I’ve done a lot of last minute subbing for sick teachers in my day, and I have one warmer game that’s saved my day dozens of times. This EFL vocab activity is a great way to establish a lesson’s vocabulary set and discover the students’ prior knowledge with minimal resources. It can also easily lead into a whole range of other activities and fit in other points of a lesson. Battle of the Scribes is a key activity idea for any new teacher, so keep on reading and check it out!
How to Play Battle of the Scribes
To play, first give your students a topic or theme such as sports, foods, animals, or things we do for fun. Elicit a couple examples from them. Next, write them on the board to make sure everyone understands (adding a wrong example for students to reject is great, too).
Next, assign teams of three to five students and tell them to select a writer (a Scribe). They will help their writer think of and write as many appropriate words as they can in a limited amount of time – two to four minutes works well. Only their writer will be allowed to put pen to paper.
Once everyone understands and has one pencil or pen ready per team then you distribute the papers and start. At this point you should remember to walk around and monitor to make sure everyone’s following the rules.
When time runs out you can have teams trade papers and check each other’s work. They can flag words they think are incorrect for you to check. Once they’re finished they can write the number of correct words and hand papers back. The team with the most correct words is the winner.
Another Version
Another great option for Battle of the Scribes is to use a picture as a starting point instead of just giving everyone a topic to work with. In this version, children look at the picture and work together to identify and write down all the things they see. Or, they could write down all the action verbs – whatever your focus is.
One great option for really drawing out your students’ EFL vocabulary knowledge is to use pictures from the Cambridge YLE Test practice test books. These have really rich, busy pictures with lots of level-appropriate vocabulary.
Extending Battle of the Scribes
This game works great as a way to test your students’ prior knowledge when starting a new topic or reviewing an old one.
Once you collect their papers you can scan it for common words and ones that only one or a few groups wrote down. You can zoom in on these with drawings, mime, or other methods to teach or check everyone’s understanding.
You can also later expand with some grammar, play Bingo, do a spelling dictation, or play Listen Quick. Thanks to this EFL vocab activity you’ll know which words were less widely known than others.
I’ve done many 70 minute lessons with 45 kids, 15 half sheets of paper, and lots of communicative activities with just 5 minutes notice to prep – all starting with Battle of the Scribes.
Final Tips
Finding the Winner: You can quickly check which team is the winner by telling everyone to stand up if their team has five or more words correct. Then tell them to stay standing if they have 7, 10, etc. or more correct until only one team is standing.
Ages: This game works great as a lead in for ages 8 and above.
What other EFL vocab activities do you like to use? Please like, share and comment below.
