ESL Games That Don't Suck, Part II:

12-card Asteroid Bingo (운석 빈고)
and
Nuke Bingo
(inspired from the old Atari games, Asteroid and Missile Command)

These are variations on the game bingo that utilize the English language cards
from the Korean English cards found in the national textbook's accompanying workbook,
which contains cut-out card pages in sets of 6, 12 and 18. You can choose whether to integrate pictures or just use words. I prefer to use the word cards only.

For all three games below, children set up their cards on their desks in the following array:

1, 2, 3, 4
5, 6, 7, 8
9, 10, 11, 12

(N.B. I just draw squares on the board and I do not indicate nor discuss numbers with the students. This number array is just an orientation guide for you, the teacher, because I can't get this blog site to draw a basic table. Typically I just motion with my hand to indicate the lines in the box set I've drawn on the board, in order to minimize explanation time. Also, going by experience I find explaining everything proves kind of useless. Just explaining one step and having them do it and then moving onto explaining the next step tends to get things done faster in my Korean public school classes.)

GAME 1 - Asteroid Bingo
In this game, cards 10 and 11 are your Earth city (지구 도시).

The Earth city can be struck by an asteroid (Bingo!) if the player gets the following
cards called, constituting a 'line' :
1,6,11
or
4,7,10

Likewise, the asteroid 'misses' the Earth city on the following lines:
1,5,9
4,8,12
2,7,12
3,6,9

But the Earth city has defenses! (방어 시설, or 방어 물)
so it 'blows up' asteroids coming on the following lines:

2,6,10
3,7,11

GAME 2

Same game, but any combination of two of the following lines is bingo
(the Earth city should have spent more money on defense!)
1,6,11
4,7,10
2,6,10
3,7,11

Again, I tend to use my hands to gesture all of the two-line possible combinations that can result in Bingo.

Nuke Bingo
You split the class in half, (teams 1 and 2) and designate 10 points to each team, on the board.

Again you have the children set up their cards on their desks in the following array:
1, 2, 3, 4
5, 6, 7, 8
9, 10, 11, 12

You call out the cards one at a time. If a child gets either of the following lines

9,6,3
12,7,2

they get Bingo! - which sends a 'nuke' from their team over to the other team. The students get very involved when I make the missile sound, the ballistic missile gesture with my hand, and the explosion into the other side and then see the opposite team's score get erased and replaced with a '9'.

Continue reading the cards - don't let them re-arrange their cards!

As you continue reading the cards, the rates of bingoes (i.e. the numbers of missiles)
will increase and the increments by which each team's score is subtracted will also increase,
from -1, to -2 or perhaps as much as -4 or more sent at any one time.
It's up to you how you want to play it, but I usually send missiles in the order of the first bingoes shouted out, which can change the outcome of the end game.

First team to reach zero loses and the remaining team is obviously the winner.
This usually ends with thunderous applause and enthusiastic response to the prospect of a second or third round.

ESL Games That Don't Suck

This is a personal survival list of field-tested successful ESL games I took from various sources and use with kids from pre-kindergarten up to middle school. Some games are mine, many are not. As so many internet-available ESL games absolutely suck, and some of you fellow teacher friends are taking up new posts with very hyper-active attention-needy kids, I offer this to you, with love - a safehouse of tried-and-tested games very likely to succeed.
The kinds of language data these games manipulate varies, so you have to go through it and get a feel for them. For example, Battleship's good with big review days, and hooks older kids just as well as younger kids, while Spiderman is used for pattern drills or lots of vocabulary, or question-answer sequences, and is only good for older kids I find. Et cetera.

The principle in picking these games is simple but important. Don't ask kids, especially young children, to sit on their bums for long periods of time. Get them using more of their limbs as soon as you can. Think of it like a bomb timer. Let it tick too long, and bam! Class is out of control, distractions, dissention, etc. After a while you can just feel when the cadence has dropped, when the attention has collapsed. That's your window and it's gone. Especially with boys, whose abilities have often been 'written out' of sedentary language class designs of the past.

Don't let that happen to you. Use these games to engage your students and draw them in.

REALLY GOOD GAMES

Battleship	Magnetic Cars Board Map
Body Ball	Pictionary
Body Parts Touching Game	Scramble
Broken Telephone	Teacher Robot
Charades	Teacher, Teacher, How Old Are You?
Emanuel's Restaurant	Teacher TV
Fetch And Say	There Is/ There Are
Find Me... Blue!	Time Bomb
Funny Monster Harry Potter	True False LineUp
Hot Potato	Simon Says
Letters Removal (What's Missing?)	Spiderman

Battleship (Tornado-Flood)

This requires a chalkboard/whiteboard, two papers (one is a small personal secret chart, and the other is the target English to be asked) and it's good for reviewing a large number of words or many variables in a number of question patterns. I love it for end-of-the-month reviews.

You display a grid on the board, numbers down the side (I use five rows) and letters along the top (I use A-E). One of the great things about this board is that you can format the questions any way you like. I use the Jeopardy-T.V.game show style increasing difficulty as you go down. The highest point squares have to have minus points for wrong answers to deter everyone just jumping on your top questions. Leave the board's squares blank until individually called by the team members. (In a class of 28, I usually have three teams (rows 1+2, 3+4, 5+6)

Interspersed on your personal chart are F's (flood - that team loses its points - I don't use it below grade 4) T's (tornado - that team picks another team, the latter which loses its points - I don't use it below grade 4) stars/asterisks (I change these from super questions in higher grades to two team members facing off for a big score in younger grades) and all the rest are just number values (I match them with difficulty level questions)

First person stands up from first team, then first person from second team, etc. Hugely popular, can get bogged down if you're not snappy with the timing. Usually I give a 5 countdown if I feel a particular contestant is going too slowly. Huge fun, especially the tornadoes. However, I try to limit those squares to 3 each. My classes are 40 minutes so I find this takes up 20 minutes. Adapt as necessary.

Body Ball

For young kids only. You need flashcards of body parts. A child comes up and picks a card from the deck. Have the class tell you what it is a picture of and repeat several times. Then have the child stand behind the line and throw a very soft toy or ball at that part of your body. Three tries and rarely do they even come close to hitting the right spot. (You can play the game in teams.)

Body Parts Touching Game

Two decks of body parts cards. The more parts the better. Separate the class into teams. One child comes up to the front at a time and picks a card from each pile. The child then must try and touch the body part shown on one card with the one shown on the other. Obviously some of these will be near or completely impossible, but they will also be very amusing. Every success gets a point for that team.

Broken Telephone

This is the classic drama game. Kids line up, whisper a message to the kid at the front, and they must whisper it one time to their neighbor, continuing until it gets to the back. You can have two teams and see who comes the closest. Emphasize the limit on the number of whispers - once or twice according to your students' levels.

Charades

No explanation necessary. All you need are some flashcards and some vocabulary topics.

Emanuel's Restaurant

You can use this for conversation pattern drills. The best part is, it doesn't have to be about restaurant vocabulary or sentences at all. It's just a highly amusing format for practicing many different kinds of beginner level questions such as 'I'm sorry' 'May I have' 'would you like' and so on, or practicing adjectives, or other mid-beginner target language.

This is a kind of front-of-the-class spoken mime dramatization based on Grover's restaurant skits from Sesame Street. At Emanuel's restaurant, something always goes wrong. Usual problems that come up are things like 1)the food's gone 2) the cook in the kitchen has eaten the specials and there's nothing but sandwiches left, or 3) the food sizes are unmanageable that they attack the customers, the list goes on. One round of Emanuel's restaurant and my grade threes are clamouring to take a shot at the target language, guaranteed.

Fetch And Say

Two teams sit at opposite ends of the classroom. Two baskets of different object flashcards are placed in the middle of the class, with one team member standing before each. You call out an object, they have to find it, run to the board, stick it on, and shout 'it's a ___!' 1point for each child who says it correctly, and 1 point for getting there first.

Find Me... Blue!

This is very simple. After you review the color names, make teams, call one member each up to the front and say, 'find me... blue!' and start ticking points to each team member who locates a blue-colored object in the room. Another point for 'this is blue!' Gets quite animated, big hit with kindergarteners.

Funny Monster

Another kindie hit. You can do this either with team areas on a board, and judge the scariest/craziest monster, or you can do this with a face on a paper, one for each child. Set up a menu on the board and have dice to roll and a deck of face parts or body parts cards, according to whatever you're teaching. The children approach one by one, roll the die and they must draw that on the monster (e.g. an eye card was picked and a 3 was rolled, so the student must draw 3 eyes on the monster.)

Harry Potter Game

On Genki English, they say split the whole class into 2/3rds Harrys and 1/3rd Voldemorts but I found that was just crazy and I couldn't keep control of the degrading English with the ensuing mayhem and excitement. So I dropped it to teams, and reps from each team. Much better. Everybody watches (so everybody's the police) and generally more control. Great at all ages.
There is one Voldemort and three Harry Potters. Each have a wand. Voldemort's purpose in this game is just to touch Harry with the wand and magically 'hold' him in place. Voldemort must utter an action like 'jump!' If he hits a Harry, Harry stands in one place jumping.
Harry's purpose in this game is twofold: 1)round up with his two other Harrys and at the same time touch Voldemort thereby banishing him.
2) 'free' a 'trapped' Harry by touching him and saying 'what are you doing?' 'trapped' Harry must say, 'I'm jumping' and then he is free to run.
Great fun. But controllable in reps from teams.

Hot Potato

Have your flashcards on the board, and a pom-pom or beanie or other small plush item and some music ready (I just use my voice, and stomp/clap to the tune of 'it was sad when the great ship went down' but whatever, you can just use a cd player too.) and pass the pompom down and across the rows, and when the music stops that person has to utter the target language or indicated flashcard item, or sit down. Team with most remaining standing wins.

Letters Removal (What's Missing?)

Alphabet letters on the board, sing the alphabet song, have the kids turn around, remove a few letters, close the gaps, have the children guess what's missing. Great with kindies.

Magnetic Cars Board Map

Materials - Super-easy. Get either some dinky cars and glue little magnets on, or get some cardboard and draw the tops of cars, motorcycles, trucks on them. As my art got stolen, I've turned to dinky cars, the kind you can find in a cheap Chinese toy product. I think my race car track set cost 2 dollars.

This is an additional game that goes well with Teacher Robot game, or community locations review (your basic police station, hospital, market, school.) You draw blocks on the board (city blocks) separated by lanes and intersections. Shouldn't take you more than 30 seconds to get something on the board. Place the magnetized cars one at a time on the board, allotting them to student teams. And then just assign x's as destinations for each of the teams to take their car. Successful arrivals get a point for each correct turn made. Great fun to watch and the kids really get into it.

How I Teach Left And Right - Start out teaching the capital letter 'L' appears on your left hand when you put your hands palms down out in front of you (thank you, Martin Ell for that.) You have to face the front to show this. For introducing the idea that left and right move with your perspective, I reinforce the choices at every intersection, pointing as I ask (i.e. do you want to go left, forward, or right?) with the hands out front, facing the correct direction. Soon the kids are doing it as they're debating with each other and trying to orient their way around your little town. An especially good game for reigning in hyper-active boys, I found.

You can ask the whole team to pitch in the first round or two, and then later you can get individuals to make contributions and ask the team if he's/she's correct. The kids get quite animated and start comparing orientations and you can decide how correct you want to be about the pronunciation of 'left', 'right', 'forward' (or 'back' if you have time.)

Pictionary

Three teams, one rep from each comes up, you show the picture or say the word to each of them and shout 'go'. First team to guess the picture wins a point.

Scramble

Great alphabet card hunting game. You need letter flashcards, scrambled across the board. Yell out a letter and a member of each team runs up, finds the letter, and touches it for a point. It also works for sentence answers for older kids (you should have sentence flashcards available.)

Teacher Robot

Loads of fun. There's a monster robot loose in the classroom and it's you! Give the kids a fake remote control complete with beepy sounds (you make) and demo. The kids practice 'turn left' 'turn right' 'go' 'stop', 'on', and 'off'. When they turn teacher robot 'on', arms come out with claws. Sound like a menacing robot monster and the kids will go crazy trying to control you. You can step up the game by later adding 'back' or 'go fast' 'go slow'. You don't even need a remote, really, they can just imagine a prop. You can also turn the game around and guide student robots. If they move incorrectly, I go up to them and pretend to open a lid on their head in frustration, and use a pencil's eraser tip to 'tweak' some imaginary loose screws, and shut the lid again. If the kid gets three errors, the robot is broken and I "send it back" to Emart (meaning he/she sits down.) This game can be coupled with Magnetic Cars

Teacher, Teacher, How Old Are You?

Kids get in an open area (away from desks is better). They shout, 'teacher, teacher, how old are you?' And you say, "I'm 5 years old" and they have to get in groups of five. Kids outside a group sit out. Change the numbers, great fun. Disputes can be resolved with a countdown from 5. When you get to two kids, rock-paper-scissors. I also like to throw in the occasional "I'm one year old!" just to get them separated.

Teacher TV

This is really just a drama mime space I designate at the front of the class by standing at the front, using my fingers to 'draw' a big screen tv in the air and simply declare 'Teacher TV imnida!' It's to act out an English language sequence or make them guess some vocabulary. But it also works to get them to come up and try as well. Everybody loves to mime. But the class does the speaking. If you look like you're having fun and it's easy, they'll want to try. But who cares, right? The point is the class is shouting the target vocabulary. In the younger grades I use it to show the rooms in a house and what items I'm using in my hand as well. (e.g. Where's Emanuel? Answer: He's in the living room! And what's this? A sofa!) or a feelings sequence with an ice-cream cone skit (e.g. sad is you lick the ice cream and it falls off your cone and on the floor, etc.) In the older grades I use Teacher TV for controlled dialogues, weather forecasts. Sometimes I call it KBS TV imnida to get reporters involved. The point is, when I set up that space, if it's fun, they'll get up and try. And for some reason, calling it teacher tv or kbs tv makes it more likely to be tried. But the focus in the younger grades is group guessing of vocabulary items.

There Is/There Are:

Warm up with questions, classroom only for the younger ones. This can be a treasure hunt for the older kids though. The questions can be things like:

How many windows are there in the classroom? How many doors are there in the school? How many teachers? classes? students in the class? How many chairs in the classroom?

Time Bomb

You need a timer (e.g. egg timer). Set the timer and pass like hot potato, but every student must answer a question. Once answered, they can pass the timer. The student left holding the timer when it goes off loses a life or is out for the game. The teacher who submitted this on a website talked of having younger children write their names in the air with their bums.

True False Line Up (like Golden Bell final round)

Boys against Girls, or half class against half class. Two lines, elimination and points for correct answers. This set up is so versatile and the competitive points-based aspect gives the kids such initiative that it should be a mandatory item on every ESL games list. I find it works especially well with flash cards. Last week we did flags and they had to utter different cities from the target country. The prompt for the card was 'Teacher, teacher, where are you from?' But as you can see, this can be used for almost anything.

Simon Says

My variation on this is I like to do the actions with the words and then look them right in the eye my hands move to any body part not corresponding with the uttered body part to get them 'out'. Also after a good laugh, starting off with the wrong placement also gets people out. Also a fast back and forth and then omitting a Simon Says (e.g. simon says touch your knees simon says touch your shoulders touch your knees!) gets people out.

Spiderman

Got this off Genki English. This and Gokiburi are enough reasons to join their site in my book. You need three small pictures of Spiderman, and three accompanying pictures each of a different Spiderman arch-villain (e.g. Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, Sandman) and some chalk to draw a ten-story building (a building outline with ten lines is just fine) and a pic of yourself atop the building crying for help. Each teams' Spiderman and villain starts at the ground floor. The idea is the Spidermans will race to the top to save the teacher! Each team brings forth one member. Each member is asked the target English question. The contestant answering correctly will see his/her team's Spiderman move TWO floors up the building. And all the other teams' villains move one floor up the building. Then the first team member from the next team is asked. Same deal. When all first team members are used up, the game just continues with the next contestants coming forward for the next English question. If you want to go through the whole team list, you could make the building more than ten storeys. Continue until one Spiderman has saved the teacher!!

SO-SO-ISH GAMES

12 (a counting game)	Hot Potato Animal Charades
Action Race	I Am You Are
Body Letters	I Like
Clapping Game	I Love
Gokiburi Evolution Game	Island Hopping

12 (a.k.a. Terrabomber - the kids named it this, not me)

Make a circle. Start with one person. First person can select one, two, or three numbers but can't pick four or more. Next person continues the sequence where the first person left off, same choices. Person who must say '12' explodes and sits down. Also anyone who messes up the sequence (skips a number) explodes and must sit down. Elimination game, but good for practicing numbers.

Action Race

Using actions like run, jump, clap, run etc. the children race from one point to another. have the children split into two teams and sit in two rows on the floor with a chair in front of the first person in line. A student from each team stands beside his/her chair and when you yell out an action (e.g. fly, jump, run, clap, etc.) the children must then jump all the way to the other side of the room and back to their chair. When they return they must sit and say 'I can jump!'. Points to the first of each round. Extra points for proper sentences possible, too.

Body Letters - Children lie down on the floor and make the letter shapes with their bodies. Good with the young children.

Clapping Game

This is a rhythm game. Sit in a circle. Start a rhythm (e.g. clap, knee slap, clap, clap) and start the round by saying a word (e.g. as part of a theme taught, like animals, food, etc.) The next student say a new word in the time of the rhythm. Any repeated words and the student is 'out.'

Gokiburi Evolution Game (a good game from Genki English)

I like that site because the games that work, work for all kinds of age groups, not just your pre-schoolers. If you're doing an after-school program you might consider signing up with them. But the art's not so hot, you may want to use your own. The songs however, rock and are worth the paltry $15 or so to get them.

1. Draw on the board an "evolution scale" of animals (these will be used as stages)

2. Everybody starts at the bottom of the scale, i.e. a Gokiburi (Japanese for 'cockroach'.) Gokiburi crawl about on the floor, hence the kids have to do the same.

3. The kids form into pairs of 2 gokiburi.

4. They practice today's conversation piece.

5. When they've finished their conversation they do 'rock, scissors, paper'.

6. The winner then moves up one step on the "Evolution Scale" (i.e. gokiburi become snakes, snakes become rabbits etc.). The loser moves down on place (e.g. Peacocks become rabbits, monkeys become penguins etc.) Of course Gokiburi can't fall any lower!

7. They then find a partner that is the same animal as they have become. (i.e. a monkey does the conversation with another monkey, a rabbit with a rabbit etc. but a snake with, say, a rabbit is not allowed!)

8. With their new partner they repeat steps 4,5 and 6 until they reach "Human". "Humans" have to practice the conversation and the janken with the teacher. If they win they then become "god", have won the game and can sit down!!

Hot Potato Animal Charades

This is a combination of flashcard-based charades and hot potato. The student caught with the hot potato must act out the action or animal or whatever is secretly shown on the flashcard, and the kids guess.

I Am You Are

Sitting in a circle or row, start by saying, "I am... you are... " The students each say "I am... " and then turn to their neighbors and say "You are... ". Variations includes I am/ he is/ she is, etc. The game can be sped up to increase difficulty. Simple sounding but enjoyable and involving.

I Like

This is a game using two or more teams, and four piles of flashcards (two for each team.) One pile has nouns, the other, adjectives.

Each team member runs and gets a flashcard from each pile (i.e. each runner picks up 2 cards), run back and tell you what they have in the form of a sentence (e.g. I like orange elephants.) 1 point for pronunciation, 1 point for first one back.

I Love
A simple relay game with a ball, but memory is involved. Sit in a circle. Start with "I love ice cream." Roll the ball to a student. He/she says, "He loves ice cream, I love hot dogs." Continue. Only previous person's sentence need be remembered, not everybody's.

Island Hopping

Large flashcards needed for this (large enough to stand on.) Each student is given a number of these large cards and must lay down a card they know the word for or answer to, step on it and utter it. They use the cards this way like stepping stones to get across the 'river' to the other side of the classroom. I listed this game as so-so because of the amount of plastic and materials involved. This kind of review can be done with much less, but if your co-teacher has the materials then why not use them in this fun way.