I teach a few lessons for elementary school kids and since they’re 1-on-1 I’m finding it a bit difficult to make games and activities for them.
Currently I’m doing things like bingo, Uno, and memory to practice vocabulary because these are all based on luck. Are there any other simple games I can play against my students without destroying them every time?
7 comments
On Rakuten shopping there’s a game called Food Fight. It’s a card game that is purple, I recommend that
Jenga, for sure. You can do it with any grammar point. Just ask a question, they respond and take a turn, then you switch.
If it is still available there is a variant of Jenga called the sushi game. It has the same rules as Jenga except that the blocks are hollow. You can open the blocks and place in a question i.e Say a sentence with the past simple, name 3 dangerous animals.
I bought my copy in Bic Camera.
Other ideas are word race
Name 5 animals but they have to be linked to the last letter of the word, so , Elephant Tiger Rhinoceros Snake Eagle
You can make it more challenging if you want and adapt it to grammar. 5 present tense words for cooking. 5 past simple for sports.
You can also do a word family game with post it notes. Write word families on the notes and stick them around the room. The student has to organize them correctly.
Check out baamboozle dot com! Lots of quiz type free games. You can use your smart phone but it would be even better if you have a tablet.
If you don’t have A-GO, that one’s always good. Basically Uno, but each card has a question to ask on it. There’s three levels, blue being easiest and orange being hardest.
Also, how’s your Japanese? I have one I use with our consonant blend phonic chart (sh, th, wh, qu, etc.). Players can put one or two pieces (we have chips) down at a time, and give the sound and one or two words in English, plus their Japanese counterparts; ex. I put down two chips and say, “wh, what, 何, who, だれ.” If they only put down one, the opponent can put down one on top and “steal” the spot with their own word. (Maximum 2 chips on a space so that some can’t, for example, go “wh, where, who, what, when, why…”) I find that having a Japanese component knocks me down a level because while I know plenty in English, I might struggle to find an equivalent in Japanese.
There’s one I do with elementary aged students. Get a deck of cards, assign months to the cards (January-Ace, February-2,etc) until you get to king which would be their birthday. Shuffle the cards and they have to tell you the month based on the card number.
Cheap one: get a package of waribashi, write questions on them, and play pick-up sticks.