Eva Buyuksimkesyan activities, creative tasks, creativity, efl, ELL, elt, esl, exercises, fun, fun activities, games, online games, pair work

Looking at Digital Games and Heroes

image taken from yahoo images
image taken from yahoo images

 

I am not a fan of online games. I don’t play any but my son spends most of his free time playing online games. I have lots of students who do the same and when the subject is online games, even the quietest one starts to speak. A few years ago I had three students in my class. They were very much interested in games. They were very interesting boys because they were not ordinary players as they learned a lot about mythology and literature playing these games. One of them is writing stories and probably he’ll become a famous writer one day. That’s my hope for him.

I was clearing my files during the break and I came across a handout I coped from a book (unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the book) on literature. There were questions about favourite titles and characters. I put the handout among the ones I’d like to use this year but then suddenly I thought about another activity. Why shouldn’t I adapt it to games that the students are fond of playing and would work on the activity eagerly?

So here are my questions. I’ll be very happy if you can suggest other questions for this activity.

Think about the online games you love playing. First finish the sentences then compare your answers with your partner.

  1. I think I’m like the character ————————– from the game ———— because ———————-.
  2. I like the title of the game ————————— because ———————-.
  3. The game which I find very challenging is ———————————.
  4. I want to meet the character ———————- from the game —————- because ————————-
  5. The character whose action I admire is ————————– because ——-
  6. For me the most interesting 3 online games are ———————————.
  7. It is easy to win a game in ————————– because ———————–
  8. It is difficult to win a game in ———————– because ———————-.
  9. The game ——————- is set in a ——————————. It is —————–.
  10. 10. In the game ———————— you need to be a team to win.

Here you can find the handout I prepared for the activity.

Links to some blogs and interesting posts on online games

 

 

Eva Buyuksimkesyan activities, dialogue, efl, fun, fun activities, ice-breakers, lesson ideas, vocabulary, writing games

5 Fun Activities For the Monday Morning

 

Slide1

1. Categories

Divide the class into two.

Explain the rules. You will give the students a category.

Call 2 students from each team to the board.

Set 2 minutes and tell them to write the words that come to their mind.

Some categories:

Things in a fridge

Things you can buy from a supermarket

Expensive items

Things you can find in a living room.

Adjectives that describe personality.

2. Right Word, Wrong Place

Prepare a handout with newly learned structures or some quotes on the topic you’d like to discuss in the class.

Make grammatically incorrect sentences changing the place of two words in the sentence and ask students to correct them.

3. Catch the words

Draw a circle and write some letters with which students form words. Prepare a handout jumbling the words you’ve recently studied in the class.

4. Dialogues

On slips of papers, write sentences or ask students to write sentences.

Put the students in pairs.

Give each pair 4 slips of papers, preferably the same 4 sentences and tell them to write a dialogue and insert the sentences they have on the slips of papers into their dialogues.

5. Comprehension Questions

Write the topic of the reading passage/listening activity on the board.

Tell students to copy it on a piece of paper and then write a question about it.

Then pass the paper to their friend and ask them to write another question. Then tell them to pass it to the next student. When each student receive their own papers, ask them to read the text and try to find if any of the questions are answered.

Eva Buyuksimkesyan efl, FlipQuiz, games, web 2.0

FlipQuiz

We love playing games in the class and quiz-show type games are very popular in our classrooms. We have the PowerPoint format of most games but if we want to change certain things on them to adapt the game for our own needs, we spend long hours and sometimes we give up. I’ve just come across with a very handy way to create my own games.

FlipQuiz 

First of all it’s free and very easy to use. All you have to do is to sign up and go to your dashboard. You will see two buttons at the top. Click on the green one and start creating your board. You will be able to create 6 categories and for each category you can add 5 questions. You can either add the answers or leave it blank. Then click on save and share the link with your students. I’m planning to revise Conditionals in the class with FlipQuiz

 

FlipQuiz

I think FlipQuiz can be used in a language classroom effectively. I will use it

1. with readers, novels and short stories, reading texts to check comprehension

2. to revise grammar

3. to revise vocabulary

4. just for fun ( as who wants to be a millionaire)

 

Eva Buyuksimkesyan activities, blog challenge, efl, fun activities, games, novels, readers, reading, reading comprehension, short stories

Reading Games for Readers, Novels or Short Stories

Reading

image from #eltpics via @mkofab

In December, I had the chance to listen to Steven Krashen at YTU ELT symposium. He talked about the importance of reading, how he became a good reader and what narrow reading is. You can read Marisa Constantinides’ fabulous post on Dr Krashen’s talk here.

That was the time I went back to the past and thought how I became a reader. I did the narrow reading. There was a time in my life, I read Enid Blyton novels, then came the French classics and the Russians, I fell in love with Sartre, Camus and their contemporaries, then came the Italian novelists and the South Americans and of course there was a time I only read British novelists. There was a time I read poetry only -Orhan Veli, Melih Cevdet, Zahrad.

I was lucky to have two primary school teachers who led me to the paths of reading so I want to follow their footsteps. I believe teachers can help students become good readers. That’s why I think about fun activities to go with reading lessons.

Here you will find some activities that I use with my classes.

1. Tic-tac-toe

Write questions from the story or novel on slips of papers or post-it-notes and number them from 1-9. (Prepare double or triple questions for each number as students may not answer the questions)

Put in an envelope or a box or stick the papers on a ‘tic-tac-toe’ grid.

Team your students as Xs and Os.

Draw a tic-tac-toe grid on the board and tell them to choose a number. Take the numbered post-it from your tic-tac-toe handout. If they answer the question correctly, cross the number with X or O.

Continue until the questions finish.

1

 

 

 2 3

4

 

 

 5 6

7

 

 

 8 9

2. Who Wants to be a Billionaire?

Play the game with questions from the novel or the story you read in the class.

3. Who said that?

Choose quotes or sentences from the novel

Divide the class into two teams.

Ask students “Who said that?”

4. Snowball fights

Tell students to write questions or quotes from the novel or the story on a piece of paper.

Tell them to make a paper snowball and allow them to play snowball fights for a while.

Stop them

Tell them to take the closest snowball and answer the questions.

You can guide them to ask their questions according to Bloom’s Taxonomy using http://teachers.ash.org.au/researchskills/dalton.htm#top

Now I’d like you to invite my first ever blog challenge 🙂

Would you like to share some of your favorite reading activities on your blog?

If you don’t blog, I’d be very happy to host your post on this blog.

 

 

Eva Buyuksimkesyan activities, energizers, games, ice-breakers

Need Energy?

seksekEnergisers are great activities and can save lives when you feel your students are not in the lesson anymore.

These quick games can be used to bring your students back to classroom. A little bit movement, mingle, laughter will break the ice, will help to get rid of the boredom. Maybe the focus is not directly on the language but still you can adapt these games according your students’ needs and levels.

Touch Something Pink

Tell students to stand up. Explain that you will give instructions and they will touch something in the classroom according to it. It can be an object, a coat, etc

What has changed?

  • Pair students
  • Partners should observe each other carefully
  • Tell them to turn their back to each other and make 3 changes to his/her appearance. For example, they can remove a watch or change the wrist, roll up sleeves, etc.
  • When ready, they turn to each other and in turns they try to find the 3 changes.

Find your family

  • Prepare cards with categories, fruit names, family names or occupations.
  • Give each student a card
  • Tell everyone to walk around the class and find their group members

This one will work very well when you plan your groups in a group work. They usually moan when you say work with him or her but when you play a game and put them in a group like that they obey the rules.

Fruit Salad

A classic but fun!

  • Teacher divides the students into an equal number of fruits according to the class size.
  • Students sit in a circle.
  • Give each student a card with a fruit picture
  • One must stand in the centre.
  • Teacher shouts a fruit, such as ‘apple’
  • All apples must stand up and change places with another.
  • The student in the middle tries to sit before all the apples settle to their new seats.
  • The new person in the middle shouts another fruit.

Tide’s in / Tide’s out

  • Draw a line representing the seashore.
  • Ask students to stand behind the line.
  • When teacher shouts ‘Tide’s out!’, students jump forward over the line.
  • When teacher shouts ‘Tide’s in’, students jump backwards over the line.
  • If the teacher shouts ‘tide’s out’ twice in a row, students who move will drop of the game.