Slap the board - A vocabulary revision activity
Psyche Kennett, Director of an English Language Teacher Training Programme in Vietnam.

Slap the board is an energetic vocabulary activity - it can be used for revision, presentation and testing - which involves students running to and hitting the board.

You put the vocabulary items on the board in any order - sort of jumbled and sometimes a little bit higher than the tallest kid can reach, so that they'll have to jump.

Form groups. Give a mother tongue translation for one of the words on the board. The students have got to recognise the word which translates to that word. They then run to the board and slap the correct word. The first person in each group to slap the right word gets a point.

Alternatively, you can form teams and one person from the team runs to the board, as a representative. The first team to hit the correct word gets the point. The representative changes, ready for the next word….. This is a little calmer than if everyone is running to the board.

You can reverse the translation, by putting the mother tongue on the board. And of course, you could use definitions or opposites if you want to avoid using the mother tongue.

You can do it with pictures so you put the pictures on the board and call out the English word and the kids slap the picture.

The teacher doesn't have to call out the English, you can get other kids to call out so they're getting practice speaking too.

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