LAPTOP ENGLISH

ACTIVITIES FOR TEACHING

ENGLISH ONLINE

Teaching English online is an incredibly rewarding

venture, and gives you lots of freedom, but sometimes we need a few ideas for lessons. In this
booklet, weve assembled some great ideas for activities to use in your lessons.
A lot of these activities work best using an online
whiteboard. There are several good ones to
choose from, including Idroo, Twiddla and WizIQ.
Alternatively, many communication tools, such as
Skype and Zoom, allow you to do a screen share,
so you can turn your screen into a whiteboard that
way too.
Best of luck and have fun with these activities!

GUESS THE PICTURE

Go to an online whiteboard, like IDroo or Twiddla. Draw a small part of a picture. Ask your student what
they think it is going to be. Help them to formulate their responses (e.g. I think that it is going to be
a., it could be a). Encourage them to give different opinions but dont tell them if they are right
or wrong. Add a little more to the drawing and encourage them to give more responses until you have
drawn the picture. You could focus on vocabulary from a particular topic, such as animals, transport or
clothes.
Its also a good idea to swap roles, so you have to guess what your student is drawing. That way you
can model the language needed, so when your student tries again, they can use the same language
that you used.
Useful language:
I think its going to be a
It could be a
Perhaps its a
Well, its definitely not a ____ but it might be a ____.

TWENTY QUESTIONS
Ask your student to choose a word that youve
recently used, perhaps something from the last
lesson. Lets say youve been looking at the topic
of clothes, so ask your student to choose an item
of clothing. You have to guess the word by asking yes/no questions, for example:

Do you wear it on your head?

Does it keep you warm?

Do you wear it above the waist?

Is it casual?

Do you wear it against your skin?

Do you wear it outside?

Alternatively, say whether the word is an animal,

vegetable or mineral at the start, or say what the
first letter of the word is.

word beginning with t such as tired. Now you

add a word, starting with the last letter of your
students word, (e.g. dream) and so on, taking it
in turns to make the word snake longer. Encourage your student to think of long words by making it a competition between you and your student to see who can add the most letters to the
snake (but let your student win (at least some of
the time!).
This works well on a tablet computer, because as
the snake gets longer you can turn the tablet upside down as you build the snake. If youre using
a desktop computer, just start a new snake when
you reach the edge of the screen (unless, that is,
both you and your student dont mind standing
on your head!). Word snakes can also be done
using Skypes chat box, of course, but it looks
better on a whiteboard.
As a follow up, ask your student to make up sentences using words from the word snake.

You must try to guess the word before the 20

question limit is up. Then swap roles, so you
think of the item and your student must guess
the word by asking lots of questions.
You could also type your questions on to an online whiteboard as you ask them, to help your student when its their turn to guess.

WORD SNAKE
Write a word on your online whiteboard. Now,
ask your student to write another word, but starting with the last letter of your word. For example,
if you wrote elephant, your student must write a

STORY TENNIS
Start to tell your student a story, perhaps
adapted from one you have just read. Your stu-

dent now has to add a sentence to the story.

Then you add a sentence.

ODD ONE OUT

Take it in turns like this until you have a completed story. This can be used either as a speaking or writing activity.

Write four or five words into Skypes chat box, or

on to an online whiteboard, or simply read out
the words. Ask your student to tell you the odd
one out, and to tell you why its the odd one out.
Here are some examples: which ones do you
think are the odd one out?

GROWING SENTENCES
Write a verb on an online whiteboard, or type it
into Skypes text conversation box. For example,
the word eat. Your student needs to add a word
or two (e.g. a pizza) to make a phrase or sentence. You can either add another word yourself
or you can ask your student to add another word
to the sentence. Each longer sentence should
make sense and be grammatically correct.
For example:
Eat.
Eat that pizza.
Eat that pizza quickly.
Eat that delicious pizza quickly.
I want to eat that delicious pizza quickly.
I want to eat that delicious cheese pizza
quickly.
I want to eat that delicious cheese pizza
quickly said my sister.

horse, pony, donkey, unicorn

Japan, Thailand, Tokyo, Vietnam, Italy

car, helicopter, train, bicycle, bus

walk, run, jump, gallop

hand, eye, nose, ear, cheek

The important thing is not for the student to tell

you the correct odd one out (there is often more
than one possibility) but for them to explain their
choice. For example, in the hand, eye, nose,
ear, cheek list, your student might say hand is
the odd one out because it is not on the face or
they might say nose is the odd one out because
you only have one nose, but you have two of everything else.
The odd one out doesnt just have to be about
meaning. It could also involve sounds and grammar, for example:

go, snow, cow, toe (pronunciation)

make, went, said, drew (tense)

sock, shoe, glasses, shirt, trousers (a pair

of)

girl, woman, man, child (irregular plural)

For an added challenge, ask your student to

come up with some lists of their own, and to ask
you to come up with the odd one out.

PICTURE DICTATION
Find a simple picture (a line drawing works very
well with this activity) with a lot of objects and/or
action. This could be from the Internet or, if you
are using one, a coursebook, but we prefer doing a quick line drawing ourselves.
Describe the picture to your student. Your student draws the picture, either on a piece of paper (which they can show to you on a webcam)
or on an online whiteboard. You might say things
like theres a large dog running past a tree, the
book is between the cup and the jar or the policeman is standing on top of the wall.
After they have finished drawing, your student
can compare their drawing with the one you
were describing. Alternatively, you can ask your
student to describe the picture back to you
have they missed any details? If you want, you
can reverse the activity,

with your student describing a picture to you,

which you must draw.

SENTENCE COMBINING
This activity focuses your students attention on
both meaning and language structures. It basically involves matching two halves of a sentence.
Think of some sentences, perhaps linked to a
topic or language feature you have just been
studying. Here are some examples using the future perfect:
They will have found a cure for cancer by 2050.
We will be living on Mars in 2050.
I will have retired by 2050.
Now, split the sentences in half, and type them
into separate text boxes in an online whiteboard.
Mix them up:
They will have found

on Mars by 2050

We will be living

by 2050

I will have retired

a cure for cancer by

2050

Your student must match the first and second

half of the sentence correctly, either by dragging
and dropping the second half of the sentence
into the correct place, or by drawing lines between the two halves.

HOT SEATING

JUMBLED TEXT

This is a role play activity. Either you or your student take on the role of a famous person or character, perhaps someone recently in the news, a
historical figure, a celebrity or someone who
works in the same field as your student. The
other person asks the one in role questions
about his or her life and activities.

Find a text from a story, a dialogue or a chronological text such as a list of instructions. Break it
into chunks (e.g. a sentence or a line of text) and
paste each chunk in a random order, on to an online whiteboard. (You can do this by copying and
pasting each line or sentence separately into the
whiteboard).

JUMBLED SENTENCES

Your students task is to put the text back together in the correct order. This requires them to
think about the meaning of the whole text, and to
think about how individual sentences in the text
are linked.

Take a sentence, perhaps from a coursebook or

worksheet if you are using one, or make up a sentence around content or language related to your
lesson, and type the sentence into an online
whiteboard with the words in a random order. For
example, if your sentence is:
Diamonds and emeralds have been mined since
ancient times.
then you could write this as:
mined been times have diamonds since emeralds ancient and
Your student simply needs to put the words in
the correct order.
To help your student, type each word separately
into your online whiteboard; this means your student can move each individual word until theyve
built a sentence.

DICTOGLOSS
Find or make up a short text, similar to something youve been working on in class (i.e. using
the same grammatical features or similar content). Read the text to your student at a normal
reading speed. Your student must write down as
many words from the text as possible. Now read
it a second time. Your student should try to add
more words to their list.
Using this list of words, your student should work
on their own for 5-10 minutes and replicate the
text that you read out.
When theyve finished, ask them to read it out. (If
you are a fast typist you could type their text into
an online whiteboard as they read it.)
Finally, the two of you compare your students version of the text with the text you read out, noting
the differences between the two. (This spot the
6

difference is crucial because it forces your student to focus on the language they dont know.)
What tends to happen in a dictogloss is the student focuses on the most meaningful words
when they create their word list, rather than
grammar words like articles and connectives.
The comparison activity at the end forces them
to notice the grammar.

CLOZE (GAP FILL)

A cloze is some text with words (or parts of
words) missing. Write some sentences into an online whiteboard or chat box and ask your student
to fill in the gaps. If your student needs help,
give them a list of words to choose from.
The gaps could be prepositions, articles, verb
endings, plural endings and so on, depending
on the language focus.

Now cover up one of the words from anywhere in

the text (the quickest way is to use a drawing
tool to colour over the word, as in the picture below).
Your student reads the text out loud again, including the missing word.
Next, cover up another word and repeat the process. Continue until all the words are covered up
(or until your students memory has given up!).

e.g. My brother is ____ firefighter, he work_ in

London

VANISHING CLOZE
Type a short text (3 or 4 sentences), based on
something your student is familiar with, into an
online whiteboard. Ask your student to read it out
loud.

This activity is a good way for your student to

practise using a specific grammatical feature (in
the text above, its the past simple and past perfect).

MONSTER CLOZE
This is the vanishing cloze in reverse! Paste a
short text (perhaps one youve just been reading
together) into an online whiteboard and cover up
every word individually. (Make sure you also
have the text written down somewhere)
Your student needs to guess the words in the
text. If they guess a word correctly, uncover it. If
the word isnt in the text, you could draw a hangman graphic. In fact, the activity works just like
hangman, except your student has to guess
words instead of letters.
You should find that your student can guess content words (e.g. pilot, doctor) quite easily, but will
struggle more with more grammatical words (e.g.
the, are).

MEMORY TENNIS
This game works well with vocabulary sets such
as food, clothes, drinks or places. Start the chain
with a sentence like:
I went to the supermarket and I bought some
milk.
Your student needs to add an item to the chain
that makes sense, so they would say:
I went to the supermarket and I bought some
milk and some apples.
You continue the chain. If one of you breaks the
chain, the other person wins the point.