Using Learn English Kids Just for Fun games in class
Learn English Kids is a great site for class or home use that is offered by the British Council for free. Much of the content is comparable in interest and quality to paid content on CD ROMs etc. If there is any problem with the site it is that the sheer amount of good material [...]
Learn English Kids is a great site for class or home use that is offered by the British Council for free. Much of the content is comparable in interest and quality to paid content on CD ROMs etc. If there is any problem with the site it is that the sheer amount of good material makes it overwhelming, especially for teachers with limited preparation time and a desire to tie things in with the syllabus. This is made worse by too many results for most searches and some difficulty in finding teachers’ notes. This series of articles aims to help teachers who have those problems.
Despite the name of the section of the site I’m going to look at being Just for Fun, almost all of the games described here can be just as useful for learning language as some of the content in other parts of Learn English Kids if they are used correctly (exceptions mentioned below). They are perfectly right in calling them “fun” though! This article aims to make it easier to choose the best game for your students, and easier to make the game useful and fun in class. It could also provide a model for judging and using other interactive EFL games for young learners. The games are organised below by approximately how often I have or will use them in my classes. If anyone has any other suggestions for how to use the games or other recommendations on good free online EFL games for kids, please leave comments below.
What’s my job? (=Job mixer)
Brief description of the game: Change the clothes on the head, body and legs of a person to match the description and guess the job and get a noise representing that job when it is correct (siren for police officer, car engine for mechanic etc)
Possible language and topic connections: Jobs, clothes, verbs connected to jobs (help, wear, use etc)
Ways of using it in class: The fact that a green light comes up when the answer is correct takes away most of the need to read and understand any of the information. You could try blanking out or covering this part of the screen in some way, or put more communication into other parts of the game. For example, each time a wrong piece of clothing comes up the students have to answer one question about that part in order to be allowed another try.
Useful classroom language: “Why doesn’t that one match?/ Which job is that one for?/ What is that?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Jobs 20 questions
Brief description of the game: Students change clothes on the head, body and legs of the character to match the sport that is described in the short text. Each one comes up with a tick as you find it.
Possible language and topic connections: Clothes (boots, football stripe etc), sports equipment (goggles, poles etc), verb patterns (infinitive with “want to” and “need to”, ing with “love”), names of sports, “a” and “some” (“a racket” and “some tennis shoes”)
Ways of using it in class: This game is rather easy, especially as students can just click through randomly until they see the tick come up (possibly without even reading the text). It is therefore more suitable for a whole class activity, with the teacher getting as much language out of the students as they can during the game. Tactics for this include asking them what each thing that doesn’t match is and what sport it will match, and asking them to predict what each part of the correct sports kit will look like. See Jobs Mixer above for more ideas.
Useful classroom language: “Which part do you want to try first?” “What do you think the … will look like?” “Does that match?/ Is that a football? No? What is it? What sport should it be used with?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Students create different costumes that can be stuck on a similar flat cut out doll.
Brief description of the game: Students choose a colour and body parts to make a Pokemon-type animal that can defeat other animals. Clicking on the camera symbol near each body part shows how it can be used to attack and defend. They can then print out their finished animal.
Possible language and topic connections: Colours, animal body parts (horn, antlers, jaw, teeth etc), can (“This jaw can break bones”), dangerous animals
Ways of using it in class: Students left on their own will probably choose the body parts without using the language at all. One way of adding language is to get them to match the body parts and the things they can do, and then click on the cameras to check.
Useful classroom language: “Which ones have poison (do you think)?” “Do you mean dark blue or light blue?” “Why do you think your one is better?” “Which (of all the animals) is the scariest/ strongest/ prettiest?” “What real animals have antlers/ poison?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Students tell the story of their animal’s combats with their classmates’ animals. They can also design similar animals with other body parts/ weapons cut out that other students can use to make animals. Similar things can be done with space rockets, robots etc.
Brief description of the game: In groups of around five on each screen, students try to put animals in order from A to Z before the time limit finishes. They can see the list of animals before they start the game (but not during play)
Possible language and topic connections: First letter phonics, the alphabet, animals, body parts (“The next one is a lynx. It has spots and a long tail”)
Ways of using it in class: Choose one student to come to the front of the class (or one student per team). Give the class an answer key made up of print outs of the animals stuck to one A3 sheet. They use this to shout out clues to the person controlling the computer. Alternatively, the same game can be done in pairs with laptops, with the person with the answer key sitting behind the computer so that they can’t see the screen
Useful classroom language: “It’s got long legs/ spots/ stripes/ a long beak” “It’s a kind of bird/ animal/ lizard” “There’s only one left, click on that” “The one in the middle” “No, further right”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Give an alphabetical list and students have to think of one word in the category you are practising (e.g. food) for each letter. Students make a list of animals in another order (e.g. size, number of babies, average lifespan, estimated population in their country or the world) and the other students guess how they have been arranged. Students draw and describe a made up animal or one they have found on the internet that no one will know, and the others draw it and compare their drawings to the original. Brainstorm animals with various parts of their appearance in common, e.g. birds with big beaks.
Miscellaneous notes: Note that some of the animals are very obscure and that even a native speaker probably wouldn’t know them. This means some kind of game where they use other language such as describing animals’ bodies as suggested above is vital to make the game worthwhile.
Brief description of the game: Students zoom a magnifying glass in and out to find three tiny or otherwise difficult to see insects in a scene within 30 seconds. After they find one, the clock is paused while they learn something about that insect (highlights include “a cockroach can live without food for a month and without its head for a week”).
Possible language and topic connections: Have (“It has six legs”), nature vocabulary (desert, rainforest, pond etc, plus the things shown in the pictures), numbers, superlative adjectives, names of insects (stick insect etc)
Ways of using it in class: The danger is that students won’t use much language while playing the game and just ignore the information that comes up about each insect as they anxiously wait to continue with the next insect. One way round this is to give them true/ false statements about the insects that will be in the scene they will see next (maybe making this focus on one language point such as superlatives). Finding the insects is done as a class and points are given only for having correctly predicted the information about each insect. Instead of true/ false, it is possible to use gapfills or matching the statements to the three insects. You could also test them on what they remember at the end of each scene.
Useful classroom language: “(Hit the) space bar” “Go closer” “Press/ Click the left mouse button” “Where is it?” “Zoom in/ out” “What kind of insect is it?” “(Move a little) up/ left/ up/ down” “In the middle/ On the right/ In the top left corner”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Students draw very tiny drawings for other people to identify. Use Where’s Wally (= Where’s Waldo) or similar pictures or books.
Miscellaneous notes: Some of the insect names are very obscure indeed, so don’t spend too much time on that (although parts of the name that are used more generally like “moth” or “beetle” could be useful)
Brief description of the game: Students sweep their shopping trolley left and right across a shelf of supermarket goods and try to remember and find the things that were on their shopping list (they can look at the shopping list again if they forget, but lose time doing so)
Possible language and topic connections: Clothes, food and drink, words that make uncountable nouns countable (a carton of… etc), going to (“What are we going to buy?” after seeing the list and before starting the shopping), Simple Past (“What did we get?” “What did we miss/ forget?”)
Ways of using it in class: You could allow some of the students to look at the list so that they can help the person controlling the trolley
Useful classroom language: “(A little) right/ left”, “Click”, “(You need to find) two more”, “Can we see the list, please?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Play the same game with flashcards, perhaps blindfolding the person who needs to take the right card or giving them chopsticks, knife and fork or tongs to take it with. Drag two flashcards along a table for students to try and slap the one you are describing before it reaches the other end. The memory game “I went to the supermarket and I bought…” where the chain of things gets longer and longer, perhaps telling them to use a different container word each time
Miscellaneous notes: Because the game is very fast and the music is good at building excitement, students are likely to stop using the language entirely if you aren’t careful. To avoid this problem, keep the teacher as the one controlling the mouse or make sure there is plenty of useful practice of the language before and after the game. If there is a danger that students can’t finish the game successfully, prepare a version that can be used without the computer, e.g. 12 flashcards along the floor or whiteboard.
Brief description of the game: Students make a dog jump and roll to avoid bins, tyres and balls in the street and then answer questions about road safety every couple of minutes.
Possible language and topic connections: Safety (e.g. class rules or the upcoming fire safety drill), street vocabulary (rubbish bin, wheel, pavement etc), advice (should, I think, Is this right? etc), large numbers (how far the dog travelled)
Ways of using it in class: The whole class tell the teacher or a student with a blindfold on when to press the buttons for roll and jump, or which thing that they have to avoid is coming up. They can also tell that person where to move the mouse to answer the questions correctly
Useful classroom language: “Are you sure? Why/ why not?” “It’s (very) dangerous” “Which button should I push to jump/ roll?” “Which button is right?/ Which button should I push?” “The top one/ bottom one/ The (red) cross/ The (green) tick”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Students create a road safety board game where they answer similar questions to avoid other road dangers such as crossing the road, or similar games for other potentially dangerous places like the playground
Brief description of the game: Drag and drop rubbish from a bedroom into the right recycling bin and hear “Good job!” or “Rubbish, try again”. The name of each object comes up as you hover over it.
Possible language and topic connections: Green issues, compound nouns (bus ticket), containers (a bottle of ketchup), prepositions
Ways of using it in class: Ask students to tell you where each piece is, to guess what it is (to be confirmed when you hover over it), and where it should go. To add language, respond to their commands very literally, e.g. keep on going right if they don’t say “Stop”. To do it in teams, let each team take turns choosing which thing they want to try next.
Useful classroom language: “Where is it?” “What is this?/ What do you think this is?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Brainstorm what things from the class could go into each of those bins (including things that aren’t rubbish such as the hamster!)
Miscellaneous notes: “A bottle of coke” isn’t really accurate as it is empty and so should be “A coke bottle”. Only a congratulations message marks the end of the game, so you might want to add another reward such as letting them try to throw scrap paper into the real bin.
Brief description of the game: Students answer general knowledge questions about music, getting an out of tune piano played by the giraffe if they are wrong and a drum roll by the tiger if they are right. If they get all the questions right, the animal band plays the song in tune. If not, the song is out of tune and they can try again.
Possible language and topic connections: Animals, music vocabulary (composer, instrument, instrument names, notes, sounds, vibrate, lyrics, tune, rhythm, band, types of music, pianist, singer, DJ)
Ways of using it in class: Let two teams take turns answering the questions, learning from the other team’s mistakes. Alternatively, let each team answer until they make a mistake and then switch teams, giving one point for each correct answer.
Useful classroom language: “Are you sure?” “Which button? Left, (middle) or right?” “Can you read the question (out loud), please?” “Let’s take a vote. Who thinks the answer is… (hands up)?” “What does the piano mean?” “Is that a nice tune? Why not (do you think)?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: The class test you on music from their country/ countries, e.g. boy bands you might not know about (due to being too old!) or traditional music. You could give them musical instruments to play in or out of tune to show you if you are wrong or right.
Brief description of the game: This game is basically pelmanism (= pairs = memory game), where students try to match words and pictures, with quite a tricky time limit.
Possible language and topic connections: Seasons (autumn and winter), nature vocabulary (seed, cloud, sky etc), hibernation
Ways of using it in class: Cover the part of the screen that has the temperature on it and have the teacher or students counting that down instead. Students tell the teacher or student (maybe blindfolded) which button to press or where to move to find the right button
Useful classroom language: “(A little) up/ down”, “What does this say?”, “What is this (in English)?”, “Quickly, the time is nearly finished”, “Who wants to try next?”, “Do you want to try again?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: You can play the same game with normal flashcards face down on the floor (without the time limit)
Brief description of the game: Students can change words into hieroglyphics just by typing the word in
Possible language and topic connections: Spelling practice, vocabulary revision
Ways of using it in class: With teams working on laptops, students write a word in hieroglyphics then print it our and pass it to another team or change computers for them to work out what the word is as quickly as possible.
Useful classroom language: “What letter does a bird represent? Who can find it the quickest?” “All the words must be types of uncountable food” “Print out your words now and pass them to the next team (clockwise)/ pin them to the notice board”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Ask students to make up their own codes, perhaps with each symbol being a thing that starts with the letter it represents
Brief description of the game: Students answer difficult trivia questions about 10 dinosaurs with 45 seconds for each question, probably after “moving around” the museum and reading up about each one
Possible language and topic connections: Large numbers (length, how long ago it lived etc), country names (where the dinosaurs are found), comparatives and superlatives (“the most intelligent dinosaur”, “one third as long as”), body parts (horns, thumb, claw, beak, backbone etc), what words really mean (names of dinosaurs, maybe linking to original meanings of “croissant”, “spaghetti” etc)
Ways of using it in class: The quiz is very difficult, so you might want to let students take notes when they are reading up on the dinosaurs. To make sure these are really notes, give them a word limit for how many things they can write down, give them a time limit for how long they can open each text, or only let them write notes after they have closed the information box.
Useful classroom language: “Are you ready to close the box yet?” “Are there any ones you want to try again?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Play Top Trumps with dinosaurs (similar to Pokemon). Play dinosaur Call My Bluff (research some dinosaurs and make up others and see if the other students can work out which one is which). Put similar texts up around the classroom (on the same or a different topic) and ask students to write questions for another group to run around the class reading and trying to answer as quickly as possible.
Brief description of the game: Students identify Olympic sports from three options to jump over hurdles, getting medals depending on how well they do. The game can also be two player, with one player using number buttons 1 to 3 and the other 7 to 9.
Possible language and topic connections: Names of sports
Ways of using it in class: If you are doing the 2 player version in two teams with a projector, you might want to set up some kind of barrier so that they can’t see the other teams’ answers.
Useful classroom language: “Are you sure? You can change your answer if you like”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Use the same pictures for flashcard slow reveal. Create a board game with a track and hurdles on it (either 2D or 3D) and drag a character around it, setting similar questions as you do so. The students can then do the same thing in teams, either preparing the questions beforehand or just doing it as they go along.
Miscellaneous notes: Make sure Number Lock is set right on the keyboard.
Brief description of the game: Students guide their worm around the screen to eat one of three letters that represents the word that has been shown and said, getting one extra segment on the worm for each correct word.
Possible language and topic connections: First letter phonics
Ways of using it in class: You might want to turn off the volume so that students have to look at and identify the word rather than hear it. The person controlling the worm could be blindfolded or standing so that they can’t see the screen so that they have to listen to the other students’ instructions.
Useful classroom language: “What things can’t you do?” “How many segments do you have now?” “Move up/ down/ left/ right”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: A blindfolded student tries to guide a toy car through a course without touching the bad and touching the good parts by listening to the instructions of his or her classmates
Miscellaneous notes: This game is only suitable for very low levels (although fun enough that higher level students will happily play while learning nothing!)
Brief description of the game: Students try to click on the letters of the alphabet in order in 30 seconds
Possible language and topic connections: Alphabet, can (“I can click on 20 letters in 30 seconds” “I can click on all the letters in 20 seconds”)
Ways of using it in class: Use this game as part of a challenge game for “Can” as suggested above or as a lead in for putting other things into order (by alphabetical order, size, number of letters, number of syllables etc)
Useful classroom language: “How quickly can you do it?” “How many can you do in 30 seconds?” “Do you think he can really do it? How much do you want to bet?” “Okay, try and prove them wrong!” “Never mind, you were close”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: See above, or play You Bet (the other students bet pretend money on whether that person really can do what they say)
Brief description of the game: Press the left mouse button once when you want the bowler to release the coconut and another when you want the monkey to hit it and then see how far it goes (if you don’t miss completely!)
Possible language and topic connections: British sports and other sports around the world, large numbers and decimals (the distance it goes), comparatives and superlatives (talking about which one is the longest and how much shorter and longer it is than other attempts)
Ways of using it in class: The people looking at the screen tell the teacher or student in charge the distance to be written down and kept to compare to other attempts
Useful classroom language: “You need to hit sooner/ later” “Wow, that’s a long way!”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Explain the rules of real cricket and play it (with a very soft ball)
Miscellaneous notes: There’s not much too this game, so you’ll probably want to move on after maximum 5 minutes
Planet (= Asteroid blaster)
Brief description of the game: Zap asteroids and get one letter of a word connected to space for each red asteroid hit. The game ends successfully when they have all the letters in the word, or unsuccessfully when you have been hit by asteroids a few times.
Possible language and topic connections: Space vocabulary
Ways of using it in class: As it stands there is basically no language in it. You could ask students to define or draw the word when the word is complete to get the points or extra points. Alternatively, if they can shout out the word before getting all the letters give them the point without them needing to blast any more asteroids. They can also guide the teacher or a student who can’t see the screen to the right position and when to shoot.
Useful classroom language: “(Move) up/ down/ left/ right” “Shoot!/ Press the space bar!” “You can guess whenever you know the word/ Any ideas?”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: A game with a sticky ball where the students try to hit asteroids, flying saucers etc on the board to be able to answer questions for points.
Brief description of the game: Drag six landmarks like the Taj Mahal onto the right country
Possible language and topic connections: Names of countries and continents, describing buildings
Ways of using it in class: If the students are unlikely to know them, give some of the students a version with the landmarks in the right place and get them to describe which one should be where without saying any landmark or place names
Useful classroom language: “It’s in Asia/ Africa” “It looks like a mosque” “(You need to go further) North/ South/ East/ West/ Northwest”
Possible lead-ins and extensions: Students test the teacher on landmarks in different parts of their country/ countries
Miscellaneous notes: This game needs some careful thought on how to play it, because as it stands it only tests reading comprehension of country names
Brief description of the game: Move a swatter around and try to swat yellow mosquitoes while not swatting green ones before they drink so much of your blood (!) that the game finishes
Possible language and topic connections: Really no language point at all! Could lead into discussing better ways of getting rid of mosquitoes, discussing if all animals really were vegetarians (the green mosquitoes say that), suggesting ideas for new Olympic sports like this, or designing traps etc for insects and mice
Ways of using it in class: Get it over with quickly as a lead into or break from something else! Alternatively, use it as a chance to discuss the rules of the game and move onto other discussion of rules of games.
Useful classroom language: You could have them say “Up/ down/ swat!” etc, but you can do that with virtually every game here with more useful other language.
Possible lead-ins and extensions: See above, or design other disgusting computer games (likely to be popular with an all boys class!)
Miscellaneous notes: You’d have to have a really good reason to use this is class. It is very fun and rather addictive, but that’s probably a bad thing as students will want to keep playing even when they are learning nothing
Pirate ships
I couldn’t find any way of adding language to this game
Secret Coder, Style-A-Hero, Shot stopper, Make your monster, Take that teacher, Haunted house, Magic Monkey
These games didn’t work when I tried them (several times on different computers)
August 2009 | Filed under Games, Young Learners
Alex Case is TEFL.net Reviews Editor and author of the popular blog TEFLtastic.
