I’ve shared several posts where I’ve highlighted games Jimmy Fallon plays on The Tonight Show and which I think are great for English Language Learners.

Last night, he did another one…

It’s called Pyramid, and I’m sure many of us ELL teachers have played something similar in our classrooms. People play in pairs and choose a category. One person in the pair has a certain amount of time to give clues to his/her partner so they can guess what each item is. The pair who guesses the most correctly wins.

I’d modify it for my classroom so that everyone can play all the time. I’d give every two students a whiteboard and then I would be at the front giving clues about a word/item in a category the class would choose. After giving a couple of clues about one word, I’d have pairs write down their guess, hold up the whiteboard, and then winners would get a point.

Watch the video and leave your own ideas in the comments for better and different ways to modify the game for ELLs.

I’m adding this post to The Best Ideas For Using Games In The ESL/EFL/ELL Classroom.