The Line Jumping Game

The Line Jumping Game : practice word differentiation or review of vocabulary

Students line up in one single file line. The teacher defines the teacher's right side as "animals" and the left side as "numbers." The teacher calls out "penguin," and the students all jump to the teacher's right and then jump back into line. The teacher calls out "53," and the students all jump to the left side and then jump back into line.

The teacher should do the exercise with the students and list various items within the category as a warm up. You can then try to trick the students by jumping to the wrong side yourself. This will get the students listening and thinking instead of just following you. Once they have gotten a little better, you start the game.

I like to have 2 or 3 rounds where I try to trick them once each round. If they aren't fooled by me jumping to the wrong side they win. It can be done as a knock-out game but I prefer to keep everyone in the game and just reward students with stamps or stickers for each successful round.

The word groups can be changed to more complicated language later on, nouns-adjectives, nouns-verbs, things you do inside-things you do outside, subject pronouns-object pronouns