It is a good idea to start groups with a warm-up activity. They break the ice, make people feel relaxed and so interested and open to learning, and are often educational and good for developing all sorts of skills!
Here are some examples of games you can play:

Telephone pictionary

Give each learner a piece of paper. Ask them to write a sentence eg: The boy stirs the porridge on the stove.
The learner passes on the page, and the next learner does a quick drawing of what the sentence describes below it (without taking up the whole page).

They then fold the page so that ONLY their picture is visible and hand it to the next learner.

The next learner then writes a sentence describing the picture (WITHOUT seeing the first sentence).

They hand it to the next learner who draws the picture from that second sentence.

This continues till the page is full. Unfold it and see how the original sentence changed!

This is a fun activity that stimulates the imagination.

Group stories

Depending on the number of your group, you can play this as one group or in smaller groups.
Very simply, each member of the group adds a sentence to a story they build. You can start them off eg:
Once upon a time, there was a shy girl named Lerato….

You won’t necessarily get brilliant stories out of this but hopefully, learners will have some fun! The challenge is to make sure that the next sentence builds on the story in some way.

This game develops listening and creativity.</em

Word Olympics

Everyone stands up. One person says a word, eg. flower. The next person has to say a word that starts with the last letter of the word – flower ends in r, so they may say – road. The next person says a word that begins with a d. And so on.

If people take too long, they sit down. See how many are left standing after a round or two!
This develops quick thinking and can develop vocabulary as well.

20 questions

Think of something – anything eg: computer, lion, umbrella
Your learners need to find out what you have thought of. You can only answer YES or NO.
Using lion for example:
Is it man-made? – NO
Is it alive? – YES
Do we keep them as pets? – NO
Does it have four legs? – YES
They can play one or two rounds of this in small groups.
The most successful players are those that classify and use categories – such as the questions above – rather than just guessing ‘Is it a horse’ ‘Is it a whale’…

It is a very useful game to develop thinking skills.

Pictionary

You can adapt the game Pictionary for your group. Have a whole lot of words on slips of paper. They can be simple nouns such as horse, car, or rain, or you could have more challenging ones such as love, or anger. Use a dictionary to get ideas!

Divide learners into two teams.

A person from each team comes to the board (or flipchart), and you give them each a word. They have to draw that word for their group, who will call out their guesses. They cannot write words or symbols.

When the team guesses correctly, they get a point and another person takes the next word and draws it. The winning team is the one who gets the most points in the 10 minutes or so of play.

This game develops creativity and lateral thinking.</em

Acting out

Prepare some slips of paper with various instructions:
– Pretend you’re styling someone’s hair
– Pretend you’re directing traffic
– Pretend you’re a dog
– Pretend you’re hiding from someone
– Pretend you’re a teacher

Give an instruction to one of your more outgoing students to act out, with the other learners guessing what they are doing.

Get four or five more, and then keep the rest to do at a later stage with other learners.

This is a fun game that develops drama skills and creativity.

Making words

Find a long word in the dictionary eg EXPLANATION. Mix up the letters and write them on the board or on a piece of paper for everyone to see:
P N T O X A N I L E A
Give learners 5 minutes to write as many words as they can with these letters. Each word must have 3 letters or more
Eg: pan
Tax
Tail
Lean
Ail
(notice there are two Ns and two As – so one word can also have two Ns eg non. However, there is only one P, so you can’t have the word POP)

Then ask learners to work out their points that they get for each word they thought of.

3 letter words: 1 point
4 letter words: 2 points
5 letter words: 3 points
6 letter words: 4 points
7 letter words: 5 points
8 letter words: 6 points
9 letter words: 7 points
10 letter words: 8 points
11 letter word: 9 points plus bonus 10!

This game helps with spelling and vocabulary development.

Throwing a ball

Choose a theme, such as vegetables, or things you find at school, or categories, such as nouns, adjectives or verbs. Then stand in a circle and throw a ball at a learner. As they catch it, they need to shout out a word that fits into the category. If they take too long, they sit down. See how many are left standing after a few minutes!

This game develops vocabulary and quick thinking!

Hangman

Play Hangman with the word CHARACTER (or any nice long word)

How to play: put the following on the board: C _ _ _ _ C _ _ _

Ask learners to suggest letters.

If any of them guess the letters that are correct, fill them in eg. if someone says ‘E’ then fill in all the E’s.
C _ _ _ _ C E _

But if they say a letter NOT in the word, then you start drawing a hangman’s noose, one line at a time…
This game can develop vocabulary and spelling.

30 seconds

Make your own 30 second cards with simple words and divide your class into two teams.
One member from one team comes to the front and gets a card. They have 30 seconds to describe the words without using pieces of them (eg. if a word is motorbike they can’t say ‘it’s a bike with a motor’) or using any other language but English. They can act out, however.

The rest of their team guesses the words.

Then a member from the other group comes up to do the same.

Give each group 2 points for each correct word guessed in the time limit (subtract a point for other lang or any other transgressions!)

You can do a couple of rounds in one session and a couple of rounds in another session as long as you record which learners have had a turn.

(You can also make your own cards and use vocab words that you have covered with your group in the past.)

What am I?

Have words on pieces of post-it sticky notes (eg. banana, bus, tree, school). Put a different one on each learner’s forehead so they can’t read their own note. They can then pair up to ask one question about their object – eg. can you eat me? They then answer their partner’s question (as they can see what their partner is). They find another partner and ask and answer another question until they have discovered what they are. (You can also replace objects with celebrities too – eg. Donald Trump, Beyonce…!)