Teach Grammar With Games, Even To Adult Classes
In every ESL classroom there needs to be some kind of grammar instruction and demonstration. In general, this is the boring stuff students don’t enjoy doing as much. As you probably already know it really helps to find fun ways of explaining, demonstrating, and practicing grammar rules. In my experience, playing games is the best way of doing this.
Sometimes it’s difficult to introduce games to a classroom of older students or adults. You may feel like they are too experienced and mature to play games like a child. You might have a classroom of serious faces demanding serious language results. My suggestion in this case is to give playing games a try. In most cases a game will really get students’ blood moving and leave them with a much better impression of the class in the end. They may give an eye-roll to the idea of a game but don’t let that discourage you. You can always refer to what you’re doing as an “activity” not a “game.” Playing a game will catch the attention of even the most reluctant student because in order to play one must pay close attention to the rules (you can even hide some grammar you are currently working on within the game rules). When all is said and done the students will have retained more and feel better about you as their teacher.
So the next step is coming up with the right games to play. Writing lesson plans that include interactive games can be quite time consuming and troublesome. The link below is one of my favorite websites for great board games. You can easily adjust them for any level students and they have lots of great pictures as well. Something colorful to look at always helps. The reason why I like this site is because they also include board games to practice grammar structures.
http://www.esl-galaxy.com/board.htm