Greetings ESL Teachers and Friends! Today I’m happy to share with you the Best ESL Games I discovered during my career as a very passionate ESL Instructor! I taught in Korea for more than ten years and my tremendous success had a lot do with the fun teaching style I used and innovated.
Great games are an excellent way of making a class exciting. It changes the entire atmosphere, (a breath of fresh air to most Asian students). I frequently used catchy music too while teaching and for lessons, in general, I always used Exciting ESL Games to make everyone feel and believe that they are having fun while learning. You won’t even have to tell them they are learning because it’s all natural fun. That’s how humans learn. Here are some of the best games I collected, polished and innovated over the years.
You will find 2 great games below, but the full list is right here: Best ESL Games List.
“ABC Writing ESL Games”:
If you’re teaching young kids, it doesn’t have to be painful. The first thing these young students need to learn is both the Alphabet and then Phonics for each letter. The way you can do this is to divide the class into two teams, then give a marker pen to the first student of each team. Say like this, “All right, please write for me the letter ___! Go go go!!” They will love it! Trust me!
“ABC Phonics Writing ESL Games”: (Level Up) 🙂
Next after they have mastered the writing of their ABC’s, change the game to focus on the Phonics. So for the phonics game say, “Please write for me the letter of the alphabet that sounds like “SSSSSSS,” or whatever you choose! It’s a great game and they love it. If you happen to have a set of velcro ABC letters, put the letters on the table. Put the stickable velcro cloth up on the white board. Then have the teams stand back and again have two team reps run for the letters, search and grab one and stick it up on the board. Or try like this, take a set of ABC cards you made, and spread them out on the table and have the kids smack their hand on the top of the card you say. Show that, the kid with the hand at the very bottom was the first!! Hahah. Also, I recommend you make these cards yourself with some A4 paper because they can get torn up fast!
“Word Writing ESL Games”: (Level Up) 🙂
When students continue to advance and there thriving, having a great time, of course you can do word spelling games on the white board with two team reps. Or have the teams spell the letters with little scrabble tiles or letter cards as a team together or individually. As the situation dictates.
My list of favorite ESL Games are as follows:
- Word Anagrams
- Mystery Sentence
- Name that Tune
- Treasure Hunt
- Blind Man’s Bluff
- Rock Scissors Paper
- Last Letter Word Game
- Story Improv
- Back Writing
- Hangman
- Bingo
- Dictation Game
- Quiz Show Game
- The Action Game
- “ABC” or Word Writing Games (above)
Thanks for reading this article. Give it a thumbs if you enjoyed it. Feel free to add your games or comments for future visitors. Happy teaching!! Enjoy.
Bingo is such an obvious game I hardly think to mention it. But of course it can be loads of fun and used for teaching numbers or if you don’t have an official game set, simply cut up some paper, make the grid and have students write in “their choice” of the study vocabulary. I did it for my “Very Good Words” Lessons many times. Take note, I’m posting my entire ESL Music Video System for free right here! Doing times of a clock is a great idea too, like 3:15, or “quarter to four,” as they get more advanced.
One of my all-time favorite fruits is the coconut. The Pacific Islanders believe that it is the cure for all illness, which is why the palm tree (from which coconuts are grown) is known as “The Tree of Life.” Coconut oil is thought to possess healing properties above and beyond that of any other dietary oils.