5 minute games for the classroom

Mix up each pile and then read one why card with one because card. The combinations can be very funny, and then after reading all the random match ups you can have your students match the correct answers with the correct questions.

This activity is a good one for getting to know your students better. You can be straightforward with your questions or be creative and out of the box. Ask your class a question and have your students move to one side of the room if they answer one way, the other side of the room if they answer the other way.

Then ask random students on each side to explain why they chose the answer that they did. You can do as many or as few questions as you have time for. You may learn some interesting facts about your students and their preferences with this activity. This old-fashioned game can get new life in the ESL classroom. Have your students arrange themselves in a circle around the room.

Come up with a long sentence yourself or have one of your students do it check to make sure it is grammatical and whisper it in the ear of the first student in the circle. The listening student then has one opportunity to whisper it in the ear of the next student. The process continues around the circle until it reaches the last person. That person then says the sentence aloud to the class. You should then tell the class what the original sentence was.

Your class will be surprised at how much the sentence changed as it travelled around the circle. If you like, challenge your students to be as careful as they can when speaking and listening and see if the sentence can make it around the circle with minimal change. Start by writing a word on the board that contains four letters. You can start with anything. Then, challenge your students to come up and change only one letter of the word to make a new word.

In my experience, this always leads to higher motivation from the class. Spinner wheels are hugely versatile tools and can actually be used for many types of online classroom games.

Here are a few ideas:. How it works: Present the class with a picture that has been zoomed all the way in. Make sure to leave a few subtle details, as students will have to guess what the picture is. Reveal the picture at the end to see who got it right. Simply upload a picture to the slide and zoom into it in the edit menu. Points are awarded automatically. As well as being one of my favourite ice breaker activities for students and colleagues alike, 2 truths, 1 lie is a devil of a review game for online learning.

How it works: At the end of a lesson, get students either solo or in teams to come up with two facts that everyone had just learned in the lesson, as well as one lie that sounds like it could be true. Each student reads out their two truths and one lie, after which each student votes for which they thought was the lie.

Each student who correctly identified the lie gets a point, while the student who made up the lie gets one point for each person who voted incorrectly. It rewards students for getting the most obscure answers possible.

How it works : On a live word cloud , you give all students a category and they try to write the most obscure but correct answer they can think of. The most popular words will appear the largest at the centre of the word cloud. Once all the results are in, Start by deleting all the incorrect entries.

Clicking the central most popular word deletes it and replaces it with the next most popular word. How it works : Using a free tool like My Free Bingo Cards , put a set of your target words into a bingo grid.

Send the link out to your class, who click on it to each receive a randomised virtual bingo card containing your target words. Read out the definition of a target word. The first student to cross out all of the target words is the winner! Getting a group of kids to pay attention in a classroom is no easy task. Whether it is a party or inside a classroom, games and activities are the best tools to keep children engaged. A fun or challenging activity can keep them focused on what you are saying.

MomJunction has compiled a list of fun classroom games for. Education is a serious business, but kids just want to have fun. So here are some fun ways to educate the children, seriously! Buzz is an excellent game for younger kids who need to recite long lists such as a series of numbers, letters of the alphabet , and days of the month.

You will need: Sheets of white paper, pencil, pen or sketch pens, drawings or images. When asked a question, the ideal thing to do is answer.

But not when you are playing this game, which older kids and teens will enjoy playing. The game gets hilarious when students get imaginative and creative with their answers.

Four corners is a simple game of chance that can energize students and keep them awake after the lunch hour. This activity helps kids work on listening, coordinating, and strategizing skills. It works best with smaller students. Have your students stand in a big circle. Ask all the other students to join hands to close up the circle. The objective of the game is to pass the hula hoop all the way around the circle without unclasping hands.

Students will have to figure out how to maneuver their bodies all the way through the hoop to pass it on. This is a great activity to support nonverbal communication skills. Choose ten students to participate in the first round. The others can gather around the edges and watch.

Designate a player one. To begin, player one makes eye contact no words or hand motions with another player player two and gives them a signal that means go. When player two says go, player one starts moving slowly toward them to take their place in the circle.

Player two then makes eye contact with another player player three and gives them a signal meaning go and starts moving toward them. After the first round, switch out the teams until everyone has had a chance to play. In this game, your students stand in a circle and raise their arms with only their index fingers extended.

Tell the students they must maintain a fingertip on the hula hoop at all times, but are not allowed to hook their finger around it or otherwise hold the hoop; the hoop must simply rest on the tips of their fingers. The challenge is for the children to lower the hoop to the ground without dropping it. To make this more challenging, you can place communication constraints on the children—no talking or limited talking, for example.

Watch the video for a demonstration. This activity is good for encouraging kids to mix it up. Students must break into groups of that size. The goal is to form different groups of individuals every time. If a person tries to join a group with whom they have already partnered, they must find a different group. After a few rounds, the process may take a bit of rearranging. This is a fun name game that requires quick thinking! Students stand in a large circle.

One student comes to the middle. That student walks around the inside of the circle, stops in front of one person, and gives them a direction. The student who was given the direction races to say the name of the correct person before the student finishes the phrase.

This activity requires coordination and communication. Divide students into groups of between four and six people. Have the students in each group stand in a straight line with their right hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them and their left leg forward so that the person in front of them can hold their ankle. The group then sees how far they can hop along together without toppling over.

Once groups get the hang of hopping, you can hold a competition to see who can hop the farthest or longest. Source: Nick Cornwell. This hands-on group challenge is an exercise in patience and perseverance, not to mention a total blast! Decide how many students you want in each group and tie that number of strings to a single rubber band, making one for each group.

Each person in the group holds onto one of the strings attached to the rubber band, and, as a group, they use this device to pick up the cups by expanding and contracting the rubber band and place them on top of each other in order to build a pyramid.

See detailed instructions here. This activity helps students negotiate and work together toward a common goal. Make a list of tasks on chart paper, assigning a point value for each job. For example: Do 25 jumping jacks 5 points ; make up a nickname for each member of the class 5 points ; get every person in the class to sign a piece of paper 15 points ; form a conga line and conga from one end of the room to the other 5 points, 10 bonus points if anyone joins you ; etc.

Make sure you list enough tasks to take up more than 10 minutes. Divide your students into groups of five or six and give them 10 minutes to collect as many points as they can by deciding which tasks from the list to perform. You need a large open space for this game. Have students spread out and guide them through a few rounds of forming letters with their bodies.

Start with two-letter words, then three, then four. If students want a challenge, come up with a phrase that will take the whole class to complete. Form groups of between three and five students.