It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a class of 10 students or just 1, the kids will like it. Even if they have to watch for a few minutes as we go around the group, giving everyone a chance to play or try once, they still are quiet and looking on attentively.
I quickly found a great site called Hooda Math. My students all recognize it now, and they continue to add great games each week.
http://hoodamath.com/games/iwb.php
One of the earliest flash games that I discovered is called Three Slices. I found t his great game when I was doing winter classes at a training center one year, and I had the awful luck to have three hours with students each day for three weeks. I knew I needed something to break up the boredom, so I began searching around. I quickly found Three Slices and the students loved it.
ESL IWB Games
If you’re lucky enough to work at a training center that has large Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs), then you can let your students treat the large computer screen on the wall just as if it were an ipad.
One great game is Three Slices and it’s a geography math game, but don’t worry, you can (try) to make them talk in English. All you have to do is cut red blocks so that 50-100% of them fall away. The kids really love it.
http://hoodamath.com/games/3slices.php
Another really fun one is Ice Cream Truck. Any business-minded students will love buying and selling ice cream. And an added bonus is watching the customers that hate your ice cream get sick and throw up. It really breaks the students up!
http://hoodamath.com/games/icecreamtruck.php
I’ve found some other great games recently at another site that I simply call Flash Games. This site has about 1,000 games, and many of my students know them from the Chinese search engines they use.
One of my favorites, and one that my boss wouldn’t get angry about since it has at least a modicum of educational value, is Word Bump. In this game students have to make small words, like so, did, read, zoo, and watch as their tower of letters slowly rises to the top. The students crowd around the board on this one.
http://www.flashgames247.com/
http://www.flashgames247.com/game/other-games/word-bump.html
http://www.flashgames247.com/play/3044.html
As you can see there are many great flash games out there to kill time in your class. I don’t care what anyone says about their educational value; when you’ve been teaching for 6-8 hours on a Saturday, you need something to take a break with. A cold beer would often be the best remedy, but that could create more problems than its worth.
For that reasons I would highly recommend familiarizing yourself with the above websites. I’m sure glad I did; it’s saved me a lot of headaches over the past year!