Some of these are quite small at the moment, but I’m presently writing worksheets and articles for all those which are short at the moment, and will be updating them and/ or this list as often as I can:
Starting and ending presentations page– NEW 15 May 2020
CPE Use of English games/ worksheets
Gerund and infinitive games/ worksheets
Reporting verbs games/ worksheets
Consonant clusters games/ worksheets
Minimal pairs games/ worksheets
Have just rearranged my list of 75 drawing game PDFs to be more organised by individual topic, and there were enough grammar ones for enough different language points to be worth a post all of their own. Will also expand this as new ones go up.
Grammar drawing games
Present tenses drawing games
Present Continuous drawing games
Who is …ing Present Continuous subject questions dice drawing games
Present Continuous and prepositions of position drawing dice game
Clothes and Present Continuous drawing game
Good and bad boys, girls and superheros Present Continuous project
Good and bad behaviour Present Continuous pictionary/ mimes
Food Present Continuous pictionary
Present Continuous and prepositions of position drawing dice game
Third person S drawing games
Does he/ she like pick and draw game
Other Present Simple drawing games
It is and they are plus colours drawing game
Days of the week pick and draw
Present Simple reading, speaking and drawing game
There is/ there are drawing games
How many are there pick and draw drawing games
What’s in the… there is there are pick and draw
Possessives drawing games
Possessive, body and adjectives pick and draw
Animals and body possessive S pictionary advanced version
Possessives and adjectives pick and draw drawing game
Whose is this?/ Whose are these? possessives drawing game
Possessive adjectives and personal pronouns drawing game
Possessive adjectives drawing game
It is/ They are + my/ your/ his/ her pick cards and draw game (with optional adjectives)
Clothes and possessive s drawing game
Animals and body parts drawing (possessive S)
Articles/ determiners drawing games
Feelings drawing games (with a/ an practice)
Comparative and superlative drawing games
Which is plus comparative drawing game
Comparative adjectives drawing games
Superlatives pictionary challenge game
Question formation drawing games
Subject questions drawing game (with animals and clothes vocabulary) – NEW
Asking for details and drawing game (question formation, directions, describing places, appearance and family vocabulary)
Prepositions drawing games
Pronouns and prepositions pick and draw drawing game
Want to plus prepositions of position personalised drawing and speaking game
Strange body positions pictionary (prepositions on position and body)
Body parts and prepositions monsters project
Our topsy turvy school prepositions project (classroom and school vocabulary)
Adjectives and prepositions pick and draw drawing game
This that these those drawing games
This that these those pick and draw drawing game
This that these those pictionary
Modals verbs drawing games
Prohibitions pictionary (modal verbs)
Rules and regulations pictionary (modals verbs and similar)
Other photocopiable grammar drawing games
As I’m (hopefully) only doing Zoom classes temporarily, number one in my criteria for planning lessons is to do things which are better done online than face to face. As I said in my last post, the things which I’ve found gain something from being on a screen are giving instructions, checking/ clarifying, telephoning, and drawing games. The last of those is obviously the most fun and something I have 75 pdfs for, but does need some setting up. Here are some tips:
Zoom settings for drawing games
Firstly you need to make sure annotation is enabled in your Zoom setttings. It seems that if it’s turned on for the person hosting the meeting then it’s turned on for everyone, so if you can do it in a practice Zoom session, then it’s probably already okay. However, if you want students to be able to open the whiteboard function themselves (as recommended below), then you’ll also need to enable screen sharing for participants in your settings.
Choosing drawing games for Zoom
At least the first time that you do drawing games on Zoom, it’s best to stick to Pictionary, which is simply one person choosing something from a list and drawing something for others to guess. Luckily, this can be used for all kinds of vocabulary, business skills such as presentations, grammar like Present Continuous, etc, etc, etc. Particularly if you’ve run through useful language for giving instructions on Zoom, the second best option is probably a drawing dictation, in which one person gives instructions on what another person should draw. Another option which seems good but I’ve never tried face to face is students just working together to make the best drawing that they can to match the target language, e.g. all working on a picture to contrast “He’s cutting his hair” and “He’s having his hair cut”.
Other drawing games like Pick and Draw are also possible, but need a bit more organisation and/ or training of students on using Zoom.
Sharing lists of things to draw on Zoom
If you want students to draw things from a list, you need to make sure that they all get and can see that list by doing at least two of these things:
It’s more complicated if you only want the person who is drawing to see the list, but you can copy and paste and send as a private message to just that person from the chat box. Just giving them one option for what to draw is likely to lead to problems if they don’t understand that thing (and any explanation will also have to be done through private messages in the chat function so everyone else can’t hear). However, if you send them everything then they’ll have an unfair advantage when the next person draws. I would therefore copy and paste 5 to 10 options for each student to choose from, with different options for each student. After finishing the game, you can share the whole list with everyone in the ways suggested above.
The other possibility is to split the worksheet into Student A, Student B, Student C, etc and email just one part to each student, but you’d need to be pretty confident about the number of students who will take part when you are preparing it that way.
Spaces to draw on Zoom
If you want everyone to be able to see the list while they are drawing, guessing, etc, you need to have both that and a blank space for drawing on the screen at the same time. The easiest way that I’ve found is to make the list as a Word document, open that document in Word as usual, open the Word “search” function, then share that document with the screen sharing function . You and the students can then use the mostly blank grey search box space on the left-hand side of the screen for drawing on, as well as being able to underline things etc in the list on the right-hand side. You could also of course do the same by making a blank space on one side of the Powerpoint slide etc that you create.
If only the student who is drawing should look at the options, then you just need to open a blank page for them to draw on. The easiest way is probably by clicking on the “Whiteboard” function after you click on “Share screen”, but you can all do exactly the same things on top of any blank document.
Making sure that students can draw on Zoom
Whatever document you share, students can draw on top of it by clicking on the drop-down “options” button at the top of the screen, choosing “annotate” (“comments” on the Japanese version that I’m using), then choose the symbol that looks like someone has drawn a squiggly line (called “draw a picture” in my Japanese version). As well as using a pen, they can draw straight lines, draw arrows and draw shapes. They can also draw in different colours (e.g. one colour for each student to know who has drawn what) and change the thickness of the line, all by clicking on the “format” button.
The easiest way to set this up is to start with a few minutes or even a whole lesson on instructions on Zoom (e.g. with this worksheet). Alternatively, I guess it must be possible to show them how you are doing it while you draw a few examples by using “Share desktop” when you “Share screen”.
If you have students who can’t work out how to annotate on top of documents that other people open, you can just close the document that you are sharing and get the student whose turn it is to share their screen and open “whiteboard” or another document to draw on. This is easier to explain than how to draw on top of your documents, as there is a big “share screen” button in the middle of the main menu that is easy to find and use if you put them in charge of that. If they can’t find that share screen button, they probably just need to open Zoom up to the full size of their screen.
After my first week of Zoom lessons, I’m more convinced than ever that students need to be specifically taught Social English (especially small talk and conversational reactions) to be able to communicate smoothly at the beginning and end of lessons on video conferencing platforms like Zoom (even more so than in face to face lessons).
During the lesson, the language that is most likely to come up and need teaching to make communication go smoothly is asking people to wait and checking/ clarifying. Both of these points are presented and practised at lot in telephoning materials. In fact, telephoning is probably easier to teach through Zoom etc than teleconferencing/ video conferencing would be. This is because it’s difficult to be in a real video conference and roleplay a pretend video conference at the same time, but you can turn the video off while practising telephone calls to clearly mark where the roleplay starts and ends, and to provide more realistic practice than you would get in a face-to-face classroom.
Finally, you can do a whole or part of a lesson specifically on instructions for Zoom lessons, teaching both language that they will need to understand and use in future lessons, and how to use the app, as in this brand new PDF of mine:
Classroom language for Zoom lessons activities
This goes well with the language of giving instructions (perhaps as requests or with the imperative). However, I did the worksheet before and after drawing games, as drawing on the whiteboard and annotating other documents is a fair chunk of most possible Zoom class instructions. Note that the instructions which students can follow and give each other will depend a lot on what you’ve done with your Zoom settings, and this worksheet will need to be substantially rewritten if you are using different software for video lessons.
This are just my initial ideas one week into reluctantly agreeing to do online lessons, so feedback on the worksheet, more suggested classroom language, etc, etc gratefully accepted.
Teaching my first two Zoom lessons yesterday showed me that, as I suspected, students need even more help online than face to face when it comes to smoothly starting and ending conversations, small talk, conversational reactions, etc. Luckily, I’ve written eight articles (including one new one) and two lists of useful language on the topic, and have lots more coming soon, all here:
I’ve been following my own tips and writing lots of articles. I’ve somehow managed to write over 2000 words each on just teaching “What’s your name?”, “How old are you?” and “How are you?”, which shows how tricky even the simplest-looking parts of teaching can be. And to show how many such points we teachers have to think about, my new to do list of absolutely vital points which I’ve never written about has over 100 things on it. That is quite an impressive gap given that I’ve just wasted some of that precious coronavirus time calculating that I’ve published 628 articles on what I’d previously claimed were all things TEFL.
Let those past and future 1.5 million words be an answer to all those who think TEFLers are dossing off while they are doing the real jobs!
A sudden surge in popularity for my posts on small talk and talking about your week and weekend for specific language points has inspired me to rearrange my list of EFL dice game PDFs so that it is now organised by target language. (Not sure how it was organised before…)
Including a couple of brand new ones, there are now sections with at least a couple of photocopiable dice games for:
Social distanced (real word?) versions include buying them a dice each (it’s ten for about a dollar in my local hundred yen shop) or the teacher rolling each time, maybe with an online dice roller. Or you could switch to coin games, as they should definitely have one coin each.
39 more TEFLtastic classics, including many similar coin games, are available here. If you like anything here and would like me to turn down crappy online teaching jobs and spend the time putting more useful stuff up here instead, please support TEFLtastic.
Can’t say that it was planned, but in the last three months have managed a nice mix of language points including some on previously neglected points like indirect questions. All of these are available as PDFs to save and keep, so it’s well worth having a quick look through to save the best ones in relevant folders on your hard disk (no doubt all newly organised, as suggested in my to do list). In approximate order of how likely I am to re-use them myself.
Direct, indirect and taboo small talk questions
Present Perfect Simple and Continuous small talk
Recommendations and invitations for visitors review
Positive and negative responses in a restaurant games
Prepositions of time pairwork guessing game
Business acronyms and abbreviations presentation
Formal and informal business communication activities
Present and past ability discussion questions
Time expressions with Present Simple games
Film, book and song titles with subject questions
Reported speech the same or different
Giving advice and recommendations future time expressions practice
IELTS Speaking Part Three functions card game
Opinions on the news and media
What’s in the… There is/ There are drawing game
Direct and indirect questions simplest responses game
Aptis Speaking Part Two activities
Travel and tourism recommendations numbers practice
Small talk about work and leisure
How questions about work and leisure
How questions and advice dice game
Work and leisure adverbs of frequency
If my blog stats are anything to go by, I’m not the only TEFLer to have lost teaching hours due to coronavirus scares, and it’s sure to get worse before it gets better, including more self-isolating teachers. In some ways TEFLers might be better suited to self-isolating than non-TEFLers, having got used to being far away from friends and family and communicating with them electronically, and perhaps already having stockpiled favourite foods from home or learned to do without.
However, TEFLers might suffer more in other ways when forced to self-isolate. Financially it’s going to be a complete disaster for many of us, given how precarious TEFL was even when times were good. Teachers generally are also probably especially at risk from mental and/ or physical collapse, given the removal of many hours of face to face human contact and an all-consuming job, suddenly changing to the complete opposite of having no one or the same few faces to communicate with, and many hours and much mental space suddenly free – the perfect conditions for all kinds of bugs to hit.
Luckily, another good thing about TEFL is how many suitable related things you can do given a bit of free time. This is a list of some of those productive ways to spend your empty time, things that should both help your future teaching and keep you stimulated through any idle hours, most of which I’ve started doing or have on my to-do list myself.
Any more ideas/ things you are already doing?
