Just Improvise – A Quick Game
Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise — George Gershwin
Gershwin was right. Sometimes in the classroom, you just improvise — and magic happens.
A Classroom Activity Where You Just Improvise
Sometimes my mind doesn’t allow me to enjoy the moment.
Last week a group of actors from a drama club visited our school and they performed with our students. They improvised in the school yard. They started with some warm-ups and continued with a few short ‘games’.
While watching them, I caught myself thinking how I could adapt them in my classes.
There were fabulous ideas and yesterday we tried one of them.
Level: intermediate and above
Time: it’s up to you and your students
Aim: to practice relative clauses, vocabulary
Preparation: none
- Ask students to stand up and form a semi circle.
- Tell them you will start the game saying ‘I’m the door.’
- Then a student will come and say a sentence which is related with the door and act as the thing in the sentence. He may say ‘I’m the lock on the door’, pretending to be a lock.
- Then a third one will come and complete the scene. He may say ‘I’m the key that opens the door.’ The first one will decide who will continue and may say ‘I want the key to stay here’.
- Then the key repeats ‘I’m the key that opens the door‘ and the game continues until you get bored.
When playing it they will make associations, connections, they can even play with the words and choose rhyming ones.
For example the next student may say ‘I’m the flock of birds flying to the south’ after hearing the word ‘lock’.
We enjoyed the activity very much. It can be a warmer or filler. Think about dull Monday mornings or long Friday afternoons.
NB My students are teenagers aged between 15 and 17. I think this activity will be suitable for teenagers and adults.
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Brilliant ideas! Thanks for sharing Eva! Have a nice Friday and weekend:)
Cheers,
Candan
That’s a lovely idea, Eva, and the rhyming part sounds both ambitious and challenging. Would you mind telling me how old the students are who were able to do this activity?
Lovely, Eva!
I was just thinking:
Do you know the song “There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea”http://www.songsforteaching.com/folk/theresaholeinthebottomofthesea.htm
and the nursery rhyme “This is the house that Jack built”? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_the_House_That_Jack_Built
Playful associations around a strong image are so much fun 🙂
That’s a fantastic idea. Really creative. I’ll give it a shot on Monday morning 🙂 You could tailor it to vocabulary you worked on the previous week or something as well.
I love this idea! You are so clever and creative, Eva.
Karenne
Hello Eva!
Thank you for participating in the Blog Carnival. I might not have seen this post otherwise. It gets a bit overwheleming at times doesn’t it, all the things up on the web, and we can miss great things like your post here,
There’s SO much about this I like. First, this game passes one of the most important “tests” of a good game according to what I was taught by David Paul, a teacher trainer in Japan, and that is, adaptability. This game can be used for a variety of target language structures. I think that it could appeal to a range of learners too from young learners to even some adult learners, and from false beginners to advanced learners.
Thanks again!
Michael