Fun and quick activities to do in the Primary classroom
Activities to practise vocabulary:
· Silly voices – a fun way to repeat vocabulary is to say it in silly voices e.g. quiet, angry, posh, high pitched etc
· Jacques a dit – like ‘Simon says’. The teacher or child could take the role of leader of the game. It is useful for teaching classroom instructions or parts of the body.
· Hot and cold game – somebody hides a flashcard in the classroom whilst another person is out of the room. When the child re-enters the children repeat the word over and over again – the volume increases as they get closer to finding the flashcard and decreases if they move away. Continue until the child finds the flashcard.
· Sausages – choose a child to stand at the front of the class facing the board. Choose a child to say chosen word in a silly voice. The child at the front has 3 guesses to work out who has said the word. This game is a fun way to revise key vocabulary or even questions!
· Kim’s game – Allow the children a period of time to look at a collection of words/objects etc. When the time is up remove the objects and the children have to say what the objects were. If using the written word, the children have to spell the words correctly!
· Splat – on the whiteboard show images/words. Choose 2 children to stand either side of the whiteboard. The teacher then calls out one of the objects; the first one to touch that image/word wins a point. This game could also be done in pairs where the children have a copy of the images/words in front of them.
· Repeat if it’s correct – display images on the whiteboard. As the teacher points at an image say the word; the children are only to repeat the word if it matches the image pointed to.
· I am thinking of... – teacher thinks of a number or word. Children have to guess what the word is. Good for encouraging children who often get things wrong as they can be the ones to get it right!
· Beat the teacher – hold flashcards to the chest so neither the teacher or children know what the top card is. Child guesses a card if they are correct they win, if they are wrong the teacher wins.
· Noughts and crosses – a great way to practise language. To make it more interesting each grid could have either a happy or sad face so that the children could give opinions of for example food or subjects! This can be done as a whole class (boys v girls) or in pairs.
· I am thinking of a word beginning with ... – this game can be used to revise vocabulary. A variation could be to think of a word ending with a vowel or consonant; one which contains a double letter or one which has so many letters/vowels/consonants/ syllables etc
· Twenty questions – children have to guess an ‘object’ from oral or written clues. The fewer clues the more points!
· Wipe-out – hold up a flashcard, whoever says it correctly stands in front with card, hiding it from view. Keep going until there is a row of children at the front of the class with hidden cards. Split the rest of the class into teams to try and name as many people plus the correct items of vocabulary as they can.
· Heads down thumbs up – 5 children at the front of the class represent 5 pieces of vocabulary; rest of the class put their heads down and their thumbs up. The 5 children go round the class and squeeze 5 sets of thumbs. If touched they have to say the correct item of vocabulary rather than the child’s name!
· Lip reading – a great activity to ensure good looking skills! The children have to read your lips and guess the word that you have mouthed. A child can also take the role of the teacher and they could also do it in pairs or small groups.
· Mime – Children guess the words or phrases mimed by the teacher or pupil. A time limit could be given (e.g. guess as many as you can in 1 minute) and is an activity that could be done in teams.
· Mexican wave – a good game to practise the pronunciation of new words. Children are to sit in a circle looking at the board where the words to practise are in a certain order. In turn, the children have to stand up and say a word from the board following the order. As soon as they have said their word, they can sit down. If the children do this rapidly they create a ‘Mexican wave’!
You can make it more fun by asking them to say it in a certain tone
e.g. happy, angry, tired etc
Clapping hands could change the direction of the ‘wave’.
· Memory game – decide on a topic of vocabulary. The teacher says one word from the agreed topic, the next child repeats the word the teacher has said and adds another; the next child repeats the previous words and adds another and so on. This could be done in teams to see how far the groups can go until someone gets it wrong.
· Fruit salad – decide on a topic for this game, for example colours. Children need to be in a circle with one child standing in the centre. Each child has a word relating to the topic given by the teacher. The teacher then chooses a word; all those children with that word change places whilst the child in the centre attempts to ‘steal’ a place. If you say ‘Fruit salad’ all children change seats!
· Action songs/raps – children could make up their own raps to spell words or use rhyme to learn phrases e.g. the weather : A Bordeaux il fait chaud; A Calais il y a du soleil etc
· Throw the toy – children stand in a circle and throw a soft toy to each other while saying a French word on a topic or could build sentences. The child who takes too long or loses his/her place is out.
· Tennis – useful for practising numbers! Children play in 2s or 4s while pretending to play tennis. They could count in multiples, backwards, in sequence etc
· Number game- children are to count around the room from 1 -10. The children are allowed to say 1or 2 numbers at a time. When a child says 10 the next child is out. Another rule could be that if 2 numbers are said together by one person then it changes the direction.
· Bingo – a great activity to practise numbers, vocabulary, verbs etc. An alternative way of playing this game is to do reverse bingo where if the children have written down a word or phrase they are out. This can be played with children writing one or two items down.
· Battleships – a good way to practise structures. This then could be extended to a writing activity.
· Chinese whispers – children say a sentence/ instruction which is then whispered around the circle. The last person could then show something or have to follow the instruction given.
· Team challenge – divide the class into two teams and give each child in the team a number. The teacher then calls out a number. The two children have to run to the board and draw, write etc whatever you tell them e.g. un grand chat. The rest of the children could be doing the activity on their whiteboard to show when the two children have finished.
· Vrai ou faux? – This can be done using whiteboards or cards which the children could hold up in response to something which is said or written by the teacher.
· Odd one out – display words or pictures and children have to say which is the odd one out.
· Duck duck goose – children sit in a circle chanting e.g. days of the week/ months of the year. One child walks round the outside and taps the shoulder of another. They race around the circle; whoever gets back first sits down and the loser is then ‘on’.
· Dance mats – give children vocabulary either in picture or word form, on separate pieces of paper. These are then spread out on the floor. As a word is called out, children have to step onto the correct one.
· Large dice – use a large die with either, pockets to slot cards in or stick on each face. Children could roll the die and say the word which shows or could be used to practise gender, give instructions etc.
· Sevens – a good game to practise numbers. Children stand behind their chairs and count from one to seven around the room. The child who says seven sits down and the next person starts again. The winner is the last child standing. Different numbers could be used. The number ‘seven’ could be changed to say a phrase that the children are currently learning e.g il ya du soleil.
· Actions – putting actions to vocabulary is a great way to help children remember the words/phrases that they are learning.
· Keyhole – this can be done on the interactive whiteboard using the tools. Have a picture on the IWB covered by a keyhole so part of the picture is showing – the children have to guess what the picture is.
· Lamb darts – on the board place pictures of the words learnt in the lesson. Organise two teams – in turns, a child from each team comes up to the board and stands a distance of about one or more metres from the board. The child uses a fluffy toy (lamb) as a dart and aims it at one of the pictures on the board. The team gets one point if the word is said properly and one point if the picture is hit correctly.
· Pass the parcel – place flashcards in a bag. Pass the bag round; when the music stops the child pulls out a flashcard and says the related word. This could be done with letters to spell out a word to practise spellings or words to create sentences.
· Happy families – a card game where the children have to collect sets of cards, for example, seasons or word classes.
Activities to practise literacy skills:
· Serpent – write a word on the board. Children then give another word beginning with the last letter of the first word. Continue as long as you wish. The children then have to find as many words as possible from the list.
· Sword drill – dictionary game in French
a. ‘En garde!’ Children put their dictionaries under their arms.
b. ‘Aux armes!’ Children hold the dictionaries up in the air.
c. ‘..attaquez!’ Children search for the word that the teacher has called out.
· Hangman – useful to practise the spellings of words.
· Jumbled sentences/letters – write a jumbled word or sentence on the board for the children to re-arrange or give them a series of words to make into as many sentences as possible.
· Practise spellings – can be done in pairs by a child writing a word on another child’s back or in the air. The other child has to guess the word.
· Wordsearches
· Pelmanism – matching pictures to sentences or words.
· Alphabetical order – children could sort flashcards or objects into alphabetical order.
· Dominoes – each child is given a card with an answer and a question on it. One child starts, the person with the correct answer reads the answer and then asks their question and so on.
· Acrostics – choose a word and write it vertically. Take each letter of the word as the first letter of another word or phrase.
· Human alphabet – children in groups have to spell out the word or the answer to a sum given by the teacher using their bodies as letter shapes. Lots of space is needed for this activity. It could be used as a warm down activity at the end of a P.E. lesson.
· Sentence prediction– provide the children with a written sentence structure frame from which the children can select a choice of familiar nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. Each child should have a mini-whiteboard and pen on which they will write a sentence, selecting a noun, verb etc from the scaffold.
The teacher will do the same. All the children should stand; the teacher slowly reads out his/her sentence, the children are to sit down when a word does not match the teacher’s. The children who remain standing once the sentence has been read out gain a point.
· Longest sentence – give the children word cards and challenge the children to make the longest sentence they can.
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