Theme: the role of games in teaching speaking for a2 level learners c0ntent introduction

The Mime Game

Get a set of actions, like these Verb Cards. Get a learner to come up to the front of the class and act out a different action from one of these cards, like eating or swimming. A point goes to the first person to guess the action.
Hangman
The game where a life is in the balance (the life of a fictional stick man, but still, important all the same). This is a fun game that can break up the day, or be used at the end of the day to kill some time (but hopefully no fictional stick men). Pick a word and draw out dashes to represent each letter. Learners then have to try and guess the letters in the word; get it right, they fill in one of the spaces, get it wrong, and you begin to draw the image of a hanging man. Learners need to correctly guess the word before the image of the hanging man is completed. If you’re dealing with a big group, you can always break it up and have learners playing within their tables. This gives more learners a chance to get more involved.
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Simon Says

A fun game where children develop their vocabulary and follow their teacher’s instructions (don’t they always?). Give instructions to your class, such as ‘hop on one leg’, or ‘pat your head’. But learners should only follow the instruction if first you say ‘Simon says’ (who is this Simon and why must everyone do what he says? A mystery for another time perhaps). You could even switch it up and nominate different learners to play the part of Simon 

Fly me to the Moon

A test of knowledge, and of paper aeroplane strength. Have your learners follow these instructions to create their own paper aeroplanes. Then put them into teams and ask them a set of questions- this could be about any of the topics you’ve covered. If a team gets a question right, then they can nominate one member from their team to try and throw their paper aeroplane at a target in the classroom. If it hits it, they get a point.

Interactive Games

Here at Twinkl, we’ve created a fantastic selection of interactive games that work great as fun ESL games for children. Interactive games on the computer are another way to keep games entertaining and varied. Scroll through this page to find hungry hamsters that need feeding with tenses, bingo playing aliens, and synonyms that need to be sorted to create a great soup. Ah, the wonders of modern technology. The benefit of these games is that they’re so simple to use- just pop one up on your screen in your class and get started.