Resources

• Numbers Flash Cards

How to play

Time: 5-6 minutes
Receptive Language: instructions
Productive Language: flashcard vocab
Game Explanation: Review the number cards & split the class into 2 teams. Shuffle the number cards, demonstrate that the teams will race to place the cards in proper numerical order, give the cards to team A, tell Team B to watch the clock for you, & yell Go! Switch & let Team B have a go. The faster team is, unsurprisingly, the winner. Shuffle the cards, shuffle the teams, & repeat.

Resources

• Numbers Flash Cards

How to play

Time: 5 minutes
Receptive Language: instructions
Productive Language: numbers, alphabet
Game Explanation: Two teams standing in line, each with a chair placed at the head of the line (and with the chairs facing each other). The first student from each team sits on the chair. Designate one student to start with either ‘One!’ or ‘A!’ The second student must continue (‘Two!’ or ‘B!’, as the case may be) and play continues back and forth until one student cannot continue. The other student’s team scores a point and two new students begin.

Resources

• Numbers Flash Cards
• Large Squishy Dice (Amazon #Ad)

How to play

Time: 10 minutes
Receptive Language: instructions, numbers, unit vocab, plurals
Productive Language: numbers, unit vocab, plurals
Game Explanation: Two teams. Review and/or introduce plurals. The first student on each team rolls a die, while the instructor simultaneously puts a vocab card down in front of them. The students must add the two die amounts together and pluralize the card. For example, 3+6+dog = ‘9 dogs.’ The first student to correctly do so gets the point.
Note: Be firm with the students regarding pronunciation, with rewards for those students who make an effort to correctly pronounce the final ‘s’ (i.e. ‘dogs’ instead of ‘dogzzzzz’).

Resources

• None

How to play

Materials: none
Time: 3-5 minutes
Receptive Language: ‘___ plus ___ equals what?’
Productive Language: numbers
Game Explanation: Students line-up to enter (or leave) the classroom & can only come in (or go out) when they have correctly answered a simple mathematical problem.
Note: Keep it in mind that the main focus is to get the students to think & answer in English & not to test their mathematical abilities. They’re only kids, you know, & may have difficulty with ‘What’s the square root of x to the power of npg over pi?’, etc.

Resources

• Numbers Flash Cards

How to play

Time: 6-8 minutes
Receptive Language: numbers
Productive Language: numbers

Game Explanation: At your command, the students run (or walk, jump, skip, dance, etc) around the classroom. You then shout “Stop!” & a number. Within a predetermined length of time (a slowly counted 5 seconds works best), the students cluster in groups of that number & sit down. Walk around the class checking the various groups, making sure to congratulate/highfive/praise the groups that are “safe.” If any of the students haven’t managed to join a group with the right number of students, inflict whatever “punishment” on them that you’ve decided upon: lightly tap them with a plastic hammer, throw them over your shoulder, give them a thunderous thumbs-down, eject them from the game, etc.

Resources

• Numbers Flash Cards

How to play

Time: 5 minutes
Receptive Language: numbers
Productive Language: numbers
Game Explanation: A good activity for reviewing numbers at any difficulty level you’d like to try. For young classes, write 1-12 on the whiteboard & then erase the multiples of three. Student A says ‘One’, Student B says ‘Two’, & Student C says ‘Buzz!’ (or stands up, or sits down, or claps, or says whatever word you tell them to say instead). Continue until a student says ‘Buzz!’ in the wrong place, or neglects to say ‘Buzz!’ when he or she should. For older classes, continue to add replacement words as the game continues (you may wish to use other unit vocabulary words instead of ‘Buzz!’).