Ideas for quick and simple activities

Here are some ideas for quick and simple activities. Most of them can last as long as you like, but they don't need to take longer than five or ten minutes. You could use them as warmers to start a lesson, as a way to introduce a new topic, or as fillers for a change of pace. Short activities are also a great way to get students speaking English.

• Random photostory

• Top ten

• Invisible story

• Chinese whispers

• My life as a fish

Random photostory

Pre-Intermediate and above

Aim of the activity

To practise telling a story. To practise describing and speculating about pictures and situations. To promote fluency in speaking.

Props

You need a random selection of fairly large photos from magazines. The best photos for this activity are ones with lots of people interacting. The more photos you have the better. You may also need some Blu-Tak, magnets or other ways of mounting the photos on the board or the wall.

Procedure

• Put up one photo (picked at random) on the board and tell the class that you are going to tell a story together.

• Ask a student to start describing the picture.

• When they have contributed one or two sentences, pick another student to continue, then another student, and so on. With a larger group, it may be easier to move in seating order.

• Make sure that each contribution adds something meaningful to the story.

• Encourage students to describe the characters and give them names and other attributes (what they do, where they live, etc.), and to describe the scene in detail and speculate on the broader context of the event that is taking place.

• If necessary, ask questions, but don't take over telling the story.

• Focus on fluency: don't interrupt the flow of the story by correcting small errors, but do ask for clarification if something is unintelligible. (You can note down more serious mistakes and come back to them after the activity.)

• At random intervals, keep putting up new photos next to the previous ones. Whenever a new photo goes on the board, students have to develop the story to include the events in the new picture and explain how we got there from what previously happened. They should not move back to describing earlier images.

• Make sure each student contributes something.

• Keep the pace quite lively; don't allow the story to break down. If a student gets stuck, quickly pick another person.

• Variation: allow each student to pass once during the activity, but make sure you pick them again later when they've had some time to come up with an idea.

• The picture changes should not be predictable. Put up new photos even if the class hasn't used up all the ideas for the previous image. If one photo turns out to be uninspiring, quickly add another.

• Keep going until you reach some sort of conclusion to the story, or until students seem to have run out of ideas.

• Variation: you can ask them to finish the story in writing at home. If you do, it may be a good idea to ask them to write a summary of previous events as well, and take a few minutes in the next lesson to recap together. If the whole story has become too complicated, allow them to take one strand or set of characters, and write about them.

Note

This activity has been tried successfully with secondary students. The procedure takes longer for you to read than for the class to understand and follow.

Top ten

Elementary and above

Aim of the activity

To refresh and revise vocabulary from the previous lesson.

Procedure

• Ask students to think about the previous lesson and to write down the ten (or five, for a lower level) most important words they learnt in that lesson. Don't allow them to open their coursebooks or notebooks.

• Variation: to make it faster, you might like to allow your students to do this in pairs.

• Pick a student to be the secretary, who comes up to the blackboard and collates the results. First, they should write down their own list.

• Each student then reads their list, which the secretary adds to the main list on the blackboard. (Make sure they don't cover the whole board as you will need space later on.) If items have already been included, the secretary should put a tick next to them.

• Keep going until everyone has contributed their top ten.

• In a larger class, change the secretary halfway through, so that they don't have to spend too much time up at the front. Pick another student from the ones who have already read their lists.

• Count the number of votes each word receives and write up the Top Ten in descending order.

• Quickly check with the whole class whose individual list was closest to the class consensus.

• If you want, you can now ask students to write sentences or a story with the Top Ten words, or simply to define their meaning.

Invisible story

Elementary and above

Aim of the activity

To focus students' attention. To raise students' awareness about the redundancy of texts and the importance of context.

Procedure

• Write a short (30-60 words) coherent text on the board before the lesson or while students are engaged in an individual task. The text should not cover unfamiliar grammar or contain too much new vocabulary.

• Read the text once. Make sure that students can understand and pronounce the words.

• Ask students to take turns to read the text aloud.

• When you have finished, delete every fourth word from the text, and ask students to read the text again. Allow students to help each other if they get stuck.

• Repeat the task until no text is left on the blackboard, but still ask the students to read the invisible story.

• Variation: delete every fifth or sixth word in turn if the task seems too difficult or every third if it is too easy.

Chinese whispers

Elementary and above

Aim of the activity

To warm up before a listening activity. To focus students' attention on the importance of listening carefully.

Procedure

• Arrange the students in a circle, semi-circle or in ordered rows, sitting not too far apart.

• Starting at one end of the class, whisper a short message (10 to 15 words) in a student's ear. The best messages are ones which contain several pieces of factual information. Before you start, assure the class that the message that's going to go around makes sense! (You'll see why.) Write down the message on a sheet of paper but don't show it to anyone.

• Variation: with lower-level classes, use a shorter message.

• Students now have to pass on the message by whispering, so that only the next person along can hear.

• Each recipient can check the message by repeating it once to the person they received it from, and each messenger can only give the message to the next person twice - not more.

• If a person is not sure about the message, they should still try to pass on what they think the message is.

• Keep going until you reach the last person.

• Ask everyone to write down the message they got and passed on. Students should not talk to each other or show others their messages.

• Ask the last person to say the message aloud, and everyone else to read their own sentence to see where they went wrong.

• Now tell the class what your original message was.

My life as a fish

Pre-Intermediate and above

Aim of the activity

To practise conditionals. To revise vocabulary (daily routine). To encourage students to use their imagination.

Procedure

• Start the activity with a little brainstorming. Ask students to name categories, such as fruits, vegetables, animals, minerals, fish, mammals, etc. under which they would be able to list at least five different examples.

• Once you have compiled five or six categories, ask students to quickly mention five examples for each.

• Now ask students to list ten daily activities (e.g. getting up, having breakfast, going to school, going swimming, etc.).

• If necessary, recap briefly how you talk about daily routine.

• Give a random category (of the ones you compiled in the first step) to each student, and ask them to think about how their life would be different if they were a member of that category.

• Allow students some time to think.

• Now ask students to talk about their daily routine as their given category. Example:If I was a fish, I would be a shark. I would not get up in the morning because I would not sleep at night. For breakfast, I would have shrimps and sometimes dolphin when I'm lucky. I would swim to school because they don't let me get on buses. At school I would learn subjects like Biting wooden objects, Fisherman tasting and Anger management, etc.

• Variation: instead of giving out random categories, you might prefer to allow students to choose one for themselves.