Soft Balls in the Classroom: Fun and Inspiration

I asked some teachers about using soft balls in the classroom, and nine out of ten suggested throwing them at students’ heads. While I can fully emphatise with the idea, I believe there’s more we can do with these colourful tools that are easy to find around the school and use in the class.

Today I want to share some ideas on simple, creative and fun activities that you can use soft balls for all ages and levels; just be careful with your adult students, especially at first, as they’ll probably be so overjoyed with the opportunity of playing a ball you’ll need to take extra time to let them calm down.

No, I’m not joking, I’m experienced.

Vocabulary revision

You need three soft balls in three different colours. Divide your class into three groups and give each group one ball (eg. blue, red and yellow). Place an empty box in front of yourself and explain that you will read various random words, and your students need to guess the category of the word symbolized by the colour.

For younger students I go for simple categories (blue – colours, red – body parts, yellow – actions), for older and more advances, I go for grammar (blue – nouns, red – verbs, yellow – adjectives). The point of the game is to react when they hear the word I say – if the word matches their category, the group needs to throw their ball into the box.

Of course things go tricky when one word matches more than one category – then it’s the group that reacted first that gets the point.

Look who’s talking!

It’s a funny activity for a more advanced group, as it’s simply improvised storytelling. Before you start the exercise, set the genre of the story (romance/fantasy/crime etc.), main protagonists… and take a soft ball.

Start the story with a short introduction, and then throw the ball to a random student who’s supposed to continue the story – and once they run out of idea (or after 45 seconds – I know some students can talk and talk, and talk…) they are supposed to throw the ball to another student who then continues the story before passing the ball to another person.

Option A: students who want to continue the story raise their hands, that’s how a storyteller knows who they can choose from, plus those who don’t feel comfortable with public storytelling won’t be stressed

Option B: if your students are familiar with the activity, divide them into two groups and introduce the new rule: once the person finished their part of the story, the ball must be passed to a person from another team. A team gets a point for everyone who is able to continue the story (and miss a point if they get stuck with the story).

Expect the unexpected

It’s the obvious use of the ball – and here you will need only one. Divide your students into two groups and tell them you are going to have a regular lesson, but once in a while you will ask a question and throw a ball to a random person. If they know the answer, the whole group scores a point and by the end of the lesson the winning group will get a prize (no homework, one task less at the next test etc.).

This activity works pretty well with teenagers and even prevents them from falling asleep, but you shouldn’t do it on every lesson as it requires your students to be really focused, and it’s surprisingly tiring!

It’s a bomb!

It’s a game similar to hot seats, only you don’t need music and chairs – in fact, the only thing you need is a soft ball and a timer. You come up with a category (e.g. nouns starting with a letter b), and your students, individually, come up with the answers (e.g. ball), passing the ball to someone else, not necessarily the person next to them (that’s why everyone has to pay attention!). Then the person who was given the ball gives their answer (e.g. belladonna) and throws the ball to the next person… and it takes as long as the timer starts to beep. Then the innocent soft ball turns into a bomb and the person holding it at that moment, loses the game, while the rest continues (you can change the category then).

It’s a funny game, short and dynamic, and works particularly well with adults!

As you can see, sometimes you just need a simple, colourful soft ball to start an interesting speaking activity in your classroom, revive your students a bit, and have some fun…

…without throwing them at your students’ heads!