When I am teacher-training I always emphasize the value of using short activities to prime for longer activities. By this I mean that you do a short activity in order to get your students in the right frame of mind for a longer activity which is to follow. This blog gives four short activities of this kind and an introduction to the value if improvisation in the classroom as these activities are all improvisation activities of a sort. There are six sections ……
- Improv in the classroom
- Word association
- You will never guess what happened to me yesterday.
- What am I doing?
- Magic fingers
- Afterword
Improv in the Classroom
The activities in this blog are improv activities in the sense that they all involve students reacting to a prompt without any preparation at all. Mostly it is a low-level of improvisation, sometimes it involves making slightly more complex stories, but I think that all of these activities are fun, they are stress-free, and they encourage creativity. Improvisation is a great way to prompt creativity as typically a space is created and you have to suddenly fill it with something, i.e. you have to create something.
Some people get worried by the idea of improvisation, the idea that you have to say or do something without preparation. In reality improvisation is easy because there is no right or wrong, you just have to say the first thing that comes into your head and anything you say is okay.
This kind of activity is especially useful at the start of a session when the group are just arriving from different places and you want to get them focused on your lesson. They are non-competitive activities, they are fun and very importantly they encourage creativity, they send a message to your class that it is okay for them to be pro-active in your session, that you are encouraging them to have their own ideas.
Word Association
Word Association is a short improv activity for focus, creativity, and uniting the group. It can be used with a range of students.
First the teacher establishes a chain going from student to student around the class. Then the teacher says a word and the first student has to say the first word that they think of which is associated with that word. The next student thinks of a word that is associated with the first student’s word, and so on around the chain. After some time the teacher stops the group and they have to go back and remember the associations, i.e. what they said and why.
A typical sequence will have students in turn saying something like Black, Crow, Wing, Feather, Pen, Ink, etc. Once the sequence has got all the way to the end of the chain, the group tries to trace the sequence backwards, saying something like ……… I said ‘Ink’ because Zuzana said ‘Pen’, I said ‘Pen’ because Petr said ‘Feather’, and so on back to the start of the sequence.
There are no right or wrong answers, whatever somebody associates with a word is fine. It is important though to emphasize that nobody should prepare their word ahead. It should be a genuine association with the word that comes immediately before theirs.
You Will Never Guess What Happened To Me Yesterday
This is another short improv activity for more advanced students. It especially encourages fluency and creativity.
Students are put into pairs. One student says „You‘ll never guess what happened to me yesterday!“ The other student begins his/her answer with „I know, I heard all about it…..“ They then go on to explain some fantastic activity that the first student was apparently seen doing (e.g. you were seen on the top of a city bus at one o‘clock in the morning wearing a policeman‘s hat and singing in Chinese). They finish with „Can you tell me why?“ The first student answers ‘Yes, that’s right.’ They then have to give an immediate and detailed explanation of what happened. The first student can ask questions to check the details (E.g. ‘But why were you singing in Chinese?’)
What Am I Doing?
This game is usually played by the students in pairs. One student asks ‘What am I doing?’ The other student then tells them an activity, e.g. ‘You are swimming.’ The first student then mimes/ does that activity. You should emphasise that the mime should continue until the second student asks, ‘What am I doing?’ The first student then tells them a new activity, e.g. ‘You are jumping’. The second student mimes/ does that activity until the first student asks again ‘What am I doing?’, And so on, they take turns asking like this for a minute or two.
The movement is important, so really do emphasise that the students should continue to mime their activities until they are given a new one (not just do it for three seconds and stop). Part of the fun of the game is how difficult it is to think of activities for the other person to do. This element makes the game work for adults as well as children.
I love this game because it has it all – improvisation, quick reactions, movement, it is energizing, and it is just a lot of fun. The movement makes it a great game for young learners, although in reality I will use it with anybody.
Magic Fingers
This is a very simple game that young learners love, because it is very empowering. Make two teams. The first team faces the second team and waves their fingers towards them in a magical kind of way and the say …. With our magic fingers we change you into e.g. tigers. The second team then change into tigers and stay tigers until team one change them back with …. With our magic fingers we change you into children. Then the second team stop pretending to be tigers and work out what they want to change team one into. This can go on for as long as you like with the teams taking turns to change the others into different animals. Make sure though that the team has enough time to agree an what they want to change the other team into as this teamwork is a big part of the game.
Afterword
Many people imagine that being creative is difficult, that it is something that only special people can do, but that is not true. Anybody can think of a word to associate with another word and that is already creativity. Doing this kind of low-level creative activity is a great way to keep a positive atmosphere in the class not only because it is fun, but because being creative is itself satisfying and motivating. If you can regularly give your students chances to be creative then classroom management will probably be relatively easy.