6 Creative Ways to Refresh Familiar Classroom Activities

At the start of a new school year, or after a long break, both teachers and learners can benefit from an infusion of fresh ideas. At the same time, our students probably need to revise the material they learned before the break. How can English language teachers bring a fun, creative approach to reviewing grammar and vocabulary, without monotonous drills? This article describes new adaptations of familiar teaching activities that I have tried in my teaching practice. Applying known practices with a new twist helps to make students more involved and gives more opportunities for language learning.

Browse all of the activities, or go directly to the topic that interests you most:

• Using Attention Getters—With Meaning
• Get Out Your Stopwatch
• Low Prep, High Reward: Sorting Cups
• 4 More Creative Ways to Practice Grammar
• Four Corners: More Than an Icebreaker
• Activities With Dice and Story Cubes

Using Attention Getters—With Meaning

Recent research has highlighted the use and functionality of attention getters in the English language classroom (Arifadah et al., 2019). Students are excited about responding to attention getters, and when their attention is focused, the classroom becomes conducive to learning (Recard & Nathania, 2021).

Different options to call for students’ attention in your classroom can include movement (clapping, snapping, ball tossing), countdowns, call and response, switching off the lights, using melodies and songs, and even sound effects (Fuhrman, 2022).

Some popular call-and-response attention getters are based on onomatopoeia (that is, words containing sounds similar to the noises they describe) or rhyming words. For example:

• • Teacher: “Waterfall!” Students: “Shhh.”
  • Teacher: “Hocus-pocus!” Students: “Everybody focus.”
  • Teacher: “One, two, three, eyes on me!” Students: “One, two, eyes on you.”

It can be fun, but why not add some meaning? In my summer camps devoted to specific topics, we invent topic-based attention getters. For example, for a space-themed camp, I used the following set of phrases with onomatopoeic words:

• • Teacher: “Asteroid!” Students: “Bang!”
  • Teacher: “Rocket!” Students: “Shhh!”

In another summer camp for teens, we practiced different daily attention getters connected with a topic of the day. These were idioms, set phrases, and proverbs, such as this one during a lesson about health:

• • Teacher: “An apple a day…” Students: “…keeps the doctor away.”

In general, making call-and-response attention getters meaningful is not time consuming; it just requires a bit of planning before the lesson.

Get Out Your Stopwatch

Sometimes, we can’t change the textbook (if it’s chosen by the institution, for example), but we can change our way of working with it, such as by speeding up the pace. This strategy doesn’t require much effort or any special resources except for a timer. You can use an online stop watch like this one, a funny object (like a woodpecker sliding down a metal stick), an hourglass, or just a timer on your smartphone.

Try it! You can time students while they

• • pronounce the word list one by one, 
  • revise irregular verbs,
  • practice a tongue twister or a chant,
  • answer questions,
  • match words to pictures in a race, or
  • write a running dictation.

Then, challenge your students to beat the record!

Low Prep, High Reward: Sorting Cups

In this activity, students race to sort a set of language items on paper slips into the correctly labeled cup. It is a fun and easy activity for revising verb tenses, vocabulary words, word formation, and even cultural facts. Moreover, using this strategy will make your lessons physically active, which has been proven to increase students’ concentration on task (Bacon & Lord, 2021) and positively influence their academic performance (Kohl & Cook, 2013). Other studies show that physically active lessons are highly appreciated by children (Dyrstad et al., 2018). Make it physical to make students’ brains work!

Preparation

• • Buy or make 2–4 cups, depending on the number of teams/categories.
  • Print out or write down the names of categories and stick them to the cups.
  • Print out task items and cut them into slips.
  • Go outside or clear some space for students to run in the classroom.

Activity Description

Students are divided into 2–3 teams. Each team receives a different set of paper task slips. They take the tasks and run or walk to the cups to sort them out. The team who does it first gets extra points. When they have finished, you check the cups and discuss the mistakes (if any) with the students. Teams get points for every correct task (alternatively, you can give them 10 starting points and subtract points for mistakes).

Sample Tasks and Categories

• • present simple vs. present continuous markers (e.g., usually, every day, now) or gap-fill sentences
  • present, past, or future markers (e.g., every Monday, yesterday) or sentences
  • modal verbs (e.g., mustn’t don’t have to)
  • word formation (e.g., negative prefixes: ir-, im-, il-, or in-)
  • traditions connected with holidays (e.g., Thanksgiving vs. Christmas) or countries (the United Kingdom vs. the United States)
  • reading comprehension tasks (true or false questions)
  • video listening comprehension tasks (jobs in demand vs. not in demand)
  • healthy or unhealthy lifestyle or food vocabulary
  • any categories you need for the lesson!

4 More Creative Ways to Practice Grammar

Very few students can master a grammar concept after just one explanation. More often, they know the rule, but still miss that s in third person singular. Students usually need practice through several “relearning sessions” (Serfaty & Serrano, 2024). A lot of practice, to be honest. The following activities can bring some variety to your grammar practice sessions:

• • Memo: This simple game can be modified in various ways. For example, with vocabulary cards for places, you can practice structures like there is\are, have you been to, and did you go to...yesterday. For example, if students have “stadium” and “hospital” cards, their dialogue can look like this:
    • Student A: “Excuse me, is there a stadium near here?”
    • Student B: “Sorry, it’s too far. Take a bus.”

If students draw matching cards (e.g., two “stadium” cards), their dialogue can look like this:

• • • Student A: “Excuse me, is there a stadium near here?”
    • Student B: “Yes, there is. Walk along this street and turn right.”

You can also add positive, negative, and interrogative options with dice (see the last section of this article). In this case, students need to need to make different types of sentences, for instance: There is a stadium near here. There isn’t a post office near here. Is there a stadium near here?

• • Line up: A teacher gives students cards with time expressions (e.g., 5 days ago, yesterday, today, in 3 hours, next week, etc.) and students line up in chronological order. To follow up, they should make sentences or ask questions with the expressions on their cards.
    
    
  • Jumping line up: This game helps students practice short answers and auxiliaries. Students stand in one line. The teacher asks a question, such as “Do you like apples?” (using picture cards for lower level learners). Students jump left (for yes) or right (for no) as they shout out “Yes, I do” or “No, I don’t.”
    
    
  • Snowball: In my practice, there are two problems with the traditional snowball activity: either students forget what others say, or it takes too much time without much action and becomes boring. Now, we make a snowball from paper. The snowball can be made from separate small pieces of paper or from one long piece. In the following example, students practice recalling past tense forms:
    
    
    • Each student writes an irregular infinitive verb and adds it to the ball, then rolls or throws it.
    • After all students have added something to the snowball, students take turns unrolling one verb from the ball and saying the past tense or past participle.
    • If you’ve used small pieces of paper, students can exchange their pieces each round of the snowball and practice different verbs until the snowball reaches the last student.

Four Corners: More Than an Icebreaker

This is another activity to make your lessons more physically active. It requires little preparation (marking the corners of the room and finding appropriate material). The material can be taken from any textbook, especially for grammar drills. In addition to grammar or vocabulary practice, Four Corners can also be suitable for sparking small group discussions.

To run the activity, a teacher reads sentences, phrases, or words and students walk to the suitable corner of the room (see examples). Depending on their proficiency level, students can then be challenged to explain their choices.

For example, with the seasons template shown here, the teacher can read phrases related to hobbies, sports, or free time activities, such as eat ice cream or go ice skating. Alternatively, for a grammar drill, the teacher can read simple words to practice the pronunciation of –ed or the pronunciation of plurals (e.g., –s/–z/–iz or irregular).

Because students need to listen carefully before choosing their corner, this game also helps to practice listening skills.

Activities With Dice and Story Cubes

Variations of cubes are endless. Some of the cube ideas shown here (animals, pronouns, actions) are taken from the textbook series Our World. Templates for blank cubes are available online, so you can print them out and adapt them to any targeted vocabulary or grammar structures. It’s also possible to buy ready-made cubes in online shops.

Here are some of the activities I have used in my teaching practice, with illustrations and examples:

• • Positive/negative/interrogative cube: Students make the type of sentence indicated after they roll the cube. Teachers can add a requirement to use key vocabulary words or grammar structures, such as past simple negative (e.g., Did you go for a walk yesterday?).
  • Story cubes: Students make a short story with the items on the cubes (e.g., On Halloween I put on my boots and went to explore the haunted house on the hill with my brother. Suddenly I heard a cat meowing. I turned around but saw nothing but a black triangle).
  • Weather cubes: Students say what weather they like or dislike, what they do in such weather, or what they wear in such weather (e.g., I don’t like cloudy weather because it’s cold and I wear a sweater).
  • Choose a question/task cube: Students ask the question or do the task on the cube.

A combination of two cubes gives more opportunities for language practice. Here are a few ideas for doubling the challenge:

• • Subject + object pronoun cubes: Students roll the cubes and make a sentence using the resulting pronouns (e.g., Your friend knows my father, and he says hello to him).
  • Actions + smile/frown cubes: Students talk about their likes and dislikes (e.g., I don’t like eating eggs).
  • Animals + body parts cubes: Students say what body parts animals have (e.g. An elephant has a short tail).

The big dice can be used outside or for revision activities in the classroom. A teacher prepares tasks for every number on the dice. For example, if a student rolls one, they must draw something; two, they sing; 3, they answer a question, and so on. Students roll the dice in teams, complete the task, and earn points. 

An online dice is useful when teaching online or when you do not have enough dice in the classroom, if students can access it from their mobile devices. Another advantage of the online dice is that you can change the number of sides if necessary for your classroom activity (from 2 to 100) or use it as a coin with heads and tails sides.

All the activities described are based on my experience of conducting and evaluating 16 summer intensive courses for children and teenagers. I hope you will be able to adapt some of the activities to your classroom or even try this whole set of activities, and that they help you to teach and revise vocabulary and grammar more effectively.

References

Arifadah, Y., Rio, R., Sholehuddin, T.R., Paramita, A.F., & Nailiyah, N.M. (2019). Teachers’ creativity in using attention grabber in EFL class. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 434, 283–287. http://dx.doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200427.057

Bacon, P., & Lord, R. (2021). The impact of physically active learning during the school day on children’s physical activity levels, time on task and learning behaviours and academic outcomes. Health Education Research, 36(3), 362–373. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyab020f

Dyrstad, S.M., Kvalø, S.E., Alstveit, M., & Skage, I. (2018). Physically active academic lessons: Acceptance, barriers and facilitators for implementation. BMC Public Health, 18, Article 322. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5205-3

Fuhrman, R. (2022, January 27). 7 attention-getters to use instead of raising your voice. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/7-attention-getters-use-instead-raising-your-voice/

Kohl, H.W. III, & Cook, H.D. (Eds.). (2013). Educating the student body: Taking physical activity and physical education to school. Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine, National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201501/

Recard, M., & Nathania, Y. (2021). The implementation and impact of attention grabbers in young learners’ classrooms: A case study. TEKNOSASTIK, 19(1), 1–13.

Serfaty, J. & Serrano, R. (2024). Practice makes perfect, but how much is necessary? The role of relearning in second language grammar acquisition. Language Learning, 74(1), 218–248. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12585