Teaching games to help your students improve their writing skills

Trying to get students excited about writing in a second language can be a difficult task – but it doesn’t have to be torture! With the help of a great teaching activity, you may find your learners don’t want to put their pens down. We’ve put together a few of our favourite activities to get students scrawling on the page. Why not see if these tasks get your own class ready to write…

#1 Consequences

This is an old school game that is just as fun today as it ever was! All you need for this activity is a pen and a piece of paper for each student. The Folded Story game work best with small classes of 6-12 students, but it can be adapted to larger classes if your students are confident enough to read and write together in small groups.

Level: Beginners +

Student: Young learners +

Lesson Stage: Warmers / Coolers

Materials:

• Pens / pencils and paper

Instructions:

1. Arrange the class into rows or a small circle. Each student needs a piece of paper and a pen.
2. Tell the class that they need to write one line of a story. For beginners, you can create a sentence with blanks on the board for them to copy. For advanced students, you can make the task broader by telling them to write a sentence about a character going somewhere.
3. Tell your students to fold over their piece of paper so that their sentence is hidden and pass their piece of paper to the student next to them. Tell your students not to open the piece of paper but to keep it folded down.
4. Now, tell your students to carry on their story on the new piece of paper.
5. Once your students have written a few lines, ask them to open up their folded story and take turns to read it out. There should be some nonsensical, amusing stories to enjoy together.

Pro tip: For beginners, you can write a few sentences on the board for them to fill in the blanks.

e.g. Line 1: The ___ (animal) went to the ___ (place)
Line 2: because it wanted to ___
Line 3: then it went to ___ (place) to ___ (action)
Line 4: and it met ___ (animal) that ___ (action)

For advanced students, you can give broader instructions.

e.g. Line 1: Write a sentence about a character who goes to a place.
Line 2: Start your next sentence with ‘because’ and explain why they went to this place.
Line 3: Start your next sentence with ‘then’ and explain what the character did next.
Line 4: Start your next sentence with ‘then’ and tell us about someone they met.

Perfect for: Practising grammar and sentence structure.

#2 Writing Karaoke

If your students look like they need to be revived a little, Writing Karaoke is a fun activity to break up a lesson or to end your class with a bang. You can play this with classes of any size and students can play from their desks.

Level: Elementary +

Student: Teenagers +

Lesson Stage: Warmer / Cooler

Materials:

• Pens / pencils and paper
• Projector and whiteboard

Instructions:

1. Pick a popular pop song or ask one of your students to pick their favourite song. (Make sure you know the song yourself and are sure it’s suitable to be played to your class!)
2. Have your students arm themselves with a pen and paper. Tell them that you will play the song and they must write down as many words from it as they can. Depending on the level and attention span of your students, you may choose to only play a minute of the song and you may want to play it two or three times.
3. Once the song has finished, put the correct song lyrics on the board or hand out sheets with the song lyrics on. Ask students to swap their work with someone else and compare their results.

Pro tip: Asking students to read out their work or explain some mistakes they made can be a fun, amusing way to get everyone involved.

Perfect for: Practising listening and writing. It’s also a great activity to entertain teenagers and adults!

#3 The Writing Race

This is a simple activity that requires very few resources. It also makes writing active and exciting for young learners – and it allows students to write on the board, which every child seems to enjoy! You’ll need to have a relatively small class, preferably less than 15 students, and some space for them to make two rows.

Level: Beginners +

Student: Young learners +

Lesson Stage: Practice

Materials:

• Whiteboard / blackboard and whiteboard pens / chalk
• Timer

Instructions:

1. Choose a topic or lexical set for the class to review and tell them what it is.
2. Split the class into two teams and ask them to make two lines in front of the board. Give the students at the front of the lines a whiteboard pen/piece of chalk each and set a timer for one or two minutes.
3. Tell the students they must write one word on the board, pass the pen/chalk to the person behind and then go to the back of the line. The next student must the do the same, and so on and so on until the timer ends.
4. The team with the most correct words is the winner!

Pro tip: If you’d like to focus on spelling, you can tell the teams to mark each other’s work. Tell them to give one point for a correct word and one point for the correct spelling. But be careful it doesn’t turn into a handwriting debate!

Perfect for: Reviewing vocabulary and practising spelling. This is also a great activity for classrooms without many resources.

#4 Stop the Bus

This activity is a great warmer for classes that requires absolutely no preparation. As long as your students have pens and paper, you can do this activity at any point in your lesson!

Level: Beginners +

Student: Young Learners +

Lesson Stage: Warmer / Cooler

Materials:

• Pens / pencils and paper

Instructions:

1. Write a letter on the board and tell your students to write down as many words as they can that start with that letter.
2. When a student can’t think of any more words, they must shout “Stop the bus!” and everyone must stop writing.
3. Ask the student to add up how many words they have and give themselves a point for each. The student with the most words is the winner.

Pro tip: You can challenge the students to write down more difficult words by offering two points for putting a word that no one else has.

Perfect for: Warming up students for the lesson ahead. It’s also a game that you can easily do with large classes.

#5 Memorise

This is an easy game to set up to review vocabulary or phrases. As with most of these writing games, you only need pens, paper and a whiteboard or blackboard to get started.

Level: Beginners +

Student: Young Learners +

Lesson Stage: Practice

Materials:

• Pens / pencils and paper
• Whiteboard / blackboard

Instructions:

1. Write down some vocabulary on the board that your class has been learning. Ask the learners to memorise as many words as they can.
2. Wipe the words off the board and tell the students to write down as many words as they can remember. The student who writes down the most correct words is the winner.

Pro tip: You can make this game more challenging by putting more words on the board, asking students to do an activity before they start writing (e.g. star jumps) which may make it harder to remember what they’ve just seen on the board, or by asking them to write a sentence using each word they can remember.

Perfect for: Reviewing vocabulary.