Help! informal fun games for groups

MES-Member Joined: 03 Nov 2009 Posts: 1

Hi, was wondering if anyone out there can help me out

I've just started working at a youth club for asylum seeking young people - most of the young people are boys aged 12-19 with varying amounts of English. There's no real structure to the club and the boys often drift from one activity to another depending on what they are interested in/what looks most entertaining - I'm looking for a range of games that I can play with a small group of them with a view to developing their English skills whilst having a fun. I'm hoping to use the games over the next few months so basic and intermediate games would be best. We have a limited budget but I think games with props or similar would work best, at least initially.

This is my first time working with young people to help them learn english so any tips would be gratefully received, I'm feeling a little out of my depth at the moment. Confused

Thanks all

MES-Addict Joined: 19 May 2009 Posts: 31

Uno is a good game for small groups and involves practicing English if you make them say each card as they put it down. I also do the same with regular card games like sevens which is good for practicing numbers. You can also use cards for a game to practice different topics - e.g. 1 = talk about your favourite sport, 2 = talk about something you don't like etc. The other thing I have done with cards is to get my students to do was to teach me a card game they know using English which worked quite well.

I find board games good for small groups. You can make some good ones on this site for different groups of vocab and then all you need is a dice (you can use bits of paper or pencils or erasers for counters).

Guess who is quite a popular game for practicing describing people vocab.

The rock paper scissors game is always good. You have a bunch of flashcards in a line (or around a table). Starting at either end two students say something in English about each card (you can vary this from a vocab word to a target sentence). When they meet they play rock paper scissors and the losing student goes back to the start and the winning student continues. The first one to get to the end of the line is the winner.

Bingo is hugely popular (I hate it but it does get the students speaking English). I always ask the first question then make the person who answers ask another student. I play it with elementary students but the high school kids I used to teach also loved it.

Games like scrabble and boggle are too difficult unless they have a reasonable vocabularly already.

Hope that helps a bit. If I think of any others I will post again.

MES-Addict Joined: 17 Oct 2008 Posts: 32 Location: France

Hi there, that sounds like a tough gig.
I think the Paper Game from here would work really well. I was surprised (sorry mark

) how well it worked.
You could time the young people and see how many sheet they can win with in the time. You could have a league. Boys (generalization) like to be competative.
You need to keep the topics current and young. When I taught teenagers, we would discuss things like 'would you have a tattoo'. We looked at song lyrics that were relevent to them eg rap. You could tipex out some of the words and play the song and see if they can find the words that are missing. Be prepared to answer questions on swearing. Unfortunatly most young people have heard some hardcore swearing on pop songs and I found that it always comes up.
Youth work is very different to working in a school so you can do things that would not be allowed in school. Be cool but don't let them take the mick.