Green Games

Card Games (including flash card games)

Using Music (make instruments, dance steps)

Speaking Games (let's talk!)

Miscellaneous (let's juggle!)

When planning games here are some considerations:

• Give Fair Trade or organic food items from shops like People Tree or Tengu as prizes. Some charities sell chocolate or other goods to fund their endeavours, try buying their goods to tempt your students!
• Rather than rewarding students with a products, give them free lunch vouchers for the school cafeteria (if high school) or some other prize that is not a tangible 'thing'. See our Giving Green Gifts for ideas. Maybe students can earn stamps for good work and then when they have enough stamps get a cool green gift.

Card games

Many flash cards are commercially available for use in teaching English. Flash cards are great: they are reusable and reduce the need for extra resources like individual student worksheets. Otherwise make your own.

Conventional card games like 'Uno' are popular in Japan. They are a good way to share culture and encourage conversation. Regular cards are available at 100 yen stores.

Flash

1. Write new words on flash cards.
2. In sets of about four or five attach cards to blackboard.
3. When students have had enough time to memorize position of words, turn the cards over so the word cannot be seen.
4. Read a sentence using one of the words.
5. The students must guess which word was used and which flash card contains the word. He or she should come to the front of the class, choose a card, turn it over, read the word and repeat the sentence.

Example:

Words/Cards: car, train, bicycle, skateboard, on foot

Sentence: I came to school by train.

Other students may be allowed to help or students could work in teams.

You can use the same word cards for a few games to allow students more time to memorize them. Just be sure to move the cards around so the game is more interesting. You can use picture cards too. Say what the card represents in English, and the students have to find the correct card.

Memory Game

Turn all card upside down and find pairs. Maybe match english words on one card with related picture card.

Dancing / Making music

If you play an instrument bring it along. Make your own instruments out of PET bottles. Fill them with sand, beans, rice (or anything else that will fit and make noise) and shake along with the weird gaijin music! Have a competition to see which student can make the strangest instrument from used household goods!

Dance steps: Teach The Hustle, The Bus Stop, The Nutbush, square dancing, Australian bush dancing, line dancing, The Chicken Dance .... a good class warm up activity!

Speaking games

Blackboard Pictionary

On cards, write the words you want students to learn. One at a time give them to students. Without talking the student must draw a picture on the blackboard and the other students must guess the correct word from the drawing. The student who elicits the fastest correct response wins.

Fruit salad

Students sit in a circle. The teacher goes around the circle giving each student a word eg apple, pear, banana, orange, etc. When each student has a word, the game can begin. A person is chosen to be "in", and stands in the middle. A teacher can be this person to start. The "in" person chooses a word, eg apple. "Apple" could be said aloud or a new line of dialogue incorporating the word could be used, eg "May I have some apple please?" On hearing the word "apple" mentioned the "apples" must jump from their seats and change with another "apple". The "in" person competes with them for a seat. The person left over is the new "in" person and chooses the next players to change seats. If an "in" person says "FRUIT SALAD!" then ALL players must switch seats.

It is fun to make a rule that you cannot swap seats with a person sitting immediately next to you.

You can alter the dialogue between the new and old "in" people to practise specific phrases.

Fruit salad variation

Like fruit salad game, but participants speak lines of dialogue to each other as they change places. They also stay in their seats in their classroom.

In this example, food is used but this game can be adapted for other vocabulary building or textbook work. You just need to switch the spoken dialogue and row labels.

Give each row of students a word from the lesson vocabulary eg (for food lesson) vegieburgers, potato chips, noodles, bananas, pineapples, popcorn. Once they are sure of what food they are, the teacher starts by standing at the front of the class and calling out the first line of the lesson dialogue: "I'm hungry. Please give me more vegieburgers!" The vegieburger row must stand up, put their hands up and shout "I like vegieburgers!" The last student to do so is in. The "in" student remains standing and must say to the teacher "You eat too much. That's not good for you." The teacher responds, "Don't worry, I jog every day."

The "in" student remains standing and repeats the teacher's lines, ie "I'm hungry. Please give me more ...potato chips!" The potato chips row must stand up, put their hands up and shout "I like potato chips!" The last student to do so is now in. And so on.

Password

Each row of students is one team. Rows of students participate against each other. One at a time, students leave the room. Outside they are told a word by their teacher. They all return to the classroom and when the teacher says "Go" each students turns to the next one in the row and says the secret word. The last person in the team must run to the blackboard and write it out. The first team to do this correctly wins. To play several times, rotate the students. Maybe they can move back one place in the row so the person writing on the blackboard changes each time.

This game also works with numbers. Large numbers are especially fun!

As corrections are made in front of the class, everyone gets to watch and learn. It is a team effort. As passing on information can lead to errors, the students writing on the blackboard don't need to accept full responsibility for the final outcome!

Taboo

Students ask designated person questions. He or she must answer the question without saying "Yes" or "No". If the taboo words are spoken the player is out.

Example:

Q: Do you like cats?

A: I like cats.

Q: Are you a student?

A: I am a student

Shiritori

Teacher chooses a word e.g. duck. The next player must think of a word beginning with the last letter of the previous word eg "koala". A good game for use in Japan as many Japanese people have difficulty pronouncing English word endings properly. A traditional Japanese game, it is played here by using the last syllable of a word to start to next word, eg sato, tofu, futon...

Twenty Questions

A person chooses an object, person, animal etc and other players are allowed to ask 20 questions before guessing at what it is. Unlike the game Taboo (above), the answers to the questions must always be yes or no.

Questions, Questions

This game is basically designed for two people, although it could work with students playing togather against the teacher or one other student. Players ask each other questions: the first to respond with a sentence rather than another question is out. Good training for future politicians!

Example:

Player 1: Do you always respond to a question with a question?

Player 2: What's wrong with that?

Player 1: Aren't you worried people will think you are insubstantial?

Player 2: Should I be?

Who Am I?

Player chooses a famous person and others ask questions in order to guess the identity of the secret celebrity. Variations on the game limit the kind of questions or answers that can be given. E.g., the answers must always be yes or no, or the questions must always use a certain verb form etc

Miscellaneous

Juggling

Materials: 3 balls for each student, background music (dance music is good), space (move those desks aside!)

How to Juggle: Pick up one ball and throw it up in the air. Let it fall. When it hits the ground, celebrate with a big "YES!!" Do this for 5 minutes or so.

1. Pick up the next ball and throw both balls up in the air, one at a time. Catch the first and let the second one fall. When it hits the ground, celebrate with a big "YES!!" Do this for 5 minutes or so.
2. Pick up all three balls. Throw the three balls up in the air. Catch the first two in the order they were thrown and then let the third ball fall. When it hits the ground, celebrate with a big "YES!!" Do this for 5 minutes or so.
3. Throw all three balls and catch all three, and keep going as long as you can. Count the number of times you catch a ball. Try to keep focussing on this number. You are juggling!

The reason why it is so important to celebrate throwing the ball away with a big "YES!!" is because many people have difficulty throwing a ball once they have caught it. This upsets their rhythm and they cannot keep juggling after they have thrown their balls once.

Juggling requires some practice, though within a few days you can be a capable juggler. Maybe you won't be able to sit on a unicycle juggling five flaming torches in one hand on your first day but you will be able to impress people at parties with a little bit of work! Encourage students to practice in their own time, and if your students are keen and you are kind you may wish to help them out at lunchtimes or after school. It is recommended that you practice over a bed or desk so you don't have to bend down to the floor all the time to pick up the dropped balls.

Juggling is a good warm up activity for classroom teaching. It can be done for fifteen minutes or so at the start of each lesson. It gets both hemispheres of the brain working. It is also a good confidence booster (and party trick).

Role playing

Get students to read dialogues from the textbook, other books, from cards, or from the blackboard. Maybe they can write their own scripts or parody famous scripts. Do an English version of a popular television commercial or TV show for example. Advanced students can perform scenes from plays or movies. Many screenplays are commercially available with Japanese translation for use in English class. Otherwise, you can download screenplays from sites like Drew's Script o Rama (do an internet search for "screenplay").

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