Sports Mixer is an online game for young learners on the British Council's site for young learners, LearnEnglish Kids. In the game children will practise vocabulary related to sports clothes and equipment.

You can find the game here:- http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-games-sportsmixer.htm

In the game learners see a picture of a girl who loves sports and a description of what she needs to do a
particular sport, for example ‘I want to play football. I need a football strip, a football, and some football boots.'
This game is suitable for primary learners and learners of a low level. It is very motivating for both boys and girls. On this page you will find tips for using and extending the game in the classroom.

Stage 1: Introduction to sports vocabulary
Warm-up in the classroom by asking your students to list as many sports as they can. This could be an open class activity or learners could work in pairs or teams. You could encourage a competitive element by awarding points for the pair or team that produces the longest list. Try to make sure that learners include the following
sports in their lists: Football, skiing, tennis, swimming, ice hockey, surfing, running, skateboarding. These are the vocabulary items necessary to play the sports mixer game. Give your students clues to guess any remaining items.

Now ask your students to choose some sports and write the equipment and clothes necessary to do the sport. You can do an example on the board to begin with e.g. football - ball, football boots, football shirts, strip etc. Learners can do this as pairs or teams using a bilingual dictionary to look up words. If you wish learners could write the sports and words as posters to stick up on the wall or board so that the other students can access the vocabulary.

Stage 2: Playing the game
Now play the sports mixer game with your learners. Depending on the equipment available students can play the game themselves or you could use a data-projector and stand-alone computer or lap-top and ask students to take turns to come and match the items of clothes and equipment.

Stage 3: Reading and writing consolidation
After playing the game your students can complete the activities on the Sports Mixer game worksheet available at britishcouncil.org/kids-games-sportsmixer-activity.pdf

This involves a very simple vocabulary/spelling activity to practise sports equipment, followed by a guessing game where students read and work out the sport and finally a wordsearch. Fast finishers could write other clues for Ex B and ask the class to guess the sport. You can find a key for the worksheet here:
britishcouncil.org/kids-games-sportsmixer-activity-key.pdf

Extension tasks
For oral fluency/vocabulary practice and fun play ‘guess the sport'. Teams read out the clothes and equipment needed for a sport. The first team to guess the sports wins a point.

Learners could make a poster about their favourite sport. They can write about the clothes and equipment needed, where it is played, famous players of the sport (with photos/pictures), the rules of the game and any other ideas suggested by your students. This would make an ideal follow-up differentiated homework task which would motivate learners of all abilities.

Sue Clarke

When you have used some of these ideas, why not come back to this page and leave a comment below to tell us how your class went. Let us know too if you have any additional ideas!