A BROKEN TELEPHONE

This is a good pre/post-activity that can be easily adapted to nearly any story you can think of. First of all, you have to divide your class in groups, 2 to 4 depending on the amount of pupils and the way you normally work with your group. Here you have some tips for that. Once it is done, choose a phrase which has something to do with the story, e.g. "Goldilocks was very hungry and she walked into the kitchen". Tell the phrase to the first person of each group so they can whisper it to the next. The last student has to say it aloud. If he or she is right, they would have won the round. After every round, the students who had received the phrase from the teacher will have to go to the back of their group, ensuring a proper rotation.

Its main advantage is that, besides being an amusing game enjoyed both by children and adults, it can be adapted to any level and background and therefore it should be challenging and motivating without being frustrating.

Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark is ready to sail, but most animals run away last night. You have to find them as soon as possible. The team that finds them first will get a free ride in the Ark.


This is a really good post-activity to be used after a song or a story related to animals. It consists on writing animal names that the children may know (be careful to adapt it to their level so it is fun rather than frustrating) in small cards, divide them between two or more teams and allow them to describe the animals to their own team so they can guess which animal it is and go to the next. If somebody doesn't know the animal they have to describe they can skip their turn after placing that card in the last position.

This is an activity that can be adapted in many different ways:
-Normally you are not allowed to describe an animal by its sound or using not verbal language, however, this might be very recommendable when doing it with small children.
-If you do so, you might like to use pictures instead of cards with the names written on them (or both things).
-You might decide not to form teams in case you want to have a better control over the class as a whole.

-If the activity is based on description by verbal language a few posters that provide with the most essential vocabulary such as this one.

THE WOLF AND THE VILLAGE

This is an amazing dynamic to practice arguing within an intermediate or an advanced group. It allows people to argue with each other, as they have to decide who is the wolf (or the witch, or the killer… just name it) in order to try and execute it.

How it does work:

The roles are decided randomly, for instance using deck cards. The most important role is the wolf (or however you want to call it) and the villagers (who are basically there either to die or to become a mob), and the director (that is you I’m afraid). Once everyone has their card the director (or god, or the mayor, or whatever you want to call it) will call everybody to sleep, so everyone will look down. Subsequently, the director will call the wolf to wake up, kill (by means of pointing or looking to its victim), and get back to sleep. Then the village will wake up and the director will inform the victim of his or her death. Immediately after, people will speak against each other for a few minutes- For instance Pedro may say: “I think that Manolo is the wolf because I saw him moving a little when the wolf was killing”. And Pedro might reply: “I think the wolf is Pedro because he accused first”. After a while there will be a vote. Whoever is voted wolf will be executed, and therefore will turn his or her card facing up. If it is the wolf (the real one,)the round is over and we shall assign new roles. If the person chosen is a villager, the whole process will start again.

We can adapt the background of the dynamic to whatever text we are working with. The characters can be animals, villagers, courtier, or whatever suits us; in the same way as the wolf can be any antagonist that appears in our story. In addition, once the game has become too easy and predictable, we can add up other characters. For instance we can have a hunter (or a cop, a guard…) who will have the chance to ask the director (silently, of course) if a certain person is the wolf after it has killed. The director will answer yes or know and the hunter is free to share the information with everyone else although they can believe him or not as he doesn’t necessary has to be the hunter. Another character that might be added to the game is the fairy (or the healer, the sorcerer…) whose ability is to bring back to life one person each turn (or try to, depending on the rules and the number of wolf/killers that are playing). We will normally use a character like the healer when there is more than one wolf/killer.

Try it and tell us what happened!!