Vocabulary Games

I did this with an adult intermediate ESL class. I had three colors of index cards, and each color had a different activity on it for students to pantomime for other students in front of the class. Each color was worth either 1, 2 or 3 points, depending on how difficult the activity was to describe. For instance, a 1 card might be "brushing your teeth" and a 3 might be "seeing a mouse in your house (eek!)".

You can adjust these to your class level. Break them into groups of three, and they can choose to have one person give all three clues to the class, or each person can give one...whatever they want. I give them one minute to describe all three things, and you score each team on the board. If teams tie, you can do playoffs with the more difficult questions.

I gave prizes to all for their participation, but the winning team got some extra goodies. This provides lots of laughs, and is best done at the end of class! (It is also important to do "word banks" if necessary before this activity in order to make sure the students know what the words in the clues mean. I did a word bank the class before I did the actual activity).