Classroom Fun Teaching Activities

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas You will find the web full of ideas for teaching vocabulary and, although most of them are undoubtedly good activities, some are only suited to a particular level. Here are some tried and tested activities that can be adapted to suit any level of student and a variety of class sizes. Listen to this blog post: 1. Hot seat 2. Beat the clock 3. Crosswords 4. Board games 5. Slow Pictionary 6. Vocabulary tennis 7. Pelmanism ("Concentration") Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! This is a great activity that can be used as a warm-up at the beginning of a class, or as a game at the end of a lesson. It's suitable for any class size over 4 students and requires minimal...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The purpose of flashcards is rather simple and mundane; we use flashcards to introduce and review vocabulary or concepts. My first language teacher said, "The only way to learn a foreign language is repetition, repetition, repetition." Can't argue with that. Unfortunately, it can be really… repetitious and boring. But, if you watch children playing, they'll show you how to make it fun. Images Double-sided or single-sided cards? Multiple Sets 3 Types of Flash Card Activities Matching Ordering and Sorting Guessing Other Ideas I call these activities, as opposed to games, as they don't involve dice or rules of play. More Games Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Flashcards can be great tools for eliciting vocabulary, but teachers should not overlook the numerous other uses for these great tools. Flashcard games can add excitement to young learners' classes. The following activities are aimed to drill the vocabulary in the second study phase of the lesson, after the elicitation of vocabulary. 1. Game for liars 2. Get on the other side of the bridge 3. Memory challenge 4. Keyword race 5. More for listening skills Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kiyomi Ann H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The liar game is a flashcard activity that can be used to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Raijmond W. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. 1. Game for liars 2. Get on the other side of the bridge 3. Memory challenge 4. Keyword race 5. More for listening skills Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: The liar game is a flashcard activity that can be used to drill vocabulary. This activity is ideal for vocabulary that a teacher is introducing as the activity involves repeating after the teacher. For this activity, the teacher should clap twice, point to a flashcard and say the vocabulary word. If the word and the flashcard match, students should clap twice and repeat the word. If the word does...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas What outdoor activities can help to teach English? I would like to say that there are plenty of outdoor activities that are effective to teach English. However, many teachers prefer indoor activities rather than outdoor, as they think that it might distract the students. Nonetheless, outdoor activities can increase their motivation for learning. Also, it helps to decrease their stress level, as they do not have to stay in the classroom as usual. Freewriting time Flashcard game 'Stand up if you've ever' game Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Sarosh Z. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The teacher...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Flashcards are an integral part of teaching English as a second language, and the variety of uses of cards is innumerable. Flashcard-based activities help teachers to make lessons fun, engaging, and therefore more effective. According to numerous studies conducted in different countries, and by various linguists, there are several types of students with varying abilities of memory and types of mind. And usually many of these types are represented within any one class, which leads us to the conclusion that the teacher should address each of them during the lesson. Reasons to Use Additional Resources Examples of Games Name the Card Match up Couples Sort and Name Funny steps Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas When teaching young learners, it's important not to spend too much time on any one activity as they can soon lose interest. It is also a good idea to have activities that give younger learners the chance to move about and use the boundless energy they have at that age. Below we present a list of short activities suitable for young and very young learners of English. Listen to this blog post: What's the Time Mr. Wolf? Telephone Basketball Volleyball Bingo Can you …? I Spy Odd One Out Stand Up Please Mastermind Blindfold Obstacle Course Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! This is a good activity for practicing time with small classes. Clear a space in the center of...  [Read more]

Federico Riva Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas The following activities may be adapted for use as warmers, engage activities, structured practice or free practice style activities. They may also be adapted for level and age. Watch the video about this topic Are you ready to teach English as a foreign language? Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! The first one is really simple but can be one of the best activities to improve grammar. Some students even at the higher levels are lacking automatic habits, which are really important for grammatical skill. Basically this activity is a grammar drill and it is supposed to be used as a warmer or as an ice-breaker activity. The main objective is to help your students automate some grammatical...  [Read more]

  Online ESL Activities: Are you an online English teacher? Do you want your students to enjoy and have fun? Then, this live stream is for you! Our TEFL/TESOL expert, Liza, will share five interactive activities that you will be able to use at your next class. Great news that these games will suit any age group and level. Don't miss! #TEFL#BestTEFL #TeachEnglishOnline 00:00-00:48 Mic was off 00:48-01:00 Intro Are you ready to teach English abroad or online? Click here and get started today: https://bit.ly/37gs5vO What is TEFL Certification? Where is it valid: https://bit.ly/36ma2Fg Check out our wide range of TEFL Courses: https://bit.ly/3ltqt73 Teach English online from anywhere you want: https://bit.ly/3ltqEPL Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Activities bring your classroom to life. They provide meaningful and fun use of language. Children learn through play and it is how adults learn, too. Acting, moving, having fun help learners effectively participate in the lesson, and retain what is being taught. The following are 5 activities with flashcards in the classroom: 1. Cups and cards (young kids): 2. Picture word match race: 3. Slam: 4. Four Corners: 5. Shopping: Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Trang M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Place the 3 cups in a row in front of your students. Tell your students to watch carefully...  [Read more]

  Online ESL Activities: Are you an online English teacher? Do you want your students to enjoy and have fun? Then, this live stream is for you! Our TEFL/TESOL expert, Liza, will share five interactive activities that you will be able to use at your next class. Great news that these games will suit any age group and level. Don't miss! #TEFL#BestTEFL #TeachEnglishOnline 00:00-00:48 Mic was off 00:48-01:00 Intro Are you ready to teach English abroad or online? Click here and get started today: bit.ly/37gs5vO What is TEFL Certification? Where is it valid: bit.ly/36ma2Fg Check out our wide range of TEFL Courses: bit.ly/3ltqt73 Teach English online from anywhere you want: bit.ly/3ltqEPL Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Federico Riva Teaching Ideas Throughout this course, my favorite units have been the ones that teach us how to lead an effective lesson and have a fun classroom environment. I love all the suggestions and teaching ideas they give, and it excites me to think about using those for my future lessons. For that reason, I chose the topic of five activities with flashcards. This essay will be a perfect opportunity for me to delve further into my favorite part of this class and plan some fun things to do. When I move abroad I plan on teaching young children, mainly kindergarten-aged, so my five activities will be geared towards young learners. They need way more energy, fun, and excitement in their lessons than teenage or adult learners because their attention spans are so short, so I tried to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas To keep the Activate Stage more fun and lively, offer your students one of these cool speaking activities. They will definitely enjoy the conversation and get creative with the tasks. Remember that any of these exercises can be easily used online. Listen to this blog post: 1. Teacher For a Day 2. Describe a Picture 3. Redo Your Talk 4. TripAdvisor 5. Communal Story Do you want to teach English abroad or online? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! Students share their ideas on how to make class more interesting and engaging. Let them discuss an ideal day in your ESL class and then propose their ideas to you. Give each student an unusual photograph (use photostocks...  [Read more]

1. Introduction to ESL Classroom Activities 2. Speaking and Listening Activities 3. Reading and Writing Activities 4. Vocabulary and Grammar Activities One of the most effective ways to improve English language skills is through speaking and listening activities. These activities help students practice their pronunciation, fluency, and comprehension. One popular activity is role-playing, where students act out scenarios to practice conversational English. Another useful activity is storytelling, where students take turns sharing a story or personal experience. Listening activities, such as watching videos or listening to podcasts, can also enhance students' listening skills and expose them to different accents and speech patterns. Reading and writing activities are essential for developing...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas One of the great things about teaching conditionals is that once you discover some classroom activities that work well for one, they can be adapted to suit any of the conditional patterns that you may be asked to teach. Here are 7 fun activities for teaching conditionals for the ESL classroom that you can easily adapt to help your students understand the correct structures and usages. Listen to this blog post: 1. Pass the Pig 2. Chain Conditionals 3. Pelmanism ("Concentration") 4. Mill Drill Questionnaire 5. Group Discussions 6. Board Game With Prompts 7. Using Songs Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! Tell your students to stand up and form in two lines (teams) and...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas When teaching reported speech the potential for mistakes, errors, and the general difficulty is enormous due to the number of changes that are made with verb tenses, patterns, pronouns, questions, time expressions etc.. It's important to cover the subject slowly with lots of verbal practice at every opportunity. There are plenty of standard 'change the direct speech to reported speech' activities, but your students will soon tire of these if you overuse them. Here are some ideas which have worked well in the EFL classroom and will give your students a good amount of talk time in a variety of ways. Listen to this blog post: The Go-Between Game The Lying Game Pelmanism ("Concentration") Guess Who Reported Speech "Tennis" Who Asked What? Find Someone...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas In a previous post, we looked at various teaching ideas for future simple and here we're going to describe some fun ideas for teaching three other future tenses. There are a wide variety of usages for future tenses and it's always important to make sure your activities focus on the usages that you've taught in your lesson. For example, future continuous can be used to talk about an ongoing action at a point in the future, a fixed future event, polite enquiries or to predict the future or the present. Predicting the present is one that students often have trouble conceptualizing, so we might as well start from there. Listen to this blog post: Predicting the present Ongoing action at a point in the future Expected achievements at a point in the future...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas There are a myriad of ways to talk about the future in English, so it's important to have a variety of activities for students to practice what you've taught them. Here we're going to focus on various usages for future simple and describe some fun teaching ideas that match them. 1. Spontaneous decisions 2. Predictions (no evidence) 3. Facts/certainties 4. Assumptions/deductions Listen to this blog post Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: One of the most common ways we use future simple in our day to day lives is to make spontaneous or unplanned decisions. For example, when choosing food from a menu, (I'll have the fish please), or if you have to make a change of plan (a friend calls to say they can't pick you up to go out and you might...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Passive voice is something native English speakers can use without much thought but it can be difficult for language learners to master because the switch from active to passive voice is quite an involved process – as many EFL teachers find when they first attempt to present it. Here are some fun activities that you can use in the classroom to help your students practice using this tricky language pattern. Do remember when you adapt these games that not every verb or tense in the English language can be used for the passive voice! Listen to this blog post: Change the Room Quiz Describing a Process Relay Tennis Game Jenga Roleplay; Blame it on Your Sister Mill-drill (mingling) Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Listen To This...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Teaching new tenses to students of a foreign language is often not as easy as you might anticipate, especially when the tense you are trying to teach them does not exist in their native language. The following 7 activities for teaching the present perfect for the ESL classroom will help your students pick up the tense in no time! Listen to this blog post: 1. Great Accomplishments 2. Have You Ever? 3. How Many Times Since? 4. Great Ambitions 5. Most Deprived 6. Bucket Lists 7. Since or For? Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! This is a great warm-up activity to make your students understand what the present perfect is all about. After teaching the structure of the...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas ESL teachers often encounter difficulties when teaching grammar patterns to students abroad. The following 7 activities for teaching the simple present for the ESL classroom will help your students pick up the tense in an easy and efficient way. Listen to this blog post: 1. Daily Routine 2. Cultural Norms 3. Classmate Interviews 4. ESP (Extraordinary Sensory Perceptions) 5. Where am I? 6. Present Simple BINGO Mingle 7. Weekend Party Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! This is a very good activity for when you start discussing the simple present and how it's used for routines and regularities. You can place the students into groups or pairs and have them discuss their...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas The simple past is one of the most important tenses in the English language. As it describes past actions, it's quite an easy tense to teach using a variety of fun and interactive activities. Here are 7 activities for teaching the simple past for the ESL classroom. 1. Preparations 2. Good Days and Bad Days 3. Charades Series 4. Dear Diary 5. Get Out and About 6. Accurate Endings 7. Double Duty Review Listen to this blog post Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: For more activities check out: 10 Exciting Activities for the Past Simple For this activity, the students think of significant accomplishments in their lives. After sharing with the class what they have accomplished, the students should describe what they did in order to achieve...  [Read more]

Simon ITTT Teaching Ideas The number of combinations of modals and usages is enormous, so TEFL certified teachers often spend a lot of time trying to find an activity that suits their particular teaching point. Here, we give you some adaptable ideas which should save you time thinking or searching, assuming you already have good grammatical knowledge of the subject and a little bit of creativity. Listen to this blog post: Language Tennis Mill-drill/Mingling Group Discussions or Debates Board Games Information Exchange Draw the Sentence Marked Up Dice Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! It's often better to spend a bit of time creating your own material rather than looking fruitlessly on the...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas Teaching grammar patterns often involves a lot of classtime and the more activities you have up your sleeve as a teacher the better. The following 7 activities for teaching the past progressive for the ESL classroom will help your students pick up the tense in no time! 1. Memory Challenge 2. People Watching 3. The Luck of The Draw 4. What You Didn't Do 5. So Much in Common 6. Strange Explanations 7. My Alibi Listen to this blog post Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Pull up an image with a lot of actions going on, for example, people engaging in different activities at a park or another public place. You can either hand out printed images or show it to your students on an overhead projector or TV. After having your students analyze...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Teaching Ideas The present progressive is one of the most important tenses in the English language. As it describes actions currently happening, it's quite an easy tense to teach using a variety of fun and interactive activities. Here are 7 activities for teaching the present progressive for the ESL classroom. 1. Look Around 2. A Letter Home 3. A Picture's Worth 4. Charade Call Out 5. What are you doing? 6. Sorry, I Can't 7. Picture Perfect Are you ready to teach English abroad? Related Articles: Have your class make observations about what's happening all around in the classroom and outside the windows. Make sure they students use the present progressive when describing what they see. Ask your students to write a letter to a parent, relative or friend describing their...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Storytelling can be useful to enhance students' imaginations as well as improve a wide variety of skills such as listening, comprehension, order, memory, and vocabulary. It is targeted for all ages, but best to start earliest possible to allow students to develop a liking towards reading. Storytelling can come with different forms of follow-up activities to further increase teaching efficiency as well as to check understanding of the students through elicitation. This essay will be focused on mainly storytelling activities for young learners in schools. Activities Experience Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jin K. Please note that this blog post might not...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Here are 9 fun ways to greet your students in the classroom that are social distancing approved and safe - plus, they are super fun and your students will love them.   This greeting has already become a classic and kids of all ages love it. Simply bumb your students' elbow as you say "hello" in the morning!   Similar to the first option, the foot bumb is even better if you want to avoid any sort of touch of the hands and arms.   Simple but effective. You can do this as a whole class or wave at each student individually as they enter the classroom in the morning.   Similar to "jazz hands," spirit fingers area a dance movement of the fingers with palms out and fingers moving quickly back and forth....  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Games have many elements that make them a powerful learning tool, many of them related to communication, collaboration, and a competitive motive that drives children and adults to do their best, encourage them to be creative, and use imagination. Playing games in the classroom have so many benefits and applying different approaches is not only a necessity in today's context but also a way for the teacher to feel personal satisfaction with their work. Researches show that game-based learning fosters student creativity and enhances learning levels. The classroom is the place, where students feel comfortable to participate in activities and to explore and to study. When teachers are in the classroom it is important to understand student's behavior....  [Read more]

Enhance your English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching skills with engaging classroom activities that will keep your students motivated and eager to learn. From interactive games to creative projects, incorporating a variety of activities into your lessons can make the learning process enjoyable and effective. Discover a range of classroom activities designed to improve language skills, build confidence, and foster a positive learning environment for ESL students. 1. Introduction 2. Vocabulary Building Activities 3. Speaking and Listening Exercises 4. Writing and Reading Tasks One of the key components of language learning is vocabulary acquisition. Engage your ESL students with fun and interactive vocabulary building activities such as word matching games, flashcards, and word...  [Read more]

Sarah Jennings Teaching Ideas As we approach the end of another academic year, it's an ideal time to celebrate achievements, build connections, and reflect on the shared journey. Whether you're teaching in a multicultural classroom or navigating diverse educational systems, this guide is here to inspire you with innovative ideas for end-of-year activities that will leave a lasting impression on your students. Ignite Creativity with End-of-Year Projects Reflect with a Memory Board Cultivate Gratitude with Thank-You Notes End-of-Year Activities Foster Connections Are you ready to teach English abroad or online? Give students the opportunity to showcase their creativity and talents with end-of-year projects that reflect their interests and passions. Whether it's multimedia presentations,...  [Read more]