Back From Vacation Card Game
The point of this activity is to get your students to talk about what happened to them over the summer holidays (which also allows for a quick oral review of those irregular past tense verbs). Each card presents an event that might have happened over their vacation.
A classic icebreaker activity
Put all the cards face up on the table and ask students to take turns choosing one of the cards and telling the class about a situation they experienced that has to do with the idea described on the card. After they finish you can have them keep the card or put it back. It’s your choice, but the second option gives the game more limits (which means it could be easier or more difficult, depending on your students). If you go with the second option (my personal preference), just stop the activity when the students finally get stuck.
A less classic icebreaker activity
This activity is identical to the first game but this time each player adopts the role of a celebrity and imagines their last vacation (you could, for example, cut out some photos of celebrities or write down some names on bits of paper). This could be a good substitute for groups of students who don’t much like speaking about themselves.
An icebreaker game
Mix up the cards and give each student 5. Students are free to roam around the room to discuss and ask questions in pairs with the goal of exchanging cards. The goal of the game is to end up with 5 cards describing real events you experienced in your last vacation. You could also put students in pairs and then change them every 3 minutes. Once a student reaches the goal of 5 cards corresponding to real events this summer, the game stops and they win. Then, you can go around the table while students tell a real story about one of the situations on one of their cards in their hand. You might also think of doing this game in reverse where the goal of the game is to have 5 cards of situations you did not experience this summer.
A pair icebreaker activity – imaginary vacation
Put students in pairs and give each 10 cards. Each pair chooses 5 cards out of the 10 and comes up with an imaginary vacation they took together. Give your pairs a time limit and be sure they come up with lots of details! Each pair presents their imaginary vacation to the class. At the end the class can decide who took the best imaginary vacation.
Now it’s your turn! Feel free to write in the comments how you used this ESL back from vacation game.
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