Introduction

This drama game can be used to practice vocabulary such as activities and sports or verbs of movement as well as the present continuous. The students move around freely in the room and contort their bodies in whatever way they like. Once the freeze signal is heard they stop moving immediately. Then the teacher asks a few of them to “justify“ the pose they are in. Here they should think of a situation or place their pose would fit in. Examples given beforehand could relate to the word fields of sports, hobbies, activities, every day life etc.

Target group and Time

"Freeze and justify“ probably works best with learners of 5th grade onwards as it requires quite a bit of association and thus improvisation. Depending on the students’ age and level of English the running time varies between 5 and 10 minutes.

Learning objectives

First and foremost FUN! Besides revising vocabulary and different word fields the game also comes in handy when introducing the present continuous. The grammatical structure of “I’m verb+ing“ can be practiced.

Instructions to set up the activity

First introduce the rules of the game by explaining the “freeze“ part. Young students will easily pick up on this bit especially if you strike a pose once the freeze signal is heard. Practice a few rounds of freezing and unfreezing. At this stage you may even ask some of the students to take on the role as game manager so that they can give the freeze signal themselves.
Then continue to explain the “justify“ part of the game which – admittedly – may be considered the trickiest part of the game (especially with younger students). Here it may be helpful to brainstorm a few hobbies, sports or activities together and thus justify each others’ poses before everyone thinks of their own “justifications“.
This could even be done as a warm up activity.

Letting it run

In case someone is stuck or students tend to be shy it may be helpful to play a few rounds together and collect freely a couple of associations that could fit each others’ poses.

Sources

Game idea based on the "Freeze and justify" game from Playing CLIL (http://www.playingclil.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/eBook_AF_17-12-web.pdf).