Games for Revision and Recycling

Dear teachers, if you want to turn your revision lessons into something more interesting, then here are some ideas:


Lying game

Aim of the activity
Improve fluency skills.
Preparation
You will need dice for this game.
Procedure
Write a list of general topics, numbered 1 to 6, on the board. For example,
1) love
2) family
3) sport and hobbies
4) holiday
5) ambitions
6) food
Students work in groups. One student in the group throws the dice and the number showing on the dice decides on their topic for the next part of the activity. They then have to talk for one minute on the topic, but before they do that, they choose a card which they must keep hidden from the other members of the group. On one card is written Tell the truth and on the other is Tell a lie. While they are talking, they must follow the instruction on the card and the object of the exercise is for the rest of the group to decide whether they are telling the truth or lying.


Criss cross quiz

Aim of the activity
Revise a variety of language skills and structures in an engaging way.
Preparation.
You will have to prepare questions for each category in advance.
Procedure
This game is based on a game of noughts and crosses. Draw a grid on the board and in each of the nine squares write a different language category. For example, spelling, pronunciation,verbs, odd one out, etc.
In two teams, the students take it in turns to choose a category and to answer the
corresponding question. If they answer correctly, their team can mark a nought or cross in that square. If they do not answer correctly, the question passes to the other team. The first team to get a row of noughts or crosses is the winner.

Label game

Aim of the activity
To revise idioms by using them to talk about personal experiences, thus making the new language more memorable.
Preparation
Make a copy of a list of idioms to be practised for each student in the class.
You will need 6 to 10 blank sticky address labels for each student in the class. Post-its can be used as an alternative. You will also need a poster-size piece of paper for each group of 3 to 4 students, dice and counters.
Procedure
Give a copy of the list of the idioms to be practised to each student in the class.
Give each student in the class a pile of blank sticky address labels. Ask them to look at the list of idioms and to think of a time when any of them were relevant
to their own experience. For each relevant idiom, they should take a sticky label and write the idiom on it, as well as the approximate time of their life the event they are thinking of happened (e.g. last year, yesterday, when I was a child, on my birthday, about three weeks ago etc). They should not write down what happened, just the idiom at this stage.
When they have finished writing idioms on separate labels, ask the students to work in groups and give each group a poster-size piece of paper.
Students now arrange their idioms in a line or a snake on the piece of paper in chronological order and stick them down.
Give each group dice and counters and ask the students to take it in turns to throw the dice and move their counter along the idioms according to the number on the dice.
Students should either talk about a time when the idiom they land on was relevant to
themselves, or ask the student who wrote the idiom down to talk about their experience.

HAVE FUN!