psychiatrist

Psychiatrist (also known as Psycho) is a party game in which all but one player takes the role of a patient suffering from the same affliction, and the remaining player is a psychiatrist who must diagnose them with a series of indirect questions.

The players sit in a circle, with one player sitting in the middle of the circle. The player in the middle is the "psychiatrist", and the players in the circle are the "patients". Before the game starts, the patients must agree on a common affliction, such as being afraid of the dark, or believing themselves to be a particular film star. The psychiatrist must leave the room while this affliction is discussed and decided.

The psychiatrist then returns, and attempts to diagnose the collective illness by asking indirect questions to each patient in turn ("Do you prefer the daytime or the nighttime?" rather than "Is your illness related to light?"). Patients can convey hints in their behavior as much as their answers.

If a patient gives an answer which is inconsistent with the agreed affliction, or is a lie, the other patients should shout "Psychiatrist!", and the answering patient swaps seats with the patient who shouted first. This game mechanic may be invoked voluntarily if the psychiatrist's questions are being too direct - for example, if the psychiatrist has worked out that the shared delusion is that of being a film star and asks one of the patients "What is your name?", that patient may choose to lie, knowing that another will then shout "Psychiatrist!"^[1]

The continues until the psychiatrist correctly identifies the patients' ailment.

twenty questions

One person thinks of an object (person, animal, thing) and others have to guess that object by asking yes/no questions. They have 20 tries.

You can play this game using points and assign 1 point for every 'yes' question, 3 poins for guessing the object and 5 points for the leader, if the object was not guessed.

the resistance

Analog to mafia game, but with a slightly differnt process:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Resistance_(party_game)

couch of power

Couch of Power is a group game of strategy and memory in which two teams shuffle seats until one team controls every seat on the couch and wins. It is sometimes known as "Parliament" or "Four on the Couch".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couch_of_Power

catch phrase

A popular American game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_Phrase_(game)

1000 blank cards

I don't completely understand the rules of that game, but one day would like to try.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Blank_White_Cards

legs

People stand in a circle close to each other, legs spread on the shoalder lenght. The games goes clockwise. Someone starts the game by touching his neighbour's foot with any of his own feet. That person in turn has to use the "touched" foot and touch his next neighbour's to the left foot. And the game continues.

You can only lift the foot, that has been touched by your neighbour. The idea is to make other people as much uncomfortable as possible. If you loose your balance it is allowed to lean on other people. If you touch the floor with your arm, you are out of the game. The two remaining people are the winners.

trivia

Split the people in teams and put the posters with the topics on the wall in front of them. The rules are simple: one team selects the topic and you read a question from that topic. The first team to answer the question gets one pont and can choose the next topic. If one team answers 3 questions in a row they get a bonus point.

Here are questions I made for my group of 13-14 y.o.

Geography

1. What is the biggest country in the world? Russia

2. What is the capital city of Australia? Canberra

3. In which country would you find the Leaning Tower of Pisa?

4. What is the name of the highest mountain on Earth? Everest

5. Helsinki is the capital city of which country? Finland

6. What is the name of the biggest ocean on Earth? Pacific

7. In what country is the Stonehenge?

8. Name the continent where Brasil is situated.

9. In which country do you find pyramids?

10. How many stripes are there on the American flag?

Films

1. What color is the hair of Marge Simpson?

2. Name three skywalkers from starwars.

3. What was the name of a bad guy in last batman movie?

4. Hugh Jackman’s hero in X-men.

5. Neo, Morpheus, Trinity – name the film.

6. Which robot say the phrase “I will be back”?

7. There are more than 20 movies about this secret agent. Name him.

8. What is the name of a donkey from Shrek?

9. What is the name of the planet from Avatar?

10. This director made the movie Indiana Johnes, Schindlers’ list and Jaws.

Sport

1. What sport is played at Wimbledon?

2. What country does the soccer player Wayne Rooney come from? England

3. In which sport was Muhammad Ali the world champion?

4. How many bases are there on a baseball field? 4

5. What sports make up triathlon?

6. How long is the maraphon distance?

7. In a professional game of hockey, how many players are on the field in both teams? 12

8. What sport uses pins?

9. Which sport has two picadors? 

Science

1. What can move faster than the speed of light?

2. Which physicist discovered gravity?

3. What is the size of Pi?

4. What is the name of a person who studies weather?

5. Which part of the body moves blood?  

6. If you do not count Pluto, how many planets are inour solar system? 8

7. Which of these is not part of an atom: Electrons, Neutrons, Rayons, Protons.
8. What is the chemical formula of water?

9. Which of the following creatures is not a bird: Wombat, Dodo, Robin, Emu?

10. What instrument is used to see objects that are too small to see with the naked eye?

Literature

1. What is the name of Sherlock Holmes' friend, who helps him in his work?

2. Who is Moby Dick?

3. Which animal in Alice in Wonderland can disappear?

4. What was the name of the sword, that king Arthur took from the stone?

5. What book has a character named Bilbo Baggins?

6. What is Shakespear’s name?

7. This man took money from the rich and gave to the poor. Who is he?

8. This boy was the friend of Vinnie the pooh. What’s his name?

9. What is the name of the man who got in a ship crash and had to live on an island? 

10. How many books about Harry Potter are there?  7

Different

1. How many years are there in a millennium? 1000

2. Arachnophobia is the fear of what?

3. What is the name of the closest star to Earth? Sun

4. Found in both Irish and Indian flag: what is the most sacred colour of Hinduism? Orange

5. Scarlet – what is the color?

6. What was the reason for the death of Titanic ship?

7. How many cards are there in a standard deck of playing cards?

8. After water, what is themost populardrink in the world?

9. Which superhero uses the alias Clark Kent?

dog!

This is a perfect game when you need to take a group of people outside. Everytime you see a dog you must shout "dog"! The one who does it first - gets the point. The game continues during the whole time outside and keeps the people excited and enthusiastic. 

explain the unexplainable

People say that this picture can't be explained. Split your class into teams and let them try.

herman's game

This is a perfect energizer and a good way to remember names.
The whole group stands in the circle, the leader holds a small ball in his hands. The game starts with leader throwing the ball to someone and saying that person's name. That person must pass the ball to the next person saying that next person's name. The ball must 'visit' all the people in the circle without repetitions and return to the leader. Then the leader asks the people to repeat the sequence and starts to pass the ball again.

After everyone has remembered the sequence, the game becomes harder - the people are asked to change places. After that it becomes more hard when the leader takes the new ball and asks the people to create a new sequence. Finally, the game is played with two balls simultaneously. 

mad libs

Mad Libs is a phrasal template word game where one player prompts another for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story. The game is frequently played as a party game or as a pastime.

Find a small text and cut out some words.

"_____________! he said ________ as he jumped into his convertible
   exclamation            adverb
______ and drove off with his __________ wife."
noun                          adjective

After that ask students to fill in the gaps with random words to make a funny story.

"Ouch! he said stupidly as he jumped into his convertible 
cat and drove off with his brave wife."

quizz

Use quizzes. 

word ball game

Students stand in circle. One person has a ball (or something soft) and starts the game by saying a word and throwing a ball to someone. The person who caught the ball must say a new word beginning with the last letter of the previous word. And then throw the ball to someone else. The game repeats until everyone is bored to death. 

alias

First ask your students to write down different words on separate small papers, and ask them to be creative. Then collect all the papers and split students into several teams. The teams take turn to play. One person from the team receives a bowl with all the papers and has 1 minute to explain as many words to his teammates (without actually saying the word) as possible. Each guessed word gives the team one point.

ransom note

Give your student a bunch of English magazines and newspapers and split them into several groups. Each group is a gang of kidnapers - they have to come out with their victim (who or what they kidnapped), with their demands (1.000.000 dollars and a plane to Cuba) and their threats. And then they have to make a ransome note by cutting out words and phrases from the magazines and glueing them to a paper. 

good/bad news

First off give the students examples of good news and bad news. E.g. Bad news: extra homework, bad weather, car accident, death. Good news: less homework, class finishing early, wedding. After that teach them sentence: “The good news is..., however, the bad news is…..”

After that ask everyone to write 5 good news and 5 bad news. Then collect all the news and put them in the separate pile. Have a student come to the front of the class and choose either a bad news or good news. They then have to read the good/bad news out loud for the class and think of a matching good/bad news. 

cluedo

Use this game.

riddles

You can have some fun by making your student solve logical puzzles.

For example:

Suzi, Jack, Mary, and Bob were playing mah-jong. By the end of the game, the four players came 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. However, someone lost the score paper and nobody knows the score now. So, the judge  asked each of the players what they remember:
Suzi: I didn't have 1st place.
Jack: I lost to Bob, but I defeated Mary.
Mary: I am definitely not the last.
Bob: The people who lost to me are Suzi and Mary.

One of the players is telling a lie. You need to find the liar and the real score.

The trick is, you have to assume that each of the person is a liar one by one.
For example, if you assume Suzi is the liar, then everyone else is telling the truth. Therefore, you must look if there is any contradiction. To make the long story short, the liar is Bob, and their rank is: 1st Bob, 2nd Jack, 3rd Mary, 4th Suzi.

More here: http://www.folj.com/puzzles/

portrait story

You give the students a portrait of a (funny looking) person. They have to come up with a biography - who he is, where he works, what are his hobbies etc.

darwin awards

Using short interesting stories (like Darwin awards cases) for cutting to pieces and putting back into the correct order. 

five letters

Think of a five-letter word, for example ‘heart’, and for each but one letter write a dot on the board, revealing only one of its letters, eg.: .e...

Students call out a five-letter word, eg. ‘fears’. Circle the letters that appear in your word too, and put a square around the letters that not only appear in your word but are at the right place (e, a and r in my example). The goal is to find out the teacher's word in maximum five tries (hence the name; there are going to be five lines and five columns). 

crazy stories

You take a big poster and write the title of the story on top. On the bottom you write the ending of the story. You also tell the students 5-10 key words that should be used. Their task is to write this story.

Karr!

You take a deck of cards and take out sets (AAAA, KKKK, 8888) of cards equal to the number of players. Then, shuffle them and deal each player four cards. the goal of the game is to exchange cards and try to collect the whole set. When someone collects the set, he/she throughts the cards on the table and shouts any English word. Other players must each shout one other word, that begins with the last letter of this word. The last one to do so is the loser.

(reversed) who am i?

The teacher thinks of the person and the students have to ask him yes/no questions to find out who he is.

me too

Students sit together in a circle. Everyone in the group gets 10 poker chips/pennies/paper clips etc. Start the game by saying something that you have done. For example: I have gone skating. Everyone who has gone skating throws one poker chip in the middle of the table and repeats the sentence. Go around the circle until everyone has had a chance to say something. Continue the game until someone runs out of poker chips.

brainstorming

Split the students in teams and assign each team a task to brainstorm - e.g. think of the most uses for a paperclip. Let them 15-20 minutes to discuss and then compare the results in one big team.

BONUS:
100+ uses for a paperclip: http://www.xrysostom.com/paperclip.html

speaking chest

Write down 15-20 interesting topics and put them in a box. The students take turn to draw a topic and to speak on it for 1 minute.

what's in the bag?

The idea: Get students to describe (in English) objects that they can touch but can't see.

Preparation: Several objects - eg stuffed toys, anything! a bag to hide the items in, paper and pens/pencils, imagination!

In the ESL classroom: Choose one student to describe the object. Give all the other students a piece of paper and a pencil (or can be done in teams with two or more students drawing on the white/black board). Explain to the class that (student name) will describe whatever they feel in the bag and the rest of the class must draw it. The student whose drawing best matches the item being described is the winner. If students are having trouble describing, try throwing in a few words like: short, long, tall, fat, thin etc.

word chain

One student says a word then the next student has to say a word that begins with the last letter of the word that was just said. eg: S1 "YelloW" S2 "WindoW" S3 "WinD" S4 "DoG" etc etc.

Here are some of the rules I use with this game. You can pick and choose which ones you want:

1) Have a time limit.
2) Put students into teams.
3) Words can''t be repeated.
4) Words have to contain at least X amount of letters.
5) Words can''t contain a certain letter(s)
6) Words MUST contain a certain letter(s)

my name is sausage

In this game students ask each other questions and they must answer with a specific word. This word can be absolutely anything! For example the word is "sausage".

S1 "What''s your name?" S2 "My name''s sausage!"

S1 "What do you look like?" S2 "I look like a sausage!"

Make sure the students maintain the correct sentence structure for the questions. ie Even though they are answering "sausage" to "What''s your name?" they still have to use the "My name is" structure

This is a great activity and really gets students thinking about what questions they will ask!

two truths and a lie

Students write on papers three facts about them, one of which is going to be false. After that they start to mix and mingle and have to find out, which of the facts are false.

yes/no

The teacher aks questions to the student. The student has to answer them without saying yes or no, otherwise he/she loses.

memory cards

Create a set of cards (20-30) which form pairs. Shuffle the cards and put them face down on the table. Students can in turns turn one card face down and find it's pair. If they don't succeed they put the cards face down again and the turn goest to the next student.

pictionary

The task is to draw a word/book name/film/sentence in an unusual and funny way. The others have to guess.

Also more complicated rules: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictionary

who wants to be a millionaire?

Create a version of that game with your own questions using the special flash program.

what was the question?

You give the answer to the question and the students have to think of that question.
Example:
"Red" - "What is the color of that car?"
"Fast and shiny" - "What is your bike like?"
"Black and not moving" - "How would you describe a dead fly?"

warmonger

You, the teacher, may need a dictionary do this activity.

• Choose a word which is long, difficult, and unknown to the students, a good word to begin with is: warmonger.
• Without using a dictionary, your students write down a definition. (They can work out the definition in groups of three).  Allow them a few minutes to think and write.
• Collect the definitions and read them aloud.
• When you have finished reading, they will have to vote which of those is the correct one. (It doesn't matter if none of them is the correct one) 
• After they have voted and none of the groups guessed the meaning you read the correct one aloud.

The idea of this game is to let students be creative and practice writing skills.
Then you can have the students to discuss their writings.

Here is a good list of words: http://yubanet.com/oddnews/100-Funniest-Words-in-English.php#.UXEh4qK-2So

bragging

You make up about 20-30 sentences in Present Perfect describing various activities one would share to brag. For example: "I've eaten lunch with Al Gore".

"Spielberg has asked me to play in his next movie". Students draw a slip of paper with a statement like that, he/she says it aloud to the group and they try to outdo him/her by thinking up a statement which would be more impressive. It might look something like this:

Student1: "I've eaten lunch with Al Gore"
S2: So what? I've eaten lunch with Bill Clinton!"
S3: So what? I've eaten lunch with Al Gore and Bill Clinton"
S4: So what? I've eaten Gore and Clinton for lunch"

secret code

You can write some messages using secret code. The students' task is to decode it using (or not using) the given algorithm.

question + basket

You have a basket in which students should through balls made out of papers. If they miss - they should answer a question. 

name six

This game is fun and challenging at the same time. It can be adapted for virtually any subject and any grade level. It allows the students to review material they've learned, without having to get out a pencil and paper and answer questions from the text.

• Arrange 6 chairs in a circle and choose one person, the teacher or another student, to stand outside the circle.
• Give someone in the circle a stuffed animal, the funnier the animal the better!
• The person outside the circle states what the person holding the animal has to name six of.
• The person then starts moving the animal around the circle and the other players pass it around.
• The player must name six of the objects before the animal gets back to him or her.

For example, let's say that you have just finished a vocabulary unit on animals. The person standing outside the group may say something like,"Name six animals that have fur." The person sitting in the circle begins namimg six animals and at the same time, the stuffed animal is being passed around the circle. If the player cannot name 6 animals with fur by the time the stuffed animal reaches him, he has lost and it's his turn to stand outside the group and stunt the other students.

balda

Making words out of letters of a different word. For example:


R E T R I B U T I O N
return tribute iron notion note tone rib tube bruit tent tribe bur button rent burin nob bite burr run route tire tore bent bet bonnet rub nib net nub bin nut bit rube ruin rob rot unit union unite tier tie tin tint tone toe brute burn brunt butt butter riot tot tenet tenure terrier retro bone boot born bout totter tote tour bore

song puzzle

For this exercise you will need the lyrics of a song in English.You will need several copies, one for each student .Cut the lines of the song .The students will try to put the song in order.You will play the song as many times as necessary.The student who finishes first is the winner.

four letter words

1.-The teacher writes a four-letter word (not a bad word but word made up four letters)on the board.
For example: TIME

2.-Students will take turns generating words from the first one.The idea is to change only one letter but generate a miningful word.

TEACHER.-TIME
STUDENT1.-DIME

3.-Any letter can be change.Only one at a time, but not on the same place consecutively. Example:
TEACHER.- TIME
STUDENT1.- DIME
STUDENT2.- LIME (Wrong you should change any other letter but not on the same place consecutively).
TEACHER.- TIME
STUDENT1.- DIME
STUDENT2.- DOME
STUDENT3.- COME
STUDENT4.- CAME
STUDENT5.- CANE
Etc.

end of story

You provide the end of the story and the student have to tell it from the beginning.
Eg:
...and I was left with a pineapple and a box of lizards.
...and that's why she will never eat caviar again.
...he closed that box and turned the lughts off.

bingo

Make a list of 20 words. Ask the student to draw a grid with 16 squares (4x4) and write one of the words in each square. You then mix all the words and start picking them up at random and callig them out. When the students hears the word, he must cross it out from the grid. The winner is the one who crosses the whole row first.

pass that pillow

The people stand in the circle. They are divided into two teams as follows: a-b-a-b-a-b etc. Each team has a pillow and when you give a signal, they have to pass that pillow from member to member as quick as possible. Their goal is to "catch" the pillow from the second team. 

guess the word

Someone thinks of a word and gives the first letter. The others have to guess the word by asking the "yes/no" questions.

word search

the price is right

An activity to practice numbers.
You show the pictures with different onjects - cars, computers, clothing etc. And the people have to guess what is their price.