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EFL Ideas


Hungry Brats


This game may be played individually or in pairs/groups. Players perform the role of efficient kindergarten nurses who are looking after some curious kids...a gang who are HUNGRY for LEARNING. If all is well, everyone will have fun AND get the hint before long!

Preparation: Before lesson starts, take a few scraps of paper and quickly draw several "Smileys" on them... some happy, others worried or angry. Keep these as tokens to give to your students later.

The teacher (or the students, in turns) pretend that they are kids who want to learn words from a given category. When "the brat" says, for instance, "I want some CLOTHES!" "the nurse" (the actual player) has 1 minute to say as many words belonging to that category as s/he possibly can. No wrong words or repetitions allowed (these put an end to the player´s turn.) When time is up, give the player one of the tokens you drew beforehand. Distribute the tokens according to the following table:

1 - 5 right words: An ANGRY Smiley.
6 - 9 right words: A WORRIED Smiley.
10+ right words: A HAPPY Smiley.

You may adjust the values according to your students´ level and/or age.

The player/s with the most HAPPY Smileys win/s the game. With the students who get too many worried and/or angry Smileys...er..... Use your good senses! (See below for some tips)

Suggested word categories:

- Things in the Street.
- Toys and Games.
- Kitchen Utensils.
- Ailments and Illnesses.
- Musical Instruments.
- Sports.
- Parts of the Body.
- Animals.
- Colours.
- Things you can Read.
- Food.
- Months of the Year.
- Flowers.
- Means of Travelling and Transportation.
- Verbs.
- People´s Names.
- Adjectives.
- Things on the Beach.
- Stationery Items.
- Things at Hospital.
- Shops.
- Jobs and Tools.
- Furniture and Fittings.
- Parts of a Car.
- Clothes.

To round off the activity, the possibilities are endless: using the dictionary sentence/composition writing making a word search box (letter soup) reading/writing a story producing a poster or a picture dictionary depicting objects belonging to a given category...you name it!