Activities of the Week- 5 Activities for small groups

Hi Guys,

Here is the view from our new Dinternal office in Chernyachovskogo Street, Odessa.

As you can see, we have a lot of snow in Odessa at the moment and this can only mean one thing for English teachers.... smaller groups!

We all have experienced that lesson, where we have planned activities for 15+ students only to arrive in the classroom to find that the majority of the class have decided not to risk the deadly perils of snow or wind. leaving us with a group of three or four people when we had expected many more.

Never fear.. help is at hand!

Here are 5 low-prep activities for dealing with small groups:

Grand-prix

Materials: Board, Magnets or paper with sticky-tape or blu-tac

Procedure:

Draw a racetrack like the one above on the board.

Using board magnets or blue-tac, the students will race each other round the track. The winner is the first one to reach the end.

The students/teams answer questions in order to move forward. The questions can be prepared by the students to make the activity even more student-centred and, of course, cut down on your valuable preparation time.

Idea:

• Put different letters on different squares to represent different types of questions. eg  V+ vocabulary   G+ grammar

The Tower Game

Materials:  Building blocks such as  Lego or dominoes or Jenga

  

This is a fun game that works in a similar way to 'Grand-Prix'. 


Students in small teams answer questions on a set topic. As in the previous game, getting students to create their own questions can be fun and motivating and great for recycling.

If the group answers the question correctly they are awarded 10 seconds to build their tower.

The team with the highest tower at the end of the game is the winner.

The towers can fall at any time making the game more fun, less predictable and also more even if there are weaker and stronger teams.

How We Roll

A great activity to generate discussion and use target language in small groups.

Materials: a pair of dice

Procedure: 

Choose  6 discussion topics (e.g. sport) and number them 1-6 on the board

The teacher chooses six structures (eg  present perfect/linking words) and also labels them 1-6.

The first student rolls the dice and the number indicates which topic must speak about.

The second roll indicates which structure the student must include in their discussion.

 The teacher can impose time restrictions or just let the discussion flow.

Word Grab

This activity is great fun and really helps students with listening for detail.

Materials: listening material and some slips with the words or phrases from the dialogue.

Procedure:  

Choose a listening track or even a reading text which can be read out by the teacher.

Choose relevant words or phrases from the text and write them on large slips.

Spread these slips out on the table.

The students then listen to the audio (or the reading from the teacher) and when they hear one of the words on the table they have to try and grab it before the other students.

At the end of the dialogue the student with the most slips is the winner.

Word grab can be used to practice listening for detail and also anticipating information, as well as a novel way of introducing new vocabulary.

Grammatical chairs

Another great activity I practised with JJ Wilson in Kiev!

The simple activity involves students sitting in a circle on chairs. 

The teacher asks a 'Have you ever'  question (questions with other forms work too)  and any student who answers 'yes' has to stand up and change their seat. The person asking the question (in this case the teacher) will try to sit down and claim a seat and the person left standing must ask the next question.

Students who moved then give more information and generate interesting stories and discussions.

A really enjoyable game to practice speaking skills and keep those potentially challenging small-group lessons fun and dynamic.

Have fun!