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Teaching English Fun Activities
Here are twenty English games and activities that CBOD volunteer Pam Anderson used with her after school English students, both grade school and high school level. It includes the game descriptions and the material and documents needed. Several were also effective English camp activities.
Our English clubs met twice weekly for 90 minutes and concentrated on conversational English, having fun, and becoming confident in our speaking of English. The activities were developed as a collaboration between the PCV and the students. They proved very effective in achieving a conversational English capability with usable vocabulary of 500 to 1500 words by the grade school club. Our English Club began with playing the Word Flashcard game and when they mastered those words, questions and sentence structures, we moved on to the First Alphabet cards and the picture flashcards by phonics units.. They learned good pronunciation and phonics, as well, and became good spellers and readers of their English vocabulary.
(I have found stickers to be a great, “cheap-to-send” care package item from the States and a great motivator for Thai students. They can also be downloaded free from sites like http://www.mesenglish.com/ ) Another idea-pilfered from the UbonRatchathani University English Crazy Camp crew, use the small labels and use markers to make your own designs. Very cheap- about B30 for 2400 stickers.
See Great English Teachers Page. for more about the English Crazy Camp.
I created a token economy by having a Sticker Store party/meeting about every 4-6 weeks where they could purchase fun, educational, and necessary items with their stickers. It was an extremely effective motivator at first. Within a year, buying things with the stickers wasn’t as important as learning the new words and accumulating the stickers. For some ideas on where to get items, see Ideas for a Token Economy
Some hints about an after school English club:
With some pretty strict rules and consistant enforcement of them about attendance and behavior, the 58 students attending the first class were weeded down to 20 interested students in about a month. (I explained that if they wanted an American English teacher, we would follow American classroom rules. It worked for me, without a Thai teacher counterpart.) We read the rules in Thai to start each class for the first two months as a reminder. Our rules were:
*Listen in class. (That includes not talking while someone else is talking)
*No name tag, don’t come in. (Kept the” Lookie-Lous” out.)
*Miss three times and you are out of the class. (I explained that if you miss three times, you won’t know the words and the others will get bored with you- they will police themselves and the interested will RESPECT this rule. You will have to keep good attendance records to back the police)
*Respect other students who want to learn. (The habit of helping their friend was a hard habit to break- be patient and consistently remind them that they take the opportunity for their friend to learn.-worked for me.)
*Have fun and enjoy learning English. (I think you will find this an easy rule to keep with these activities.)
For the rules in Thai, click here (for a Word document of the original implementation click here) have a Thai friend write them out for you so you can have the class read them before they start each meeting.
The games were developed as the students advanced, so you may want to try them in order. To see all of the games, follow the links below:
To see the 500 Flashcards, click here.
Word Flashcard Game
How To Use Picture Flashcards
The Word Action Game
Do You Have Color Game
The Word Picture Detective Game
The Many Questions Card Game
Picture Concentration
Word Relay Race
Name the Food
Sound Spy Relay Race
Spelling Relay Race
Jeopardy ( Jeopardy Questions-Set 1) (Jeopardy Questions-Set 2)
Hunt for the Vowel Game
The Questions Dice Game
Use the Verb Game
Vocabulary Bingo
Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt
Sentence Scramble
See also Crossword Puzzles
For a document with 48 scanned (GIF) worksheets using the pictures from these flashcards, click here.
Our English clubs met twice weekly for 90 minutes and concentrated on conversational English, having fun, and becoming confident in our speaking of English. The activities were developed as a collaboration between the PCV and the students. They proved very effective in achieving a conversational English capability with usable vocabulary of 500 to 1500 words by the grade school club. Our English Club began with playing the Word Flashcard game and when they mastered those words, questions and sentence structures, we moved on to the First Alphabet cards and the picture flashcards by phonics units.. They learned good pronunciation and phonics, as well, and became good spellers and readers of their English vocabulary.
(I have found stickers to be a great, “cheap-to-send” care package item from the States and a great motivator for Thai students. They can also be downloaded free from sites like http://www.mesenglish.com/ ) Another idea-pilfered from the UbonRatchathani University English Crazy Camp crew, use the small labels and use markers to make your own designs. Very cheap- about B30 for 2400 stickers.
See Great English Teachers Page. for more about the English Crazy Camp.
I created a token economy by having a Sticker Store party/meeting about every 4-6 weeks where they could purchase fun, educational, and necessary items with their stickers. It was an extremely effective motivator at first. Within a year, buying things with the stickers wasn’t as important as learning the new words and accumulating the stickers. For some ideas on where to get items, see Ideas for a Token Economy
Some hints about an after school English club:
With some pretty strict rules and consistant enforcement of them about attendance and behavior, the 58 students attending the first class were weeded down to 20 interested students in about a month. (I explained that if they wanted an American English teacher, we would follow American classroom rules. It worked for me, without a Thai teacher counterpart.) We read the rules in Thai to start each class for the first two months as a reminder. Our rules were:
*Listen in class. (That includes not talking while someone else is talking)
*No name tag, don’t come in. (Kept the” Lookie-Lous” out.)
*Miss three times and you are out of the class. (I explained that if you miss three times, you won’t know the words and the others will get bored with you- they will police themselves and the interested will RESPECT this rule. You will have to keep good attendance records to back the police)
*Respect other students who want to learn. (The habit of helping their friend was a hard habit to break- be patient and consistently remind them that they take the opportunity for their friend to learn.-worked for me.)
*Have fun and enjoy learning English. (I think you will find this an easy rule to keep with these activities.)
For the rules in Thai, click here (for a Word document of the original implementation click here) have a Thai friend write them out for you so you can have the class read them before they start each meeting.
The games were developed as the students advanced, so you may want to try them in order. To see all of the games, follow the links below:
To see the 500 Flashcards, click here.
Word Flashcard Game
How To Use Picture Flashcards
The Word Action Game
Do You Have Color Game
The Word Picture Detective Game
The Many Questions Card Game
Picture Concentration
Word Relay Race
Name the Food
Sound Spy Relay Race
Spelling Relay Race
Jeopardy ( Jeopardy Questions-Set 1) (Jeopardy Questions-Set 2)
Hunt for the Vowel Game
The Questions Dice Game
Use the Verb Game
Vocabulary Bingo
Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt
Sentence Scramble
See also Crossword Puzzles
For a document with 48 scanned (GIF) worksheets using the pictures from these flashcards, click here.
3jnerd |
Latest page update: made by 3jnerd
, Oct 1 2008, 6:02 AM EDT
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- 3jnerd
11 words added 1 word deleted view changes - complete history) |
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