Heidi Chen / Dong Yuan Elementary School

The following is sample material for English teachers. The three games are easily to operate in class. You can make use of them to play games for practicing phonics, vocabulary words, sentences, and questions to answer.

Why I have activities in my English class

　　As an English teacher, I strongly believe that creating an exciting environment for students is essential. You can make good use of the following games to motivate students in your English class.
　　They are, “Give or Keep”, “Phonics in a Row”, and “Listen and Fold”. I will give you the objective, material needed, steps and notes for each activity. All of them have been properly practiced in my class. It helps a lot for students in various levels.

Activity I: “Give or Keep”

Objective: Practice what you have learned in class and win points by luck.
Materials needed: magnets (for the points), ppt slides (for the game)
Steps:
　　1. Divide students into two teams.
　　2. Students take turns choosing a letter from the 26 buttons on the screen.
　　3. Click the letter
　　4. Students of the team see the question and answer it.
　　5. The teacher shows the answer.
　　6. Then the team needs to choose “give” or “keep”
　　7. The teacher helps click the button, “give” or “keep”.
　　8. If they choose “keep”, they will keep the points when they see “+___”. However, they will lose points when they see “-___.”
　　9. On the contrary, if they choose “give”, they will give the points to the other teams. The opposite team will get points only when they see “+__”, and they will still lose points if they see “-__.”
　　10. Besides “+” or”- “, the teacher can also put “x”, “exchange” or a bomb to make the game more exciting.

Notes:
You can also make your own “give or keep” cards with hard paper. Students can draw one of the card and decide to keep the card or give the card to the other team. (For example, you can write “+1, -1, x2, /3, exchange, or bomb” on the paper.)

Activity 2: “Phonics in a row”

Objective: Practice easy phonics rules
Materials needed: a dice (for the points), ppt slides (for the game)
Steps:
　　1. Divide students into three teams, team A, B, and C.
　　2. Students can see 25 phonics words on the ppt slide.
　　3. The teacher leads the whole class to review all the phonics words before the game.
　　4. Each team takes turns rolling the dice.
　　5. For example: Team A rolls the dice. If the number is 3, Team A needs to choose one of the grids with the number 3 and read the word. Team A can mark “A” if it’s correct.
　　6. The first team to get 3 of the marks in a row is the winner.

Notes:
In order to mark A, B, or C on the blackboard, we need to pull up the screen in the front of the classroom. It’s easier to mark the team and draw a line on the blackboard if they have three in a row.

Activity 3: Listen and Fold

Objective: Practice Listening and Speaking
Materials needed: A piece of A4 paper
Steps:
　　1. Divide the class into several teams.
　　2. Each team has a piece of A4 paper.
　　3. Each A4 paper has two sides.
　　4. Each side of the A4 paper has 8 phonics words.
　　5. The teacher reads a phonics word.
　　6. The student needs to fold the paper into a smaller one and show it to the teacher.
　　7. Students need to stand up, read the word and show it to the teacher.
　　8. The fastest team can get a point.

Notes:
Some naughty students will play with the paper. The teacher needs to remind them not to do anything bad with the paper or the teacher will take away some points.

Conclusion:

Activities are a vital part of teaching English as a foreign language. They can be used to warm up the class before your lesson begins or kill a few minutes at the end of class. No matter you teach adults or children, activities will ensure your lessons to run smoothly. An English classroom should be fun, active and challenging and I hope these games are sure to help you go ahead in the right direction.

Keep or Give(下方)	Keep or Give
Phonics in a row	Listen and Fold