Dance of The Ostriches ESL Classroom Activity

This is another one of those fun classroom esl activity games that kids just love to play. It’s really quite simple to set up and only requires two students, and two teams.

Preparation

Get yourself a pack of esl flashcards or failing that just make up some cards with vocabulary on them. You could even use pictures instead of vocabulary to make the game more challenging for the students. What you do can be tailored to what you are teaching and the level of English your students are used to. The esl flash cards could be English verbs, English nouns, colors etc. You also need a couple of clips for this game.

Part 1

Now ask the children to get into two teams of their choice, they now need to pick a team name. That’s best left to the students as they can come out with some really cool team names of their own.

Part 2

Get a player from each team to come out. The pick a picture or random flash card out of your pack of flash cards. Now make the first student face the class. Go behind that student and put a flash card on his back using one of those clips. Now make sure he has his back to the wall so nobody can see the card on his back. Now do the same thing to the other students.

Part 3

Now use a tie to blindfold each player and bring them out into the center of the room and stand them back to back with each other. Now take their blindfolds off and shout start. The idea is for the students to stalk each other until one student can outmaneuver the other and see what the card is on his back. Once one student can see the card or picture and call out the name his team will then get a point.

You really have to supervise this game because when it gets going it’s a fast action fun classroom esl activity that the kids really love and get carried away with! It will certainly add more sparkle to your esl lessons.

Tip

Because this is such a fun esl activity esl teachers should be aware that students could try to cheat by calling out the name of the particular esl flash card to their team mates in their own mother language! If this happens then just deduct a point from that team and that should put an end to any future cheating.