ESL Madness

Materials: Each student’s name on a small placard with magnet attached (or just have them write their names on the board).  / 2 large dice / illustrated month cards.

This is a great activity for teaching the months of the year to elementary school students (or likely any age for that matter). As usual, it’s all in the presentation and set-up…

SET UP
Tell the students you’re going to be learning “months”. If they don’t know what that is, ask them their birthdays, then repeat the month they say each time… they’ll get it. Then let them know that since there’s 12 months, it’s a little difficult to remember all of them, so we’re going to use our birthdays to remember.

REPETITION
Start by placing the January card on the board, and having the class repeat after you. Then ask whose birthday is in January. When they raise their hands, have them come up to the board and place their name cards (or write their names) under the January card. Then coach each of them briefly on the pronunciation of the month before they go back to their seats.  Continue this process for all the months.

Go through all the months once as a class.

Then go through the months as a class again and have the students stand up and say the month even louder when it’s their birthday. Repeat 2 or 3 times, getting faster and faster, so the kids have fun trying to stand up and sit down really fast, and get used to hearing the 12 months said in order.

THE GAME
Split the class into two teams – split down the middle of the room. Put a score board up. Have the teams huddle up together close to the front, but forming an aisle down the middle of the room between them.

Choose one student from each team to start the game, and come to the front of the aisle with you. Hand each student a dice. When you say go, they each roll their dice down the aisle.

The students must raise their hand and tell you the name of the month corresponding to the numbers on the dice.
For example: 3 and 5 = 8, so the answer is “August”.

Their teammates may help them, as they are likely to have a teammate with a birthday in that month.

One point goes to the first team to say the month, (only the original player can raise their hand and answer), and then play starts again with the next two players. The game ends when everyone has had a chance to play.

THOUGHTS
By having the teammates help each other, it takes the pressure off the individual while handing out responsibility and ownership at the same time!

The dice-rolling turned into a bowling competition in one of my classes, but the dice are soft, so it just made the game more fun for them. This was one of the first games I have played where the students seemed to forget that they were trying to learn a new language, and were able to relax and have fun instead.

If you try this, let me know how it goes!