Wall Games In The EFL Classroom

We’ve no doubt that as a TEFL teacher you have a million different games up your sleeve. Games to interest, entertain, educate and revise. You probably have a few props that you use for your games too – dice, balls, boxes. But have you ever thought about using the walls of your classroom to play games? Wall Games in the EFL Classroom.

Ideas for Wall Games in the EFL Classroom

Classroom walls are usually reserved for showcasing students’ work or displaying notices but they can also be very useful as a classroom tool. By using the walls as part of your classroom activities, you ensure that your students need to get up out of their seats to participate in these wall games. You are bringing in elements of movement into your lessons and changing the tempo of your class. Students appreciate the chance to move around and to be able to leave their chair behind.

Not sure how exactly you can use your walls in your lessons? Here are a few of our favourite ideas:

Wall Games – Running dictation

Divide a dictation text into shorter sections. Stick them up on the walls around the classroom. Put the students into pairs. One student is the scribe and the other is the runner. The runner must run to a section of the text, memorise it (no note-taking allowed) and run back to the scribe and tell them what to write down. They can run back to the text as many times as necessary to make sure they have the entire text correctly written down. The runner runs to find another piece of text to do the same again until they have the entire text written down. They can change roles during the activity if you want them to. The team that has the entire text written down accurately, wins.

Wall Games – Multiple choice quiz

Print out the letters A, B, C and D on pieces of paper and stick each one on a different wall of the classroom. Project a multiple choice question on your interactive white board as well as the four answer options.

For example: She congratulated him _____ passing his exam.

A: on                                                     B: in

C: to                                                       D: for                    

The students must go and stand next to the letter they think corresponds to the correct answer. If the students have different opinions, the teacher can invite justification from the students before revealing the correct answer.

Wall Games – Discussion pictures

Often we use images as discussion points in our lessons. Instead of using the coursebook or your interactive whiteboard, stick the images you want to use up on the walls around the classroom. Allow your students to mingle and stand near the image of their choice. You can then pose the discussion questions for them to discuss in their groups.