Teenagers can be pretty tricky customers when they want to be, and these are often amongst the most challenging groups for teachers. One of the biggest issues is that teenagers’ moods can be so unpredictable that a bad day can spell disaster for your seemingly well-planned lesson, as the learners don’t react to it as anticipated. It’s for this https://www.crossroadsfeedandseed.com/ reason that you need to have some different activities up your sleeve to ensure that you can mix up the class as and when necessary and keep those teens on their toes!
Here are our very favourite activities which we use regularly with our teenage classes.
1. Back to the Board
What it can be used for: This works best for vocabulary revision.
How to play: The clue’s in the title; get one student to sit with their back to the board and get the others to sit facing it. The teacher then writes something on the board that the ss sitting facing it can see. They must describe or mime the word which they see, but they mustn’t mention the word itself. For younger learners, this activity also works well for practice of numbers- the person with their back to the board has to guess a number and the others just have to say ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ and the student keeps guessing until they say the correct number.
2. Jeopardy
What it can be used for: This can be used for any language practice.
How to play: The teacher writes a table on the board of any size they want. Obviously the bigger the table, the longer the activity will take. The columns are organised in order of category, this could be categories related to grammar or vocabulary. The rows are labelled in terms of number of points, the first row has the fewest number of points associated with it and the last row has the most. The questions that the ss have to answer in the lower-point rows must be easier than those in the higher-point rows. The students guess a category and a prize, e.g. present perfect, 200. The teacher then asks a question or shows them something they need to complete. If they get it right, they win that square in the table and the teacher writes the team/student’s name in the square. At the end, all of the points are added up and the student/team with the most points wins!
3. Sentence Jumble
What it can be used for: This works well for grammar revision in which the ss have to place the different elements in the correct order.
How to play: The teacher gives ss a set of jumbled sentences, these can be on a worksheet, the board or in little cut-up cards. Individually or in pairs/groups, ss have to put the sentence in the correct order. Make it harder by adding one word which doesn’t need to be used. Mix up the type of sentence, too, so have some affirmative forms, negatives and interrogative forms.
4. Countdown
What it can be used for: This activity is used for vocabulary practice.
How to play: The countdown tool on ESL games is perfect for use in class to practise vocabulary. It works well with most levels, but particularly well with higher levels as they have more vocabulary to draw on when creating the words from the chosen letters. You can get ss to think of the most words in the set time or think of the longest word. You could also go further and get them to only think of a certain part of speech, like verbs. If you’re feeling extra cool, you can also play the original countdown clock when there are 30 seconds left to increase the pressure.
5. Song Lyrics
What it can be used for: This activity practises listening for detail.
How to play: The website lyrics training has been a saviour for many teachers of teens for many years now, and it’s easy to see why. The teacher, or the students themselves, can pick a song which they then have to listen to and choose or write the missing lyrics. You can set it to varying degrees of difficulty (beginner, intermediate, advanced or expert) to make it suitable for all levels of learner. If you don’t fancy using this online tool, then a simple worksheet with parts of the song removed or jumbled works just as well- it might just take you more time to produce.