Games

1. Who's Telling the Truth?

Have each student write three facts about themselves that nobody in the class
knows on a piece of paper. Make sure each student includes his/her name on the
top of the paper. Collect the sheets of paper and bring three students to the front of
the room. Read aloud one of the facts that is true for one of the students in the front
of the room. The class then proceeds to question the students in an attempt to
determine who is telling the truth, and who is lying. Each student is allowed to ask
one question to one of the three students. After a round of questioning, the students
predict who is telling the truth.
2. Taboo Variations
Variation #1: Create a PowerPoint presentation with each slide containing a
noun. Have one student come to the front of the room and sit with his/her back to
the PowerPoint. The students in the class should take turns describing the words for
the student in the front of the room to guess.
Variation #2: Separate the students into groups of 4/5. Place a pile of cards with
random nouns in the center of the group. Have students take turns describing the
nouns for their group members to guess. The group member who guesses correctly
keeps the card in an attempt to have the most cards at the end of the game.
Variation #3 (Advanced speakers): Separate the class into two teams. Students are
given a word to describe to their teammates, in addition to a list of words that they
cannot use in their description. Each student should have 2-3 minutes to see how
many words his/her teammates can guess.
3. Descriptive Drawing Activity
Pair up the students and give them each a picture face down. They must describe
the picture for their partner to draw.
4. Comic Strip Descriptions
Give each student a portion of a comic strip. Without showing their pictures to one
another, the students should attempt to describe their image, and put the comic
strip into the correct order. After about ten minutes, the students can predict the
order, show one another their portion, and see if they were correct!
5. "Secret" Word
Students are given a random topic, and a random word completely unrelated to the
topic. The student must hide the word in their speech, without the other students in

the class guessing their "secret" word. The other students in the class must listen
carefully to the speech, in an attempt to discover the secret word.
6. Debates
Give each student a piece of paper with agree written on one side, and disagree
on the other side. Read aloud a controversial statement, and have each students
hold up his/her paper stating whether they agree or disagree. Choose one student
from each side to explain his/her position and participate in a short debate.
7. Impromptu Speaking
Split the class into two teams, and use a list of impromptu speaking topics. Have
each student choose a number, and respond to the statement without
preparation. The student must continue speaking for 45 seconds when the teacher
calls out "stop." As the student is speaking, the other team listens for any
hesitation, grammatical mistakes or vocabulary mistakes. If the other team can
correctly identify an error, they get a point.
This is a link for randomly generated conversation
questions:http://www.teacherdiane.com/questions
8. Desert Island Activity
Give each student a piece of paper and tell him or her to draw an item. Any item.
Tell the students that they have been stranded on a desert island, and only half of
the class can survive and continue to inhabit the desert island. The student's goal is
to convince the class that they should survive. The hard part is that the only thing
they have is an item that was drawn a few minutes earlier by a classmate on the
piece of paper.
9. Storytelling Activity
Bring four students to the front of the classroom. Three students should sit down in
a row, and one of the students should stand behind them acting as a controller. The
controller should have a stack of cards in his hand containing nouns. The controller
will hand a noun to one of the three students who will start to tell a story. The
student will continue telling the story until the controller decides to hand another
noun to another student who will then take over the story.
10. Two Truths, One Lie
Each student should write three facts about themselves on a piece of paper. Two of
the facts should be the truth, and one should be a lie. Students read aloud the facts,
and give the other students a chance to question them and decide which statement
is a lie.

11. True/False Storytelling

Give each student a piece of paper with either the word true or false. Each
student should tell the class a story, and the class must guess whether the story is
the truth, or a lie. To add to the activity, you can allow the other students to
question the student telling the story.
12. I Have Never
All students in the class should start holding five fingers in the air (this number can
be adjusted depending on how many students are in the class). The student who
begins the activity will tell the class one thing that he/she has NEVER done. The
students who have done that activity should put a finger down, and tell the class a
story about this activity.