Summer School Games – Episode 1
This is a quick game for elementary and pre-intermediate younger learners. It’s an idea that originated from Miriam Austin, who I worked with at IH Newcastle. It’s a practical way for your students to practise prepositions of place, with additional language practice thrown in.
Preparation
Cut up the ghost cards from the worksheet [click here to download]
Before the lesson, hide the ghosts around the classroom in ways that will help students practise various prepositions of place:
- Under the table
- Above the door
- Next to the white board
- On the chair
(between, behind, in front of, in)
Use sticky/blue tack to make sure the ghosts will stay in place.
If you don’t have time before the lesson, ask your students to help you to hide them at the start. Ensure a variety of places are being used so it’s not too repetitive.
Ghost Hunting
The classroom is haunted! First, ask students to walk around the room and find all of the ghosts. Students can point and call out, telling you and each other. Your stronger students may already be using the target language accurately, which is great but not essential. Tell them how many they need to find to keep them looking: “There are three more hiding somewhere!”
Next, everyone sits down, and they take it in turns to point out ghosts and tell you where they are. Elicit descriptions, helping students where necessary. If students are struggling or have forgotten some of the language, there is an opportunity here to do some drilling and repetition for support.
Before students start the next stage, write a couple of examples on the board, eliciting from the class:
- There’s a yellow ghost under the desk
- There’s a blue ghost on the chair
Then, students take their exercise books and write sentences for as many ghosts as they can find. Monitor and support as they go. After ten minutes or so, or once every student has written at least 6 sentences, ask students to sit down and compare sentences. Finish with some open feedback. After each sentence a student reads out, they pick up and collect the ghosts. They take turns until all of the ghosts have been ‘caught’.
Handouts / variations
I’ve made two sets of ghosts with increasing difficulty, so you can repeat the activity over two lessons for additional practice and repetition. [click here to download]
With set one, students practise prepositions of place, colours and “There’s…”
- “There’s a blue ghost under the desk.”
- “There’s a green ghost on the board.”
With set two, students practise prepositions of place, numbers, colours and “There’s…” and “There are…”
- “There’s a blue ghost under the desk.”
- “There are four yellow ghosts next to the lamp.”
Thanks for reading!
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July 3, 2018 at 6:13 am
Hi Mike,
Just to let you know that we’ve shortlisted this blog post for this month’s TeachingEnglish blog award and I’ll be putting up a post about it on today’s TeachingEnglish Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TeachingEnglish.BritishCouncil, if you’d like to check there for comments.
Best,
Ann
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July 3, 2018 at 7:06 pm
Thanks Ann!
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September 6, 2018 at 8:16 am
Hello Mike.
As your game is blog post of the month for British Council, I received your game ” ghost hunt”. I really like it, I used to do this sort of game with realia (pen, pencilcase, rubber etc) but the ghosts make a nice change. Very practical to have different ghosts on one card so the students have to use the plural form.
Thank you very much.
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September 27, 2018 at 12:00 am
I’m going to adapt it to use in a French class for children, I hope that’s ok!
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