The Book Next Door

New interactive games and activities for beginners

Now available: Starting Tabletop English and Tabletop English!

These are photocopiable interactive games and activities for group work, designed to promote learner independence, peer support – and fun! 

Tabletop English is for beginners (and more confident early beginners). Starting Tabletop English offers the same types of activities, but at an easier level (think Course in EAL from the EAL Framework, if you’re in Australia). 

Video overview of Tabletop resources

 Here’s a quick slideshow video overview of what the Tabletop resources look like! I’m planning some more YouTube videos to show the resources in more detail, so watch this space!

Where to find samples to try out with learners

Not sure what level will work for your learners? Tabletop resources are digital, available from The Book Next Door Payhip sales page.

You can download free sample tasks for Starting Tabletop English and Tabletop English and try them out with your learners!

Mapping Tabletop resources to EAL units

Are you wondering how this can work for your Australian Course in EAL or EAL 1 class? 

Here are some suggestions for mapping Tabletop activities to settlement topics and to the Course in EAL and EAL 1.

However, all the tasks are useful for developing learning skills and strategies and learner autonomy.

Tabletop Task Types

There are 10 tasks for all 12 activity sets, so that learners develop familiarity with a task type:

1. Cut up pictures and sentences, with the topic of ‘Where I live’ or ‘My dream home’
2. Cut up stories, narrated by a working mum and an at-home mum.
3. Complete 4 sentences and Write 4 sentences
4. Interactive board games (picture prompts)
5. Interactive board games (text prompts)
6. Match and spell and Spelling Boss (simple peer reading and dictation)
7. Find 5 differences and Find 7 differences in a simple familiar text type
8. Memory Match: Matching cut up activity to use as a memory game
9. Write and draw information gap activity
10. Simple ‘Ask everyone’ quizzes
11. No-clue crosswords (focus on word length and letters)
12. Cut up Conversations with Adam (young adult) and with Sam (worker and dad)

There are also 10 Giant tasks that can be pinned to the wall or whiteboard for whole class explanation, and Tabletop templates to make your own matching tasks.

If you’d like to find out more, I’ve posted about this on the blog.

The idea for the Tabletop resources came from Dorothea Milenti at North Metropolitan TAFE, so huge thanks to Dorothea and to all the teachers who trialled and offered feedback!