1. Spelling Ball

This game is as simple as ABC. Have your students stand in a big circle. Say a word and toss the ball to one of your students. Student says the first letter of the word and tosses the ball to a classmate, who has to say the second letter, and then tosses the ball to another. Students who make a mistake must sit down and play starts again with the teacher. The last student standing is the winner!

2. Shoot for Points
Set up a trash can, bin, or any container that will serve as your “basket”. Students line up. Choose a topic or grammar point, for example Past Simple. Ask each student a question: Where did you go last weekend? If student uses the verb in simple past correctly, they may shoot for points: 10 points if they score; 5 if they miss, but answered the question correctly.

3.Choose Your Victim

This is a great way to make a Q &A session more “active”. Students stand in a circle. Give them a grammar point to practice through questions, for example, tell them to ask questions with “ever” so they practice Present Perfect. First student asks a question with “ever” (Have you ever been to London?) and tosses the ball to a classmate who must answer correctly to stay in the game and earn the right to ask a question. Those who make a mistake must leave the circle.

4. Freeze!
This game is ideal for little ones! Practice vocabulary with flashcards. First, teach students the meaning of “Freeze!” as stop. Students sit in a wide circle with a set of flashcards in the center. Students pass the ball around the circle. Tell them they can’t hold the ball for more than a second. Cover your eyes while they do this and say, “Freeze!” The student who has the ball must stop and take a flashcard from the pile. Depending on your students’ ages and level, ask them to either say the word or use it in a sentence.

This is a great way for students to introduce themselves and learn their classmates’ names in a first lesson. Also a fun way to practice or review possessive pronouns! Have students sit in a circle. Give one of them the ball, and say, “It’s a bomb! The timer is ticking (use an egg timer!)” Tell them they have to say their name, pass the ball, and say their classmate’s name: My name is Juan. Your name is Maria. The student who has the “bomb” when the timer goes off, leaves the circle. Have students re-arrange themselves in the circle so they’re sitting next to different students, and start again.*

For this  warn  up activity, you can divide the students into small groups or pairs or they can work on their own. Come up with a few sentences before class, and write the sentence’s words on your physical or virtual whiteboard in a random order. The first group or individual student to unscramble the words and read the sentence aloud correctly wins that round. When creating the sentences, you can use motivating mottos, the target language of the day, or review a grammar point from a previous lesson.
 
The  purpose of this warn  up  activity is motivate  the students  in where they can use  their  previous knowlege  about  grammar  and vocabulary. It permits   students´ competition  among them

Examples.

1-   Read    they,  intructions, did not=  they did not read the intructions

2  He    house , cleans,  yesterday , the= He  cleans the house yesterday.

3-   They   read did the  intructions =  Did they read the intructions?

Board Race is a fun game that is used for revising vocabulary, whether it be words from the lesson you’ve just taught or words from a lesson you taught last week. It is a great way of testing what your students already know about the subject you’re about to teach.

Have all students stand up. 

Ask them questions like "How is the weather? What time is it? Which superhero wears the colors red and blue? What did I have for breakfast today? and so on".

Let students raise their hand who first gets it has a chance to answer. If the answer is wrong, the next student to raise his/her hand follow the activity and so on. If the answer is correct, that student gets to sit down. The goal is to not be the last student standing!

Students stand in a circle or just stand up where they are (depending on the layout of your classroom). You can also play this game with a ball or without one.

You can start the game for the first time by giving a student any letter in the alphabet, e.g. “i”. Pass the ball to a student, then they have to say a word that starts with that letter, e.g. “ice”. The next student then gives a word that starts with the last letter of “ice”, e.g. “egg”. And so the game continues.

You can also play different variations with the game, e.g. a student needs to give words that are longer than three letters, it should be related to a theme, all words should be verbs, etc.

This no prep ESL game is especially great if it is your first time teaching a class or if the whole class is new and students should get to know each other.

You can come up with three questions, such as “What’s your name?”, “Where are you from?”, and “What is your favourite book?” If needed, you can write these on the board. Students stand in two lines, facing each other. Once you say, “Go”, the students on one side of the line start asking the person opposite them the questions. Once the first pair of students is done asking each other, they say, “Switch”, and one line of students move one space down. And so the activity continues.

Rather than just an icebreaker or getting-to-know-you type of activity, use this for conversation practice with students asking and answering questions or practicing dialogue related to the topic, for example, ordering food in a restaurant, where one line of students are the ‘waiter’ and the other the ‘customers’.

Vocabulary warm-up activities are a great way to elicit vocabulary from a class and introduce a topic. Tell students you are going to show them an image and that they will need to list as many words connected to the picture as they can. Show them an example image first. If the example image is a photo of a kitchen, you could ask “What can you see?” and write up words such as “sink”, “washing machine”, “kettle”…

Explain that the team with the most words will win and that they have to write the words down for them to count as points. Then, divide students into pairs and give them the picture (sent to their breakout room chat online, face to face as a print-out or on the IWB (interactive whiteboard)). Give them a time limit of 5 minutes or more.

When the time is up, students total up their words. The winning team has the most words! Afterwards, go around the class, giving each pair a turn to say one of their words. Write the words on the board until all the words have been written up.

For higher levels, your examples could include multiple words, for example, “linoleum floor”, “tea towel”. You could make it more interesting by explaining beforehand that if they think of a word that another team didn’t think of, that it will count as 2 points. This will encourage them to stretch themselves and even get creative. Remind them that all vocabulary must be visible, so they can’t say “cliché housewife with a feather duster” unless there is one pictured!

Introduce 4 times of the day: morning, afternoon, evening and night, play Times of the day boxes game, create a Times of the day chart on the board,add times to the imes of the day chart and play the Daily Routines Memory Game