Fruit Salad

 Fruit Salad

The teacher writes the words fruit salad on the board (and possibly explains what a fruit salad is). The teacher then elicits three fruit (i.e., asks students to name some fruit) and writes them underneath.

Whiteboard

Fruit Salad

Apple

Orange

Banana

The teacher then goes round the classroom pointing to each student and telling them that they are an apple, an orange or a banana. This is usually done in clockwise order as shown in the diagram below.

WHITEBOARD

Team A                                          Team B

#1s apple                  banana #1s

#2s orange                  orange #2s

#3s banana                  apple #3s

#4s apple                  banana #4s

#5s orange                  orange #5s

#6s banana                  apple #6s

After checking that everyone knows what they are (“Hands up apples, hands up bananas, hands up oranges, hands up fruit salad!”) the teacher then explains that when they say, “Apple,” the apples must get up out of their seats and sit in one of the other apples’ seats. This is demonstrated. Another demonstration follows when the teacher shouts, “Banana!” and the bananas swap around to sit in different seats. Finally the teacher shouts, “Fruit salad!” and all the students are up out of their chairs running to find somewhere new to sit. At this point the teacher sits down in one of the students’ seats (or alternatively takes one of the chairs away) so that one student is left standing with nowhere to sit down. This student is now the ‘teacher’ and must say, apple, banana, orange, or fruit salad to get the students moving around again, and thus making a chair available for them to quickly sit down on. Following this fresh scramble to find a new chair to sit on, a different student will once again be left in the middle: and this student will now have to say, apple, banana, orange, or fruit salad to get the students moving around again.

Once you have played this game a few times you can start to use it for other vocabulary.

For example:

Colours	Animals	Jobs	Everything
red	fox	engineer	glue
green	rabbit	architect	scissors
pink	yak	secretary	string

In fact by renaming the game “Everything”, you can use it for any three flashcards or items of vocabulary.

This is fun game that involves the whole class. It serves well as an end of lesson reward or as a mid-lesson change of pace. It is also good for drilling home a word that most of the students can say but that one or two of them are struggling with.

Note: this game can also be used to review clothes vocabulary; “Change chairs if you are wearing socks,” etc.