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Killer filler game

Here is a dead simple game to encourage sentence creation at any level. You could run this as a team game or with individuals competing with each other. It's as simple as this:

You write a word on the board, give a time limit (say three minutes) and individual pupils, pairs or groups have to produce as many sentences as possible including the chosen word. You could add variations e.g. write up two or more words or reward the person, pair or group who produces the longest sentence. You could give the game an electronic twist by making a slideshare with one word per slide. The teacher or a pupil could roll dice to advance the slides to the next (random) word.

More creative teachers than me could find other ways of refining the game.

Simple, but very adaptable since it works at every level. You could use the game as a random starter, filler or plenary, or you could structure it into your plan to reinforce previously taught and practised language.

The trickiest bit is the listening back to the examples which pupils produce. You would need to make a virtue out of the oral work generated and balance this with any scoring system. You could easily leave out the competitive element, but then it wouldn't be a game!

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