Revista simpozionului Eficiență și calitate în educație - 19 mai 2017 Eficiență și calitate în educație | Page 16

Colour Circles
A good activity for young kids. Get some pieces of A3/A4 paper and draw a large circle on
each one. Pin the circles on different walls in the classroom. Model the activity: Say
"Blue", take a blue crayon, walk over to one circle and colour a small part of the circle. Do
this for each colour you plan to teach. Then, say a colour ("Blue") to a student and she/he
should pick up the blue crayon and go over to the circle you coloured in blue. Let him/her
colour it a little and then call him/her back. Continue with other students.
Touch: Have students run around the classroom touching things that the teacher orders
them to do (e.g. "Touch the table", "Touch a chair", "Touch your bag"). Colours work well
for this, as students can touch anything of that colour (e.g. "Touch something green"). I do
this activity with two or three students in the same time not with the whole class.
Train Ride Game
Have students form a train (standing in line holding onto each other). Go around the
classroom and call out instructions (e.g. faster, slower, turn left/right, stop, go).
Follow the leader
Students line up behind the teacher and follow him/her around the classroom. The
teacher does an action and shouts out the word for that action. The students copy the
action and repeat the word. Good actions include: wave hello/goodbye, it's cold/hot, stop,
go, run, hop, skip, crawl, walk backwards, jump, sit down, stand up.
Give Me Game: You can use with objects or flashcards. This works well with plastic fruit
or little toy animals. Gather and elicit the different kinds of plastic fruit/animals you have
then give each student an item. Once the students have the fruit/animal, the teacher says
"Give me an apple". The one with the apple should hand him/her the fruit "Here you are".
There will be more students with the same type of fruit or animal. Another alternative of
this game is that of asking a student to say ”Give me…” .
Action Race: This is a fun game using actions. Use actions like jump, hop, clap, run etc.
Have the students split into two teams and sit in lines with a chair by each team and one
chair at the other end of the room. One student from each team stands next to their chair
and the teacher calls an action, e.g. "Jump". Students must jump to the chair on the other
side of the room and back, sitting down in their chair students say "I can jump". First one to
do it gets their team a point.
Bibliography:
Harmer, J. (1991). The Practice of English Language Teaching: New Edition. New York:
Longman.
Lewis, Gordon and Bedson, Gunther. 1999. Games for Children. Oxford: OUP.
Toth, M. (1995). Children's games. Oxford: Heinemann Publishers.
Links last accessed 1 May 2017:
http://esl-kids.com/eslgames/eslgames.html
http://eslkidstuff.com/Gamescontents.htm
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/esl-teaching-tips/124028-communication-games-for-
your-classroom/
http://www.english-time.eu/for-teachers/activities/
http://www.eslinsider.com/blog/esl-activities-for-kids-that-motivate-and-educate
http://www.eslinsider.com/blog/the-13-best-esl-games
http://www.fluentu.com/english/educator/blog/esl-grammar-games/
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