This is a great game to revise vocabulary and you can use it with any age group and any level by changing the category headings.

It really gets students focused and working on tasks as a team and can be a saviour to fill the last ten minutes of a class when you have run out of ideas!

Procedure

• Put the students into teams of three or four.

• Draw on the board a table like the ones below and get each team to copy it onto a piece of paper.

• Students simply have to think of one item to go in each category beginning with the set letter.

• Give an example line of answers for the first time you play with a new group. The first team to finish shouts “Stop the Bus!” .

• Check their answers and write them up on the board and if they are all okay that team wins a point. If there are any mistakes in their words, let the game continue for another few minutes.

• If it gets too difficult with certain letters (and you can’t think of one for each category) reduce the amount of words they have to get. You can say. “Ok. For this round you can Stop the Bus with 4 columns”.

Examples:

For higher levels change the category headings. For example:

Or, for even higher levels:

This activity first appeared in the Games section of the British Council Language Assistant website.

Jo Budden, British Council, Spain

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