo Word
This is probably one of the most well-known games in EFL classrooms. While it can be played one on one quite effectively, I find that adding a competition aspect makes it go faster. This is best for recycling language and can be done at the end of each week or chapter.
Start by giving students slips of paper. I recommend three to four per student, but the number is up to you. Next, have them choose words from their books or classroom materials that they have already studied. After they have found and written, collect the slips of paper, shuffle them, and put them in the centre of the table. I have found that students also have more energy to do the activity if they are standing rather than sitting.
Next, one of the students takes a paper and explains the word much like Hot Seat without using words from the same word family. When another student guesses the word, that student gets the paper. The game continues until there are no more words left, and students count their papers to see who won.
Pictionary
This is a classic game that can be played even with young learners from 10 years old and up. Similar to Taboo Word, students find the words that they think are the most useful. Then, after collecting the papers, one student comes to the front to draw their word. The student continues to draw as many words as s/he can until time runs out.
To make this more competitive, divide the class into two teams. One person draws for their team to get the answer. Then when time runs out, they switch.
If you decide to choose the words instead of letting students choose, try to keep them to nouns, verbs, and adjectives. With adverbs and other parts of speech it will become more difficult.
Charades
In Ukraine, this game is also known as “crocodile.” Students choose the words like in Taboo Word and Pictionary, and instead of explaining or drawing the word, students must act them out. Again, to add a more competitive aspect to the game, you can split the class into teams and have the student acting out the word only to his/her team.
I also adapt this game, Pictionary, and Taboo Word into a game with dice. Students are called to the front and roll a die. If they roll a 1 or 4, they should tell the word (Taboo Word). If they roll a 2 or 5, they should draw the word (Pictionary). And if they roll a 3 or 6, they should show the word (Charades). However, this adaptation works better with smaller classes than larger ones.
Grab the Word / Slaphappy
This is an especially fun game for vocabulary review. If your course book has a word list, this is especially useful. Choose ~25 vocabulary terms that students have already learned from the chapter/unit. You can write them on thick index cards or laminate them on paper. This will prevent them from flying around too much during the game. Then put the cards on a table. If you don’t have access to a printer or thicker heavier paper, you can write the words on the board.
Next, split the class into two teams and two lines. Give one person from each team a fly swatter. Read out the definition (or translation) of one of the words and the first person to hit the right word with the fly swatter gets the point.
Would I Lie to You?
This is a British daytime game show on TV that can be adapted for the EFL classroom. It works much like two truths and a lie, except the student is trying to elaborate on only one particular statement instead of three. This game is also good for practising the narrative tenses.
First, one student takes a card and reads it aloud. For example, “I’ve been the victim of a crime.” Next, students need to create questions about this statement to ascertain whether or not the student is lying or telling the truth. When enough questioning has occurred (I usually try to get each student to ask at least one question), the teacher will prompt students to choose whether it’s the truth or a lie. Whoever is correct gets a point and the person gets a point for every person who didn’t guess correctly. This works well and can easily be adapted to a one-to-one context as well. This also is interesting because if it is true, students should try to get the others to think it is a lie in order to get more points.
To see a sample, you can watch the video below and play it for yourself.
That’s all for now. I hope you can use at least some of these games in your classroom for the next academic year.
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