10 one-minute speaking activities in which students come to the front of the class (the time limit can be extended at your discretion).

 1. Find the question

You or a student gives a name, date, place or reason and the rest try to guess the question to which that is the answer. 

Examples: 

Answer: Michael Phelps.

Question: Who has won the most Olympic gold medals?

Answer: Because it is a national holiday.

Question: Why are schools closed on…? 

Points can be awarded for the correct question. The question must be the same as that thought of by the answer provider. 

2. How do you do that?

Students have a minute to explain how to do certain things – make an omelet, download music, play snakes and ladders etc. 

3. What’s my line?

Students imagine a job and describe a typical day in that job. After a minute the class guesses the job. The describer shouldn’t give the job title away by for example saying: "I fight fires” if they are describing a fire-fighter, but should say something more indirect: "Sometimes I get up very early and other days I don’t start work until the evening. Some days I get paid for just sitting around doing nothing, but I always have to be ready for anything. You never know when you might be called out…” 

4. Keep going

Students in groups of 3 or 4 come up to the front of the class and are given a topic to speak on – e.g. fruit / holidays / elephants / green. Use a stopwatch to time them and tell them they have exactly one minute to talk about the subject. Designate one student to begin and give them a ball / pen to hold. When or if that student runs out of things to say, they pass the ball / pen to the next member of their team, who continues the topic without repeating what the first student has said. 

5. Out of the box

Prepare a big box with lots of objects in it – the greater the variety of objects, the better. Invite a group of 4 or 5 students to the front. Give or get another student to give on object to each of the group. Tell them they have to make a story using the objects they are holding. Each student will speak for 20 seconds. Select one student (A) to start. After 20 seconds say "beep” as a signal for student B to take over telling the same story including their object in the storyline. Continue until the last student, who concludes the story. 

6. Tell me more

Select a student (A) to come to the front and tell an anecdote – something they did recently. Select 6 other students to form a team to sit facing student A as a team. Give each of the team members one of the question words who, what, when, where, why and how written on cards. When A begins the team’s job is for each of them to interrupt him/her once by saying "beep” and ask a relevant question beginning with the word on their card. A provides the extra information asked for. If the team manages to ask all six questions within a minute, they win. 

Example:

A: "Last night I went to the cinema…”

B: "Beep! Where was the cinema?”

A: "In Stadium Street. And I saw the film Slumdog Millionaire…”

C: "Who was the star of the film?” 

7. Excuse me

Have two students come to the front of the class and give them a situation and each one a role. E.g. You are in a restaurant. You (A) are a waiter. (B)You are a customer. The students have a minute to improvise a dialogue.

8. Detectives

Two students (the detectives) leave the classroom while you tell the rest of the class (the witnesses) to answer any questions with either "Yes” or "No”. A question ending in any of the letters A- M is to answered "Yes”; those ending in N – Z are answered "No”.

Call the two detectives in to stand or sit at the front of the class. Tell them something has happened and it is their job to find out what it was and who did it in as much detail as possible by asking yes / no questions to the class. 

Example:

Detective: "Was there a murder?”

Class: "No.”

Detective: "Did someone steal something?”

Class: "Yes.”

Detective: "Was it valuable?”

Class: "Yes.”

Detective: "Did someone in this class do it?”

Class: "No.”…. 

9. Word non-association

Have 4 students come to the front and divide them into teams of two. Team 1 begins by one student (A) saying a word. Their partner (B) then says a word which is completely unrelated. A continues by saying a word unrelated to what B has just said. It goes back and forth like this BUT if a member of team 2 can think of a connection between the words just said by team 1, they say "beep” and challenge, telling them the connection. If the challenge is accepted, team 2 takes over.

Example: Team 1 – student A: banana. Student B: car. Student A: horse. Team 2 – "beep – both can be forms of transport.” The challenge is accepted and team 2 continues. 

10. Hangman

A student comes up to the board, thinks of a word and writes a line of dashes corresponding to the number of letters in the word. The class is divided into two teams which take turns to suggest a letter, by raising their hands and being selected to nominate a letter by the student at the front. Students are not allowed to shout out letters or words. If the letter fits, the student at the front writes it in; if not, they write the letter on the board and add a component of the hangman. When the last letter and thus the word is found, a member of the winning team takes over at the front and begins with a new word. The words may be freely chosen, restricted to words from the last unit of the course book or limited to topic areas