Classroom Activities

It’s important to do a range of activities to practise different skills and make the
classes more enjoyable for the students so that they don’t get bored easily
(especially younger students who have shorter attention spans

Fun Games (maybe for Saturday class)

●​ Hangman
●​ Pictionary: 1 person draws a picture on the whiteboard and other students
have to guess
●​ Charades: 1 person acts out a word for other students to guess
●​ Simon says/teacher says
○​ Teacher gives commands to students: simon says stand up, simon
says sit down
○​ Students must do what simon says
○​ If teacher says ‘stand up’ students must not do it because simon didn’t
say to do it
○​ Students who do the action when simon didn’t say are out
○​ Can change ‘simon says’ to ‘teacher says’
●​ Duck duck goose
○​ Students sit in a circle
○​ Student A goes around touching people on the head saying duck every
time
○​ Student A chooses someone and says goose
○​ That person must stand up and chase person A around the circle
○​ Person A must run around and sit in the other persons space
○​ The loser must now go around and say duck duck goose
●​ Stuck in the mud
○​ Outside game/in the church
○​ Choose 1 student: they have to run around and ‘stick’ other students
(by touching them)
○​ If chosen students touches other people, they are stuck in the mud so
must stand still with their arms out
○​ Other students must try to free the stuck students by running under
their arms
○​ Can have more than 1 student sticking other students if many students
●​ Traffic light game
○​ Red = stop
 ○​Orange = walk
○​Green = run
○​Roundabout = turn around
○​Rain = students must wave their arms left to right
○​Reverse = walk backwards
○​Teacher shouts the words to students and they must do the action (can
start with just red, orange and green and then add more after they
understand)
●​ 11 game
○​ Students stand in a circle and take turns to count up to 11
○​ Whoever says 11 is out and must sit down
○​ Continue until there are 2 people: final 2 people come to middle and do
final round
○​ Alternative game: students stand in a circle and count up to 11 and
whoever says 11 is out, but students can choose to say 1, 2 or 3
numbers
■​ Example: student A says ‘1, 2’, student B says ‘3, 4, 5’, student
C says ‘6’, student D says ‘7, 8, 9’, student E says ‘10’, and then
student F says ‘11’ so they are out
●​ I spy with my little eye
○​ Student A says ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with
_____’
○​ Other students must guess what student A is talking about
●​ What’s the time Mr Wolf
○​ Choose 1 student to be the wolf
○​ The wolf stands facing the wall
○​ Other students stand far behind the wolf and shout ‘what’s the time Mr
Wolf?’
○​ The wolf says a time (1 o’clock/10 o’clock)
○​ Students take that number of steps (if wolf says 3 o’clock, students
take 3 steps towards the wolf)
○​ When the wolf replies saying ‘it’s dinner time’ wolf turns around and
tries to catch other students
●​ Alphabet game
○​ Students stand in a circle and take turns to say 1 letter of the alphabet
○​ If students makes a mistake or takes too long to answer they are out
●​ Shopping game
○​ Student A says ‘I went shopping and I bought a _____ (something
beginning with A)
○​ Student B says ‘I went shopping and I bought a (whatever student A
bought), and a ______ (something beginning with B)
○​ Continue until the end of the alphabet
○​ If students forget or make a mistake they are out
 ●​ Categories
○​ Give students a category: clothes, weather, animals, sports, food, drink
○​ Go around the class (maybe students stand in a circle) and everyone
must say a word belonging to chosen category
○​ If someone repeats a word or says a word not in that category they are
out
○​ Alternative: throw ball to people and whoever catches the ball must
give an answer
●​ Practise new vocabulary: give each word an action and when teacher says
that word is student has to do that action (example: if teacher says blue,
students have to jump)
●​ Deduct points if students being too loud/don’t follow rules/cheating

Movie Time (end of document has links to movies/videos)

●​ Once per week for 30 minutes

●​ Watch video and prepare some questions in advance
●​ Write down the minute where the answer to the question is
●​ Write questions on whiteboard and make sure students understand before
watching
●​ If some students don’t know the answer, show them that part of the video
again so they can understand
●​ Watch on small TV so students can see questions at the same time
●​ Points system: extra points for answering in English
●​ Younger students: could teach them a song/dance

Vocabularly

●​ Teaching vocabulary: DO NOT TRANSLATE INTO KHMER

○​ Beginner: draw pictures for words
○​ Advanced: write definition or write a sentence using that word
●​ Make sentences with new vocabulary: write in notebook
●​ Game
○​ Write new vocabulary on board
○​ Give 1 point to each word but give harder words more points
○​ Students have to choose a word and make a correct sentence to win
points
●​ Matching exercise:
○​ Make up sentences with new vocabulary but erase the new word from
the sentence
 ○​ Write the missing vocabulary in a list
○​ Students have to match the correct word to each sentence
●​ Teacher says the word and students have to draw a picture or write a
sentence
●​ Write words in the wrong order and students must write words in correct order
to make a correct sentence
●​ Pictionary
●​ Crossword: draw on whiteboard

Spelling

●​ Weekly spelling tests and correction

●​ Write incorrect spelling of word on white board and student has to correct it
●​ Write word with missing letters and student has to fill in missing letters
●​ Ask students to come to the board to spell the word
●​ Draw pictures on the white board and students must come to spell
●​ Team spelling game
○​2 teams: each team makes a line in front of the whiteboard
○​Give first 2 people a word to spell
○​Fastest team gets a point (only if spelt correctly)
○​Repeat for the whole team and team with the most points wins
●​ Spelling relay
Students stand in a line in front of the whiteboard
○​
Teacher gives a word to spell
○​
Students take turn writing 1 letter each
○​
If they make a mistake they are out of the game
○​
Can also play this standing at desks and go around the class saying
○​
aloud the letter and sit down if make a mistake
●​ Review game for the end of class: student has to spell a word correctly before
they can go home

Reading

●​ Advanced stuents
○​ Reading comprehension in textbook: always spend time on
comprehension questions and make up your own questions to ask
students to check they understand
○​ Go through the reading to check students understand vocabularly and
grammar (spend lots of time on this)
 ○​ If they don’t know the answer to the question, show them which
paragraph the answer is in to help them (try not to just give them the
answer)
○​ Find extra reading comprehension online or make up your own to
practice more
●​ Practice reading aloud
○​ Repeat a sentence after the teacher or the audio
○​ Practice reading in pairs: teacher walk around and observe and check
pronunciation
○​ Individual reading: student reads 1 by 1 to teacher (make sure other
students are quiet and listening or give them something else to do)
●​ Story time: choose a book from the library to read to the students
●​ Reading and translation (intermediate & advanced)
○​ Make up sentences or a story using vocabularly and grammar from the
lesson
○​ Write it on the white board
○​ Practice reading with the students
○​ Ask students to translate

Speaking

●​ Conversation time
○​ Beginner: write an example conversation on the whiteboard and
practice reading with students then they practice in pairs
■​ Example: Hello. Hi. How are you? I’m fine thank you, how are
you? I’m good thank you. What is your name? My name is
______. What is your name? My name is _______.
○​ Intermediate/advanced: spend 10 minutes talking with the students
(basic questions like what did you do today or pick a topic to talk about)
○​ Conversation topics: sports, holidays, travel, school subjects,
likes/dislikes, family, the future, hobbies, food
●​ Everyday activity: ask students what day is it today and train them to answer
with the day, month and year (what day is it today? Today is Monday 13th July
2024)
●​ Conversation game
○​ Write questions on small pieces of paper and fold them up
○​ Students take turns to choose a piece of paper and must ask that
question to another student
●​ Pass the pen
○​ Students pass a pen around while teacher is not looking
○​ Teacher says stop and whoever is holding the pen must answer a
question from the teacher
 ●​ Ball game: throw a ball to a student and ask them a question and then they
throw the ball to someone else and ask a question
●​ Presentations/speaking in front of the class to improve confidence
●​ 2 truths 1 lie (advanced students
○​ Each student has to think of 2 truths and 1 lie about themself and say
the 3 sentences in front of the class
○​ Other students must guess which one is the lie
○​ The people who guess correctly win points

Grammar

●​ Do regular review for grammar

●​ To review tenses: make up sentences on the whiteboard but don’t write the
verb, write the base form of the verb in brackets at the end, students have to
write the correct form of the verb
●​ Reading with grammar mistakes: make up sentences or a story on the white
board with grammar mistakes and students have to find the mistakes and
correct them

Writing

●​ Make students practice their writing skills and writing sentences

●​ Give them words to make sentences with (vocabulary from the lesson)
●​ Beginner/intermediate
○​ To help teach students to write sentences teach them the correct
sentence structure
○​ subject + verb + object (write this on the board)
○​ Ask students what is the subject? people, animals or things
○​ What is a verb? a doing word
○​ Write some examples on the board
○​ Students must underline the subject and put a circle around the verb in
their sentences
○​ Remind them about capital letters and full stops
○​ Every time you do sentence writing review and get them to tell you the
correct sentence strucutre
●​ Advanced
○​ Give them writing tasks to do: write a small paragraph about a topic or
give them a question to answer (what do you like to do in your free time
and why? must give at least 3 things)

Chinese
 ●​ Weekly videos or songs
●​ Weekly dictation: after dictation ask a student to write the character on white
board and check together if it is correct, make sure students do corrections
after dictation
●​ 11 number game: same as English
●​ Number game: give each number an action and when teacher says that
number in Chinese students have to do that action
●​ Pass the pen: students pass a pen around when teacher is not looking,
teacher says stop, person who is holding the pen must answer a question
from teacher
●​ Question game: 1 student asks another student a question, that student then
asks a different student a question, continue until all students have answered
a question
●​ Translation
○​ Write pinyin on white board and students write Chinese characters
○​ Write Chinese characters on white board and students write pinyin or
translate to English
●​ Write incorrect Chinese characters on white board for students to correct
●​ Conversation practice
○​ Write conversation example on white board to practice together then
practice in pairs, have 2 people stand up and practice the conversation
in front of the class
●​ Listening practice
○​ Try to do the listening exercises in the textbook but teacher makes up
their own sentences
○​ Make up your own listening exercise: write questions on the whiteboard
●​ Make up exercises to review more
○​ Write chinese characters in wrong order and students have to put in
the right order to make a correct sentence
○​ Write sentences with missing words and students choose correct word
○​ Matching exercise: write half of the sentence on each side of the board
(have around 5 sentences) and students must match up correct halves
to make correct sentences

Videos/Movies

Beginner

●​ Alphabet song [Link]

●​ English singing [Link]
 ●​ Phonics [Link]
●​ Curious George cartoon [Link]
●​ Peppa Pig [Link]

Intermediate

●​ Disney Junior (short videos and songs)

[Link]
●​ English singing [Link]
●​ Classic stories [Link]
●​ Animated videos/movies [Link]
●​ The Smurfs [Link]
●​ Tangled [Link]
●​ Curious George cartoon [Link]
●​ Peppa Pig [Link]
●​ Cinderella [Link]
●​ English conversation [Link]

Advanced

●​ The Lion of Judah: [Link]

●​ Diamon Dog Caper:
[Link]
●​ Grandma’s House
[Link]
●​ [Link]
●​ [Link]
●​ Short videos [Link]
●​ The Smurfs [Link]
●​ Tangled [Link]
●​ Ratatouille [Link]

Songs for Beginner/Intermediate

●​ Wheels on the bus [Link]

●​ Heads shoulder knees and toes
[Link]
●​ If you’re happy and you know it [Link]
 ●​ Rain rain go away [Link]
●​ v=SrDTSB5bVS4[Link]
●​ [Link]

Resources for Teachers

●​ [Link]