EFL Opening Routines | Vocabulary Dice Games

One of the best tools you can have in your bag or teacher box is a dice. There are many things you can do with dice as a teacher: play a board game, choose who goes first in a game, or you could open your classes with vocabulary review games. 

Opening Routine

First of all, ask your students to have a notebook for your lessons. If they have a notebook, turn to the last page to write all the vocabulary words from your classes. (Whenever a new vocabulary word comes up write them on the side of the board. We call this a car park. 

Keep track of these words and use them for this game.

How to Play

Break the class into teams.
Choose team names (Adjective + Noun)
Assign the numbers of the dice to do tasks based on their roll (EVEN or ODD if you just do two tasks)

Draw (draw a picture of the chosen word)
Act (act out the chosen word)
​-for more advanced levels-
Describe (describe the chosen word without saying any part of the word)

Take turns to come up, roll the dice, and do the task based on the number.

Easter Egg Lessons

Adjective + Noun - For many languages around the world, our form of ADJECTIVE + NOUN to describe something is backwards to their language. Therefore, it can take some work to change the order in English. Doing this in the beginning of each class is an engaging way to reinforce their correct order in English.

Added Vocabulary - After the students get accustomed to making team names, they will go through several stages, especially for teens. If you remind them that their is a language purpose of doing this, students usually respect that and start caring a bit more.

Even and Odd Numbers - Doing this as an opening routine for a while will allow you to teach EVEN numbers and ODD numbers. Chances are your students will know what they are, so you can just focus on the best way to help them remember it in English.

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