ESL Teacher

One of my favourite games to play in the ESL classroom is a form of “Pictionary” - not least because I can’t draw to save myself and it makes the students laugh.

Coming up to Christmas, I like to teach a fair bit of Christmas-related vocabulary, both for activities we will do in class as Christmas gets closer and because students seem to be motivated by it to understand Christmas songs and perhaps simply because it’s a fun topic.

So once I’ve done some work on Christmas vocab, the best way to revise it is to use a drawing game. I’ll demonstrate the first one by drawing (badly, of course) a simple object that they have recently learned. The first student to guess the correct word (and spell it correctly, if necessary) can be the next to draw. I’ll show them a word (with the difficulty level of the word dependent on the student) and get them to draw it. If necessary, they can check with me first that they’ve understood the word. When a student guesses what that is, then they can take the next turn drawing, and so on, with some teacher intervention if it looks like the same people will always be guessing and drawing.

Alternatively, in a bigger group, you can arrange the class into teams and rotate who will be drawing through the groups, and when another group guesses it they can score a point. The main objective is to increase the students’ exposure to this vocabulary, and of course to have a bit of pre-Christmas fun.

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