Lesson Share: Drama: Mime, draw or explain

Procedure

• First, the teacher divides the students into two groups. (There can be more than two groups. If the group is large, then the teacher can decide which teams compete against each other).
• The students (or teacher) choose a volunteer from a team. The teacher shows the student an index card with a vocabulary word.
• The object of the game is that the student defines the word to his or her team by miming, drawing or explaining. Usually, I let students themselves decide whether they are going to mime, draw or explain; but some variations can be introduced, like the teacher telling the students how to define the word, or giving them slips of paper at random showing what they have to do. I have also used dice, and I establish some numbers for each choice, for example: if the student gets numbers 2 or 4, he or she has to mime; if the student gets a 1 or 3, he or she has to draw, and so on.
• The rest of the student's team should guess the word he or she is trying to define, and if they guess it correctly, they get a point. (I usually tell students that miming is worth 1 point, drawing 2 points and explaining 3 points, since my main objective is that they use spoken English).
• The team that wins more points 'wins'- If you want to consider it a competition.

Note: The teacher must ensure that students know the meaning of all the words. For that, he/she should have introduced the meaning of the vocabulary words.