What’s the best and easiest way to liven up your ESL lessons and create more fun along the way? Very simply by including classroom games and activities. However, most ESL teachers tend to miss this small yet very important part of teaching!

A lot of ESL teachers are literally a slave to the book! What the book says goes! Though when teaching it is always better to get the views of your students, what would they like to learn in an English lesson and once more how would they like to learn?

If a lesson is just full of endless repetition and the students are spoon fed with grammar, they’re just going to go into a state of stagnation! What does this mean for you the ESL teacher? To put not so finer point on it, this means, that your students will be bored! What do bored students equal to any teacher? Yes, you’ve guessed it, bored students equal students who are not learning!Bored students equal students who don’t want to come to your lessons! Bored students equal students who become frustrated, which in turn creates classroom discipline problems for you!

The easy way around this rather bleak scenario for you is simple. Just add some ESL games and activities to your lessons! They can help to reinforce the language and vocabulary points that you’ve previously taught! Everyone is a winner. I’m going to introduce you to one such classroom game, very simple and a great way to end the last 15 minutes or so of your lesson.

Simple Simon says activity

You can use a variety of vocabulary and phrases for this game. It’s great at getting the kids active and out of their seats after a long lesson.

Write a few phrases on the board that the kids are familiar with. For example you could put things like… Simon says… stand up and turn around. Simon says.. sit down and read your books. Simon says… stand up and put your hands on your head.

Procedure

Start by creating two teams.

Call out a command you want them to do, eg: Simon says… Stand up!

The team that complete the action first get a point for being correct.

There are many variations on this game. You of course can tailor it to suit your own needs and the needs of your students. Have fun with simple Simon!  ESL games activities   or Jobs.