Teaching English as a foreign language can be a pretty demanding job especially if one wants to make the English lessons as much fun as possible! What’s the easiest way to achieve this? By introducing ESL games and activities. Students love playing games! And the more games and activities you have up your sleeve the easier your English lessons will go!

Here is a favorite game of mine, it doesn’t really contain any vocabulary as such,. It’s main purpose is to get the students thinking and teach them numbers.

The ESL Math game

First off you’ll need to prepare some sums that you’ll be asking the students, maybe a list of twenty or more for one game. Example: 1 + 1 = 2 5 – 1 = 4 6*6 = 36 etc. Make sure the students understand what you are going to be doing.

Next, pre-teach = equals + plus – minus * multiply so the students know what you’re going to be saying. You could go through it like this… 6 plus 1 equals 7. Go through a few examples with them before you start the game,to make sure everything is clear before you start.

Now divide the students into teams, and give each team a piece of paper so they can work out the answers. Sometimes it’s better to do it this way because it will avoid students keep asking you to repeat yourself.

After that start the game. Firstly start off with some very easy sums like what is 1 + 3? This not only helps to warm the students up but allows them to develop some confidence.

Now you can dive right into the activity and drop some really hard ones on the students, depending on what level they are. This is a great game that can be adapted to any level and it really gets the students thinking! http://esljobs4teachers.com

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