Games to play with teenagers in the English classroom.

Some students love mime and others are not so keen. Adolescents can get very self-conscious and embarrassed, so don’t push it upon them. Students between 8 and 12 usually love them. I have had many adult students who liked them too.

Prepare slips of paper with instructions like these:

You’re knitting on a fast train.
You’re eating spaghetti with chop sticks.
You’re sweeping leaves outside on a windy day.
You’re washing a big, angry dog.
You’re a clumsy waiter.
You’re a drunk tightrope walker.

These can be relatively easy or very complicated linguistically depending on your students.  

  • Give a slip of paper to one student with the instructions that she is going to mime the activity and the others must guess what she is doing. No words, in any language, can be spoken.
  • The first person to guess – in English what she’s doing is the winner and gets the next slip of paper. (If the same students always guess, let others have a chance to mime).  

Once they get the idea of the game, get students to write similar instructions on slips of paper. This can get incredibly funny.

Topics

Teenagers: Games