Linguistic Card Game for students

When I have stations throughout the school year I enjoy adding a "fun station." I like to have it be somewhat literary or linguistic. One great game is Bananagrams and I just found out about a new one called Rewordable.

This is a great game for you to enjoy with family and friends, but more than that it's a fun way for students to take an intellectual brain break and think about words (which is key for yearbook and journalism especially!)

There are 124 cards consisting of single letters, blended sounds (ch), and full syllables (ine, age, etc).

The game starts with three cards and three tokens facing up. Then each person gets five cards. You make words with your cards and collect tokens if possible. Once you create a word, others can add to it and it turns into THEIR word.

It really is easy and we only looked at the directions twice the entire night! It isn't just the one with the most verbose vocabulary that wins. It takes some serious thinking and brain power to keep it.

Notes: If you are using this as a quickie with your students, I would not use the tokens. I would just have each student grab five cards and see what they can create.

I was lucky enough to get this as a freebie to try out in my classroom and leave an honest review. As a self declared word-nerd, I honestly love it. You can find it for sale at many big book stores (e.g. Barnes and Noble) I've also include an Amazon affiliate link below (if you purchase through this link I get a small percentage which I use for my classroom)

ABCs of Me a No Prep Icebreaker

Here's an easy no prep activity that students love and can be easily tailored to best fit your students' levels.

I don't know how your first day is...mine is CHAOTIC. Students are always switched out or moved in, or just added late. I really feel like I don't want to teach anything day one because I'll have to re-teach it for the following week.

Technology is usually working on the first day, so I have an Kahoot activity with my students for information on me. Students LOVE it. However, this year I taught summer school. I had no tech, no class list and had just moved into the classroom. Of course!

I wanted to get an idea of how my students were as far as writing level. This was a remedial English class, so I just wanted to know if they could write a sentence.

As such, I brought back an OLD ESL activity. "ABCs of Me" and threw it into a Snow Ball fight .

In the end this activity was such:

1. Students write down the alphabet (one letter on each line of their paper) and try to write COMPLETE sentences with the letter. 
2. You can adjust this according to students' levels. For more advanced classes have each sentence connect (so the entire page would read like a paragraph or story). For lower levels, just have them focus on a word per letter (adjectives or nouns).
3. I gave my students a few ways to do this. I let them write a word that starts with the letter and then the sentence, OR have the sentence start with the letter. I tell them NOT to use their name. I also walk around and help kids who are stuck on letters (or tell them to skip a letter)
• So, "A teacher is what I am." Good
• "Birthday: My birthday is in January" Good
• "Carissa is my name." Bad
• "Dad. My dad is a basketball coach." Good 
4. Once they’ve written as much as they can (5-10 minutes) I tell them to crumple the paper up and we have a two minute “snowball fight.”
• Make this fun! Play "Let's Get Ready to Rumble" or "The Eye of the Tiger" Students usually don't go too crazy with this, but if you notice they are targeting someone you may need to put a stop to it.
5. Once you stop they grab a paper uncrumple it and try to match it to the person who wrote it. 
• I have them put their name at the bottom if they found the author, but the author should NOT write their name (yet), so you can play again!
6. Repeat if needed / desired. 
• I like to play a few times. The last time they play the author write their name on the top and sits down with their paper.
7. Have students share something they read about someone else they thought was interesting OR about themselves.

This helps me because I can gauge what they think a sentence is as well as their vocabulary. I also learn a bit about the students.

Students are also eager to share because it isn't their information... they're sharing about their classmates. The pressure it way off.

It's an easy, no technology nor prep activity that students LOVE.

If you try it let me know how it goes.

You're Getting Old! (Verb Tenses)

Have you ever noticed that when you teach something, you see examples of the grammar all over! This summer I taught past and present perfect in a TOEFL prep class and the website: http://you.regettingold.com/ started getting passed around my Facebook pages.

The site is super easy to use. Simply go to the link and plug in a birthday, then  specify if you are doing this for you or for someone else.

In this case I am putting in what many people believe to be Harry Potter's birthday: July 31st, 1980. After I put in the birthday and name I press go and voila! Tons of great sentences:

Check out the AMAZING variety of sentences here. We have simple present sentences, present perfect, past perfect and past passive. We have irregular verbs (i.e. is, take, beat). If your students have been taught to identify different sentences, see if they can do so now. If you are the type of teacher who prefer that students understand meaning rather than grammar make sure they notice the different way.

The website goes on. It gives you plenty of examples of the perfect tenses as well as passive (Ronald Reagan was elected President. ET was released.)

I suggest you go through the site a few times with different birthdays: celebrities, student volunteers, authors, create birthdays for characters in books you read etc.

Are you this old?

After students get the idea have them create their own "website." I am really into using things like this for literature, so I would have them do it with a character from a story we have read. If you don't read stories in class have them make it for themselves. (Note: the website will not work for people born before 1900, so you'd have to use people from the 1900s on).

The website gives examples, but if your students need prompts:

• To see Emmy winners look at the Emmy website.
• To find heart beats and breaths taken you can go to the Bloodindex site.
• To find the date of famous people's deaths (by year) search FamousDeaths 
• Your students can find Olympic medalists (and the year) on Wikipedia
• You can find number one songs from different years on Number One In History
• You can find famous birthdays on History Orb 

I hope you ans your students find this website as fun to play with as I do!

Baby Shower Games in the EFL class?

No I am not expecting! I was planning a wedding shower for a friend a while back and I mainly fell back on my teaching knowledge of random games to amuse the guests. So when I was scrolling through free kindle books and found this I thought, "You know, I bet baby shower games would be great in some EFL classes!" Some of them were, and others... not so much. Here are a few of the ones I think I could use in class.

Feed the baby: Great for beginning EFL students (I'd say A1 or A2) learning about food. Think of it as a specified Simon Says. One student volunteers to be the baby (or the teacher starts). The baby starts shouting out random vocabulary. For example, the baby says: "Broccoli" The parents, the rest of the students, have to decide if it is edible or not edible. If it is edible they clap twice. If it is inedible they cover their mouth.

Baby: Broccoli
Parents: Clap twice
Baby: Bread
Parents: Clap twice
Baby: Shoes
Parents: Hands over their mouth

If a parent messes up and does the wrong motion they are "out" and should sit down. Start out slowly but speed up eventually. This should help students recognize food words. The last student standing becomes the baby.

This can also be done with flash cards! While I think this works well with food, you could easily lose the baby and parent scenario and use it for colors or rooms in a house. For example the topic could be "Things we find in a kitchen" Two claps would be: Knives, Drawers, Microwaves. Hands on your mouth would be: bed, toilet, etc.


What animal is it? Take a shoe box and put a hole in it. Put an animal cracker in it. Have the student put their hand in and describe it. Can they guess the animal? Great for adjectives (rough, tiny, bumpy, etc.) and animals! You can use a puzzle piece or small toy if you want to avoid food (or have to because of allergies or school regulations. Alternatively put things in plastic Easter eggs and have them describe and guess. Probably best for Primary or Pre-K.

Who is it? Finally an easy ice breaker. Hand each student a post it and have them write three facts about themselves on it. Put a number on it and place them around the classroom. Have students go around with a student roster and guess who is what number.

Name Game! Probably the hardest (I think). Either give all the students a name (your name, a mascot name a celebrity name, a main character's name, an author's name, etc.) or let them use their own. Have them make a sentence with each letter starting a different word, so: Carissa Create Awesome Relics Inviting Super Stars Around. To make it easier have each letter start a sentence: Clearly you are special As such you should be careful. Really think before you decide to do something. If you do that, then your life should be awesome. Should you not follow those directions, things may end badly. So you've been warned. Act cautiously and you'll love life!

So those are just a few ideas from this book. Have you ever been to a baby shower? What's your favorite game? Would you use it in the classroom or keep it away from EFL?

102 ESL Games and Activities - Book Review

Now just $2.99 on Amazon

102 ESL Games and Activities for New and Prospective Teachers I have skimmed through the whole book and about read half of it. I didn't find any new and groundbreaking activities, but I did find a lot of solid activities with a good basis in having students actively participate.

The writer is Miles Jaworski who has taught for 25 years in China, Vietnam, Ecuador and the United States of America.

Basically this book does exactly what it says it does. It gives 102 activities for new and prospective teachers.

What kinds of activities? There's a lot of speaking, some writing, some ice breakers, a lot of fillers and mainly drills (where students are tricked into having fun while learning...awesome!)

This is a sample of how the book looks in my kindle (in my case the kindle app on my tablet) and why it is awesome:

1. Each activity has a Language/ Skill Practiced e.g Past Simple /Past Continuous. Most games can be adjusted to practice whatever you want. However, when you are a new teacher doing a lesson on the past perfect (or another specific topic) for the first time, it can be nice to quickly find a game tailored to that skill.
2. In addition to a title each activity has an approximate time! When I first started teaching the HARDEST part for me what to figure out how long an activity should take. Now the author mentions that this isn't set in stone and it is key to remember that. Some classes will take longer and others won't need as much time, but at least Miles gives a general ideas.
3. Most activities require very little. So when you are assigned to a class without a computer, an IWB or a radio, it is nice to have these easy activities ot use.
4. If you don't have the Internet in your classroom you can download this to your tablet / Kindle and use it in class to find a last minute filler game.

Here's why it isn't the best

1. Most of these activities are fairly simple and you would probably have come up with them on your own / seen  them online / found them in a textbook.

Overall:

• If you are a new teacher, or a teacher who doesn't have time/ability to sort through the Internet to find appropriate activities this is great.
• If you had been teaching for a while but stopped and are just now getting back into it, this is a great refresher of some classics.
• If you are a new teacher who wants an overall view of different types of activities to do in EFL then this is a great e-book for you!

If you do download it let me know what you think! Do you like it more than I did, or less?