Atividades para o Way - 2017.

2 (by Lázaro)

1. Show and tell – student gets an object out of the pocket/purse and talk about it.

2. Alphabet – student is asked to spell some already learned word, according to his/her level.

3. Tell the time – bring a clock to the classroom and ask students to tell you what time it is.

4. Roll the dice – roll the dice with wh- words and other structures, students make sentences/questions.

5. Odd one out – with four-word groups, students must tell which one is different.
Examples:

apple, peach, banana, tomato – a banana doesn’t have seeds

strawberry, branch, bowling ball, boat, iceberg – bowling balls don’t float
window, river, envelope, client, oregano – client doesn’t begin and end with the same letter
comb, champagne, knife, plum – the word plum doesn’t contain any silent letters

6. Sentence betting – the teacher prepares sentences with some containing mistakes. Students must bet play
money on the sentences according to their knowledge if they are correct or not.

7. Unscramble (sentences and words) – students must unscramble scrambled words and sentences. Words for
basic levels, sentences for the advanced ones. They can receive some help through clues.

8. Two truths one lie – students talk about three things they did the weekend before, one of them must be false,
classmates try to guess which one is a lie.

9. Imaginary classroom - Tell the students to imagine the room without any furniture, any people, anything. They
have to create their ideal classroom by suggesting how to "refurnish" it. For example:
- There is a thick soft wall-to-wall carpet on the floor.
- There is a TV in that corner, with a Blu-ray player.

10. Favorite words - Write on the board one of your favorite words. Tell the class it is one of your favorite words and
explain why. It can be a favorite for any reason you like: it sounds nice to you; it looks nice; it's so useful; it
reminds you of good friends, occasions, places, etc. If you feel the students need more examples or words and
reasons for liking them, write one or two more on the board. The students should now write down (or say) some
of their favorite words and then give their reasons for choosing them to their neighbor. Some students might
volunteer to write on the board/say their favorite words and give their reasons for liking them to the class.
Variation: Talk about words you don't like.

11. Favorites - write on the board about five or six names of items or topics in the same field: TV shows, for
example, or foods, colors, songs, singers, school subjects, etc. Identify each by a letter: A, B, C, etc. For example,
you might have:
A. Biology; B. Literature; C. English; D. Sport; E. Maths.
Each student writes down the letters in order of preference; if sport is the favorite then the student will write D
at the top of the list. Those who finish early can compare and discuss their choices with their neighbors. When
they have all finished, hold a vote to see which choices were most popular. If you have time, discuss different
tastes, and see if there is a general consensus on favorites.

12. Pico, Fermi, Bagel - First, students take out some scratch paper and then put them into pairs or let they choose
their own partner. The one who is "It", thinks of a three-digit number  and writes down three dashes on the
board/paper. The number can't start with a zero and can't have any repeating numbers ...so 075 wouldn't work
 and neither would 559. The partner tries to guess the number in as few turns as possible, while "It" writes down
each guess to help both of them remember what has been guessed. "It" gives his/her partner clues for each
number.

Pico = Right number in the wrong place

Fermi = Right number in the right place

Bagel = Wrong number (It's not there!)

For example, if the number was 578 and the person guessed 582, "It" would say fermi, pico, bagel for that guess.
As soon as a number is correctly guessed (all fermi) it is written down above the dashes.

13. Different Hangman – separate students in groups, put a line of dashes on the board representing a word they
students will know, give some sort of hint, use markers of different colors, one per group. Students start picking
letters: if the letter is in the word, write that letter using the group’s color; if it isn’t, write it below the line. Even
when the group knows what the word is they can’t say it – the team that does that loses the game. In the end,
the winner is the group with more letters correctly guessed and fewer wrongly guessed.

14. Chinese whispers – teacher whisper a sentence in a student’s ear, students pass it around and then you check
what comes up in the end. It can be done more than once, and you should do it to review vocabulary, grammar,
etc.

15. Picture connection – show two random pictures to the students and they try to make connections between
them by saying sentences, making comparisons, pointing out what they have in common, etc.

16. English words in our language – separate students in pairs or small groups and ask them to think and write down
on a piece of paper as many English words we use in our own mother tongue as they can, as in a competition.

17. Erasing words – write on the board about ten words which are difficult to spell, and give the class a minute to
“photograph” them. Point to one word, then erase it; the students write it down from memory. And so on, until
all the words have been erased. Check the spellings. It can be done as a competition and also orally.

18. Draw a word – whisper to one student, or write down on a slip of paper, a word or phrase that the class has
recently learned. The student draws a representation of it on the board: this can be a drawing, a symbol, or a
hint clarified through mime. The rest of the class has to guess the item.

19. Share something you learned today – pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? To be done by the end of the class.

20. Dictate numbers – dictate a random list of numbers in English. Both you and the students write down the
corresponding figures as you say them. Then check, by writing the answers on the board, or asking them to
reformulate their figures into words. Variation: Ask students to add up the numbers you dictate – do they get
the right result?

21. Detectives – one volunteer is the detective and goes outside. You give a coin to one of the students in the class
to hide on their person – he or she is the thief. The detective returns and accuses any member of the class: “Did
you take the money?” The accused, whether guilty or innocent, answers, “No, I didn’t take the money, X (names
one of the others) took it.” The detective then accuses X, using the same formula as before, and so on, until
everybody has been accused (it is up to the students to make sure the real thief is named). The detective
watches the accused people and has to try to “detect” by their behavior which one is lying. Give him or her
three “guesses”. Variations: Use “Do you have / Have you got?” instead of “Did you take?” Alternatively, imagine
the “criminal” did other “crimes” in order to practice other verbs: broke a window, stole a book, ate someone’s
lunch, etc.
22. Correcting mistakes – write up a few sentences on the board that have deliberate mistakes in them. If you wish,
tell the students in advance how many mistakes there are in each sentence. With their help, correct them. Take
examples from the books they’re studying (of course!). Note: It is important to stress the fact that the sentences
presented are unacceptable, and to make corrections on the board so that the students are left with the image
of the correct sentences at the end of the activity.

23. Categories – ask the students to draw two or three columns on paper, and give them a category heading for
each. For example, food and drink, or animal, vegetable, mineral. Then dictate a series of words which can fit
into one of the categories. They have to write a cross or tick in the appropriate column for each word you
dictate. Variation: for a more difficult and time-consuming exercise, students actually write out each word in its
appropriate column.
BOX: Categories

Elementary
Food, drink: tea, apple, bread, coffee, cake, water, egg, meat, beer, milk, chocolate, potato, rice, pasta, orange
juice
Animals, objects: dog, pencil, chair, elephant, door, man, lion, book, table, cat, horse, donkey, television
Big, small: elephant, mouse, matchbox, house, flower, mountain, pencil, cigarette, egg, sea
Round, square: sun, book, blackboard, ball, window, door, moon, television, flower, house, ring, wheel, desk
Land, sea, air: cloud, earth, rain, fish, tree, wave, fog, sky, field, ship, road, mountain, wind, swimmer

More advanced
Sad, happy: smile, tears, laugh, miserable, tragedy, cheerful, pleasure, depressing, fortunate, celebration, weep,
amusing, mourn, joke, delight
Loud, soft: shout, scream whisper, crash, murmur, rustle, roar, hum, bang, sigh, squeak, cheer, thunder, tick
Good, bad: ethical, evil, wicked, virtuous, immoral, naughty, villainous, faulty, saintly, perfect, excellent,
deplorable
Superior, inferior: servant, queen, master, chief, subordinate, commander, assistant, slave, captain, prince,
follower, head
Sick, healthy: well, fever, fit, energetic, disease, pain, flourishing, sickness, invalid, blooming, collapse, coma, fine

24. Things to do with a potato – Produce a potato (if that’s not possible, introduce the concept of a potato). Ask
students to come up with a list of as many unconventional uses for it as they can. For example, paperweight,
weapon, pen holder, smartphone dock. The longest list wins the potato.

25. Name ten – have students think of 10 items that fit particular criteria.
Examples:

 Jobs where you have to wear a uniform

 English football clubs
 Sports that are played with a ball
 Foods that contain egg
 Animals that lay eggs
 Three letter parts of the body – eye, arm, leg, hip, ear, toe jaw, rib, lip, gum

26. Three things in common – This is a great icebreaker, but you can also use it as a lead-in to a theme or to test
your students’ knowledge of a grammar point. Simply ask students to work in pairs and find three things that
they have in common and then report back to the class. You can narrow the topic down to areas like t hree
things we both did at the weekend, three foods we both like, three things we both don’t like about this city, three
things neither of us has done yet but would like to, etc.
27. Word Association – Sometimes the simplest ideas turn out to be surprisingly effective and word games don’t get
any simpler than word association. Give an initial word, for example, banana and each student takes it in turns
to say a word which they associate with the previous word. If the connection isn’t obvious, challenge the
student to justify their choice.

banana – monkey – zoo – tourists – hotel – bible …

28. Tic-Tac-Toe – draw a grid of nine numbered squares on the board, for each square a number, for each number a
question. Students play in pairs or groups, they can put their symbol on the grid when they answer a question
correctly.