“700 Classroom Activities” by David Seymour and Maria Popova can be considered an invaluable asset to any ESL teacher in the world for its huge repertoire of practical activities ready for use from elementary to upper intermediate levels and beyond. Here are four of my favourite games:

Message in a bottle
In small groups, students are asked to imagine they have been shipwrecked on a desert island just like Robinson Crusoe.
They have to choose ten objects to save from the ship and explain why they chose them.
Students may talk about the following: duties, food, dangers, punishments, equipment, weapons etc. After that, a spokesperson for each group reads out their message and, as a whole class, students decide which of the castaways deserve to be rescued.

Throw and catch
Standing in a circle, the participants throw a ball from one person to another. As you throw it, you have to shout out an adverb. When you catch it, you have got five seconds to use the adverb in a sentence. The class decides if your sentence is correct. If it is not, you are out of the game.

Example: A (throwing) – Fluently!
                 B (after catching) - He speaks English fluently.
The last student left standing is the winner.

Nice people, nasty people

The teacher gives the students a model conversation to look at :
A I like my cousin Roger.
B Why?
A Because he always sends cards and gives me a lot of presents.
B So you like him because he’s generous.
A That‘s right.

Then, working in pairs, the students have to devise similar conversations about the people they know. They may be given adjectives like: honest, modest, careless, moody, positive, selfish, insecure, easy-going, cheerful, creative, hard-working, kind, boring, aggressive, polite or they may choose their own adjectives.

Someone who…
Students listen to a list of ten or twenty descriptions of people. For each description, the students have to shout out an adjective that describes the person, then write down the number and name of somebody they know who is like that. They must not write the adjective.

1.  Keeps losing things (careless, forgetful, absent-minded)
2.  Always drops/breaks things (clumsy)
3.  Thinks bad things will happen (pessimistic, negative)
4.  Goes to a lot of parties (outgoing, sociable, gregarious)
5.  Keeps to himself (introverted, unsociable, withdrawn, closed)
6. Never smiles (moody, grumpy, bad-tempered, miserable)
7. Makes you yawn (boring, uninteresting, dull)
8. Likes making things (creative, artistic)
9. Keeps things tidy (neat, organized, efficient)
10 . Always arrives late for meetings (unpunctual, unreliable)

For each person on the list, the students have to write the adjective from memory, then compare their ideas with the others. After that, in pairs, the students have to think about a famous person for each adjective.