Two-Minute Lists

Confession: this game is a fall-back filler game. However, students tend to LOVE it. It doesn't matter what level speaker, they seem to really like this one.

Basic idea: students have 2 minutes to make a list of as many items as they can.

This is how we do it: divide the students into groups. You can do this individually, too, but in our experience, students are far more comfortable when working in groups. They will need a pen and piece of paper for each group. They will have 2 minutes to list as many items as they can that pertain to the topic you give them. Here are some of the topics we have used:
1. family words
2. animals
3. American movies
4. countries
5. Jobs that begin with the letter 'd' (you'd be surprised at what we've had students come up with!)
6. Vocabulary review- they list as many vocabulary words that they can remember from your class

We often do several of these listing games in a row. If the class likes competition, after each two-minute segment, have each team read off all of their words. Count how many they got and keep score. This seems to be quite motivational. :)