Teachers don’t have to be drab and we don’t always need to resort to textbooks to help our students learn and progress. In fact, studies have shown that we learn best while having fun! So, when you feel your students might be losing interest in their lesson, or are perhaps simply not absorbing the information, you might want to throw a fun and educational game into the mix to exercise those minds and regain their attention.

While the internet is your number one portal for a variety of games suited to students of all ages, one game that has always been a hit among learners is The Verb Game. This game is ideal in that the verbs you encourage your learners to use can either directly or indirectly refer to other lessons or topics that you have recently discussed in the classroom.

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Here’s how the game works:

1. Divide your class into smaller groups of 4-5, where there are at least two kids in each group. Group numbers should be even, to be fair.
2. Give the learners a topic, this topic can relate to a previous lesson or it can be arbitrary in it’s use. Example: the park, the zoo, the mall, the ocean
3. Set a timer for your preferred number of minutes (usually 2 minutes is enough).
4. Now each group must right down as many verbs as they can think of that would take place in the theme/topic/place you have set.
5. When the time is up, compare the verbs between groups, crossing off verbs that other groups have.
6. The group that is left with the most number of unique verbs is the winning group!

Source Link: http://room5teacher.blogspot.co.za/2013/01/verbs-verbs-verbs.html

Kids usually enjoy this game because of the competitiveness, which encourages them to think out of the box and grasp at those unique and original verbs, that they probably didn’t even realise they knew up until that point!

This is a simple word game that has so many benefits: it acts as an ice-breaker, it exercises the mind in preparation for further learning, it relaxes the students and it refocuses their attention on to you, the teacher. Not to mention, it is an awesome way to build your vocabulary.

So, be the fun teacher, be the one that keeps the class on its toes and eager to learn. Have fun while you learn!