Boost Student Talk Time with the Line Up Game

We’ve all been there: it’s quiet enough to hear the heater humming or that pesky fly buzzing near the window. Your students’ eyes glaze over, and you fight the urge to once more repeat, “Anyone? Anyone?” 

An uninterested class is much more entertaining onscreen than it is in your classroom.

Here's an activity that can help your students reset while also increasing overall student talk time in the classroom. I call it the “Line Up Game," and it can be done at almost any point in class.

How it works

You can get as creative as you want with your topic and how you ask your students to line up, but here’s an example:

Line up in alphabetical order based on your first language.

Display the directions on the projector or write them on the board, and provide a written example of how you would like your students to communicate with one another.
 

Hiyab: Hi. What's your first language?
 

Yusuf: My first language is Arabic. What's your first language?
 

Hiyab: My first language is Amharic.
 

From here, students can work together to figure out which language comes first alphabetically and where they fit into the line with the rest of the class. More conversation may naturally unfold from their initial questions, depending on their English level and comfort with speaking.

Students will move around the room talking to each other in English, trying to figure out where everyone needs to line up.

After students line up

After the entire class has lined up, you (the teacher) can have each student say something like: “Hi, my name is ____ , and ____ is my first language.”

The amount of time you have, the language level of your class, the size of your class, etc., will determine how quickly you move on to the next student or how many follow-up questions you ask. You could also give other students the opportunity to ask follow-up questions.

Variations to try

There are so many ways you can do this activity. You can line students up alphabetically or numerically (e.g., How many siblings do you have?), or even in reverse alphabetical or numerical order if you are looking for even more of a challenge for your class.

Teacher tip: Use it for new groupings

This activity gets your students up out of their chairs and gives them an opportunity to put their English skills into action.

Additionally, this kind of activity can help build your classroom community by helping students learn more about each other and encouraging them to work together.

As an added bonus, you can use this as a chance to assign students to new groups. If students always sit in the same spot in class and work with the same people, you can put them into new groups for the next activity when they are in line at the end of this activity.

What ideas do you have for boosting student talk time?