How often do you find yourself preparing a class, wrapping your head for something different, a new activity to cheer up a group of tired students, or just to bring something new into the classroom? If you’re like most teachers, thinking of something new and exciting every day isn’t easy, and often we just don’t have the time (or energy!) So we go back to our tried-and-true ideas (and sometimes a little worn). , or to the next page after page of a textbook.

Well, it doesn’t have to be that difficult. Many ideas can be adapted to many different language points, giving you something that can be used over and over again. If the activity has a clear focus, motivation (students need to know why they are doing something; adding an element of competence to an activity is one way to achieve this), and of course clear instructions, then you are in for a winner.

There are many good resource books available with hundreds of quick and easy activities that require little or no preparation. Search your school resources for books like “Five Minute Activities” by Penny Ur and Andrew Wright, or “Keep Talking” by Friederike Kippel. Don’t forget that your fellow teachers are good resources too – use them!

Here are some ideas to get started:

1 You may be familiar with “Backs to the Board,” where one representative from each of the two teams turns his back on the board, while his teammates try to explain the word he has written on the board, without saying the word to him. word or any variation of it. Well, why not extend this to complete sentences? The teams have one minute to explain the sentence to their partner, without using any of the words, or spelling them, or using gestures. You can adapt this to whatever tempo or structure you want to practice.

2 Sentence reduction: Write a long sentence or a short paragraph on the board, rich in vocabulary. In teams, students take turns deleting one, two, or three words in a row. The sentence should still make sense, grammatically, afterwards. If not, replace the words and go to the next team. Keep going until no further reductions are possible (your students will be surprised at how short the sentence can get, while retaining its grammatical sense!). The winning team is the one that eliminates the most words. (Variation: do the opposite: start with one word and ask students to replace it with two or three, expanding the sentence.)

3 To practice spelling and vocabulary, try this: start with a letter on the board, say “S”. The first student then thinks of a word that begins with “S” and adds the next letter, for example “ST”. The next student then thinks of a word that begins with “ST” and adds another letter, and so on. If someone in the group thinks there is no such word, they can challenge the writer to name their word. If there is no such word, the writer is out, but if he was thinking of a real word, then the challenger is out. The winner is the last remaining student.

4 If your students are imaginative, give each group four or five pictures cut out of magazines and ask them to create a picture story; you can keep the context very open or have them focus on a particular time or function. If you want to focus on oral communication, don’t let them write their story! If you want to evaluate their writing as well, ask them to write it down as they go. When they have finished, have each group tell their story to the rest of the class.

5 As a “Getting to Know You” exercise, ask students to write down three things that are true about themselves and two that are not true (but believable). Students take turns reading their sentences to the rest of the group, who must discuss and ask questions of the reader and try to find out which of their sentences are true. A good way to break the ice is to do this yourself first to get an idea: write the five things about yourself on the board. (Variation: Write five one-word facts about yourself on the board, for example, “32”, “Liverpool”, “Three”, “Bloggs”, and ask students, in pairs, to try to guess the questions asked. will give these answers.)

6 Another for imaginative learners: dictate the first line of a different story to each of several groups. They have a few minutes to continue the story and then pass their sheet of paper to the next group, who reads the story so far and adds the next part. Continue until the stories reach their original groups, who then conclude and read the stories. To focus on a particular language point or vocabulary item, you can do it orally as a chain story: write the first sentence and then have the first student continue the story. At some point, they must use the tense, structure, or word (assigned in advance) that you want to work on. Continue until all students have contributed.

7 For vigorous writing practice, divide the board into three columns and give each column a heading with three structures that you want to practice (for example, “first, second, third conditional”, “yes / no questions, indirect questions, labels questions “,” present perfect simple, present perfect continuous, past simple “). Divide the students into pairs. One of each pair is the writer, the other is the broker. Give each pair many small pieces of paper and some blu-tac, and tell them to construct as many grammatically correct sentences as they can, in each of the three categories, and paste them on the board (with their initials to identify them). ). Set a time limit of five or ten minutes. The writer writes a sentence, then the runner takes the sheet of paper and sticks it on the board. Yell “CHANGE” from time to time to switch roles. At the end, have all the classmates look at the sentences and evaluate them. If they find an incorrect one, they will tell you, and that sentence does not count toward that pair’s score. (Variation: You can make this activity more difficult by saying that each sentence must contain a minimum of 10 words, for example.)

8 Another favorite is to give each student a secret celebrity identity, which is attached to their back or forehead. They go around the class, asking yes / no questions to establish their identity. You could make sure they practice the simple past by making all famous people die (“Did I live in the US?”), Or the perfect present, bringing them to life (have I acted in many movies?), Or future, for imagining that these famous people have not yet been born (Will I be an actor?).

9 Stand students up and yell two opposing ideas, people, concepts, adjectives, or places. For example, “beach or mountain”, “Spielberg or Hitchcock”, “red or blue”, “Playstation or Nintendo” depending on the age / interests of your students. Point out one side of the room for one idea, the other side for the other. Students move to the side of the room they choose; choose a few students at a time to explain the reasons for your choices. If you want, you can let it develop into a discussion between the two groups.

10 Hold a “grammar auction” or “fill-in-the-hole auction” with mistakes students have made (and noted) or with an area of ​​language you want to work on. Divide the students into teams and assign each team $ 100, or 10,000 yen, or whatever amount you want. If you can photocopy some real money, so much the better. For the grammar auction, give each team a worksheet with 10 (or more) sentences (depending on the mistakes they made or the language area they are working on). Some must be grammatically correct, others incorrect. Give the teams some time to discuss whether they think the sentences are correct or not, and then ask them to bet on that decision for each sentence. Then give them the answer: if their decision was correct, they will double the amount they bet; if not, they will lose their bet. To fill in the spaces, give them 10 or more sentences to fill in the spaces (again depending on the area you are practicing or their mistakes) and this time they choose the correct word to enter the space and bet on it.

You can find variations on these activities, and many, many others, in the books mentioned at the beginning of this article, among others. Try one of them today to get something different in your ESL classes!