Six Activities for Practicing Numbers
To celebrate World Maths Day, a reminder that English teachers also 'do' numbers
My first ‘topical’ post of the relaunched Six Things, this new list is for World Maths Day (March 26). Yes, yes we are all language teachers and not maths teachers, but even we need to teach students how to say numbers at one point or another. Here are six fun activities to practice just that.
1 One - Two - Three - One - Two
This is a super quick but such a fun activity. It’s a great pairwork warmer too. Put students into pairs, A and B. They need to do something very simple, just count to three together. Like this: A: One. B: Two. A: Three.
Once they’ve done it once tell them now they have to keep doing it over and over again (e.g. A: One. B: Two. A: Three. B: One. A: Two. B: Three. A: One etc) It’s harder than you think because you constantly have to be on your toes as your ‘number’ will keep changing. When they’ve done it for awhile, get them to switch. They now need to count down from 3 to 1. Like this: A: Three. B: Two. A: One. B: Three etc And keep going. This is even harder!
2 Slap the number
Ok so we all know one of the frequent problems students have with numbers is distinguishing between the numbers that sound similar (like 13 and 30, 14 and 40 and so on). Write the numbers 13-19 and 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 on different parts of the board. Get two students to come up to the board. Call out one of the numbers (e.g. 15). The student who ‘slaps’ (puts their hand on) the correct number on the board first wins. To make it even harder, you could include the number in a sentence that you call out (e.g. I read fifteen books this year).
3 Numbers in your life
A variation on the cloud (or star) speaking game, draw or display a series of five small clouds on the board each with different number that represents something important to you or connected to your life (e.g. the street number of the first house you lived in, your birthday, your favourite number). Students have to guess the correct questions to give those numbers as answers. When they have guessed all the questions, they then make a similar drawing themselves and test each other.
4 Numbers inventory
I discovered this in an activity book called Beginners by Peter Grundy (OUP 1994). For this activity, get students to write a series of sentences beginning with ‘I own…’ + a number + a possession. For example ‘I own one bicycle. I own fifteen t-shirts.’ They then read and compare their lists. To add a fun twist to this activity, get them to just write the first two bits of the sentence (I own + number …) and then the names of the objects all jumbled up next to the sentences. They read the first part of the sentence, and their partner has to guess which possession it refers to (e.g. I own 38… books? dusty CDs? plants?) .
You could add vague language to this activity (e.g. around fifteen, more or less a hundred, thirty-ish) for higher levels as it is probably hard to think of an exact number for certain things anyway!
5 Numbers dictation
Create a list of numbers for different categories (e.g. speed limits, distances, times, years, fractions, phone numbers). Make two or three numbers for each category. Dictate the numbers all jumbled up to the students. They write them down, then in pairs they try to decide which numbers go together and what the categories are. At the end, they need to add two numbers to each category.
6 Favourite number acrostic
Tell students to choose a favourite number between one and twenty. They should then write the number out in letters, with one letter for each line. The challenge now is to create a little acrostic poem using those letters. Here’s one for the number EIGHT.
Endless loops, a figure divine,
Infinity’s shape, a timeless sign.
Glowing with balance, strong and bright,
Holding the world in equal light.
Turning, twisting, fate’s own thread.
So, yeah lol there’s no way a student would make something quite like that (it was generated by an AI) but you get the idea. The poem doesn’t have to rhyme!