Elementary School Activities

Angela Sheehan

PROCEDURE:

1. “How are you?” Relay

HRT starts stopwatch and asks the first student “(insert appropriate student name), how are you?” Student responds, “I’m happy (fine, hungry, cold, hot, etc)”. This student then turns to face the second student and asks “Setsuko, how are you?” This student answers and in turn asks the third student. Continue in this order around the class until the final student asks the ALT “(your name), how are you?” Once you respond the relay is over and the time is recorded on the blackboard.

Teachers react, saying that it took too long and then redo the activity aiming to lower the time. Be sure to decide and clarify the order of students before commencing! If required review the appropriate responses before playing.

2. "What’s this?” Game

Using flashcards (introduce/) review basic animal, fruit and vegetable vocabulary. Then split the class into 2 or 3 teams depending on class size and number of teachers available to assist. You need one teacher per team. Each team then divides into two lines in front of their assigned teacher. One line of the students will be discreetly shown a flashcard, they will draw this object on the blackboard and the student in the other line (of the same team) must guess what the object is. The flashcards are divided up between the teachers. On ‘go’, the teachers show a flashcard only to the student who will draw; the student draws this (animal, fruit or vegetable) on the blackboard while the other student guesses in English what it is. This pair of students returns to the back of their team lines. The teacher shows a new flashcard to the next student in the drawing line. Continue until every student in the line has had a turn. Re-do, with the students taking the alternate role of drawer or guesser.

3. Racing Game

Play this game in the gym or music room! Determine two places in the room to pool laminated flashcards, for example at the far corners of the room or the side and back of the room. Put the colour flashcards in one location and the animal, fruit and vegetable flashcards together in another location. Divide the students into teams. One member from each team comes to the starting line (at the front of the room). When you say, “go”, they must race and collect one colour card and one of the other object cards. Once they have returned to the starting line, they must show their flashcards to the class and state what they have, for example “blue apples”. The other students that ran also do this in the order that they got back to the start line. Points are then awarded 50pts for 1st, 35pts for 2nd, 20pts for 3rd. Bonus points can be awarded by the ALT for very good pronunciation! Continue until all students have had a turn. Tips: Enlist the help of one or two students to return the flashcards to the pool after each round. The HRT records scores on the blackboard.

Students get very excited (and a bit rough) so it does take time to play this game. Ensure that the students calm down and listen while their classmates are introducing their flashcards. For higher level classes you could make them say “I have blue apples” or “I like blue apples”.

NOTES:

These three activities together took 50 minutes. It worked very well with a large class (i.e. 4-1 and 4-2 combined), two HRTs and an ALT. We had three teams and their points were tallied from both activities.