Charades is a fantastic TPR method to elicit responses from your students and its extremely easy to set-up. Here is the classic game:
How to play: One student stands out the front of the class and mimes out an object or thing. The student can't use any words, only body language. The students who are sitting down have to try and guess what the student is miming.
Here are a couple of variations of the classic charades game.
- Get the student's to write a short story. This can be on a subject that you specify, or they can write about anything. Be sure to write your own story, as well. S's must now read their and act their story out. This can either be done in groups or as individuals. Make sure to demonstrate with your story first. This is a fun variation that can lead to a lot of laughs.
- This variation of charades should be reserved for higher level students. Get the S's to write out a story. Instead of reading their story out loud, S's will only act it out. Choose random S's to tell the class their version of the story, based on what they saw.
If you have any other ideas for charades that you think could benefit others, please send them to us by using the comment form at the bottom of the page!
Variations:
- Give points for the team that correctly guesses the mime.
- Limited the amount of guesses that each student has.
- Limited the time that each team has to guess.
- For an extra challenge, make the mimes obscure.
- Have things with multiple words, eg "computer table".
Enjoy!
