The Human Buzzer Game Show
We've all stayed in on a Saturday night watching TV game shows, where the fastest finger buzzes in to answer the question for their big chance to win prizes or a holiday! This is where you can bring those big Saturday night game shows right into your ESL classroom!
Preparing before class
Before class, prepare about 20-30 questions appropriate to the English level of your students, or on topics you've recently been studying. To mix things up, you could have a 'picture round', where you show flashcards, or an 'audio' round, where they hear someone speaking or singing and the kids have to imitate it. Bring your questions to class.
How to Play
In class, divide your students into three or four teams and explain that they're going to be playing a TV game show. Each team should choose a player to answer a question first, with one student from each team standing in a row at the front of the class. In front of each standing student, have seated in a chair another student from their team. So, for example, if you have three teams, you'll have three students answering questions and another three students seated in front of the kids answering questions, making six in total at the front.
This is the funny part; each student answering must rest their hands on the head of their team mate seated in front of them. After the teacher has asked a question, if a student knows it, then they must press down on the head of the student in front of them and the seated student must make a funny buzzer noise, just like the buzzer on TV! Only then can the standing student give their answer. The first to buzz in gets to answer first. If they get it right, then their team wins $100, if they get it wrong, then one of the other players can try to answer.
After each question, change the kids at the front, so everyone has a chance of answering questions and being the human buzzer! This game is seriously funny and very awesome! Play this ESL game in your classroom this week!
Get more amazing ESL games for young learner classes from TEFL Lemon!
Snowball Fight
This ESL activity for kids and teens is good for kids who are elementary level and above. Make enough photocopies so that each student has a copy. Each student writes down their answers and screws their paper up into a ball. Now get your class into two lines facing each other.
Meteor
In “Meteor”, students are stood in a circle and need to quickly say vocab items as a ball or soft toy is thrown to them.
A student in the middle is trying to catch the ball. All your students will improve their vocabulary recall with this excellent ESL game for children.