8 Fun and Digital Speaking Activities for Students Using Random Emoji Wheels

Looking for exciting ways to make speaking practice more engaging for your students? Emoji wheels are the perfect tool to spark creativity, encourage communication, and build essential language skills. These fun speaking activities challenge students to think on their feet as they spin emoji-filled wheels featuring characters, actions, emotions, and places. The result? Unique stories, debates, travel plans, and even spontaneous songs that turn language lessons into memorable experiences!

In this post, you’ll find 8 interactive speaking activities using emoji wheels that are perfect for in-person or virtual classrooms. Whether you’re teaching English, foreign languages, or communication skills, these activities will help boost student confidence and participation while keeping them entertained.

How Can You Use These Ready-Made Speaking Lesson Plans?

All the classroom speaking activities in this blog post are free to use. You can make a copy of the lessons below to your BookWidgets account, or you can navigate to this BookWidgets group, where you can find them all together. This allows you to duplicate the activities, make changes (language, instructions, settings) when needed, and share it with your students. This way, you will also receive the results and be able to provide written and audio feedback to students.

The speaking lesson plans are created with 2 BookWidgets widget types:

• The Randomness Widget: to create the emoji wheels. You can choose to add text and/or images to the wheels. You can also choose how many wheels you want your assignment to have. Check out this blog post with more on the randomness widget and lots of inspiration.
• The Split Worksheet Widget: this widget allows you to embed links (and rich text) on one side and ask questions (over 35 question types!) on the other side.

How Emoji Wheel Speaking Assignments Work

Emoji wheel speaking assignments are an innovative and engaging way to boost communication skills in the classroom. These activities combine creativity, language development, and fun by using emoji prompts to spark student storytelling, debates, or role-playing scenarios. The setup and process are simple yet versatile enough to fit various lesson goals.

Here’s how they work:

• Spin the Wheels: Students use digital wheels (made with the BookWidgets Randomness Widget) featuring emojis related to specific themes such as occupations, places, emotions, or actions. Each spin generates a unique set of emoji prompts that serve as the foundation for the speaking task.
• Follow the Instructions: On the assignment side of the BookWidgets Split Worksheet Widget, students receive detailed instructions on how to structure their responses using the emoji prompts. Activities may include crafting imaginative stories, describing travel experiences, or predicting future scenarios.
• Recording and Presentation: Students record or present their speaking activity individually or with a partner, depending on the task. They practice skills such as vocabulary usage, storytelling, grammar, and expression.
• Feedback and Self-Assessment: Students assess their performance using a structured rubric provided in the assignment. The rubric focuses on creativity, the use of emoji prompts, language accuracy, storytelling flow, and delivery.

These emoji wheel assignments are adaptable for various classroom setups—whether in-person or online—and can be tailored to different language levels or learning objectives.

Let’s check it out!

8 Digital lesson ideas for practising speaking skills

1. Random Emoji Song Lyrics

Boost creativity with this fun writing and speaking activity! Students spin emoji wheels to get a random occupation, theme, and place, then craft unique song lyrics based on their prompts. This activity is a perfect blend of language learning and artistic expression!

2. Tell a Winter Adventure Story with Random Emojis

Take your class on a frosty storytelling journey as your students spin emoji wheels to create a winter adventure filled with unexpected events, weather twists, and imaginative characters. Perfect for sparking creativity during the colder months.

3. Animal Story speaking lesson plan

This engaging speaking activity encourages storytelling and the building of animal vocabulary. Students spin wheels filled with animal emojis to invent tales featuring wild adventures and lovable creatures.

4. Random Emoji Fortune Teller

In this creative speaking activity, students predict the future using emoji prompts for emotions, objects, and places. This imaginative speaking activity helps them practice future tense while building storytelling skills and vocabulary.

5. Groceries Speaking Activity

Turn shopping into a speaking adventure! Students spin emoji wheels to select items, then role-play as customers or shopkeepers in a fun, interactive grocery store scenario. This is the perfect setting for a speaking assignment to learn new vocabulary about foods like vegetables, fruit, and snacks.

6. Character Building with random emojis

Let your students develop characters and life stories using emoji prompts for jobs, hobbies, and food. Students spin the wheels and get creative crafting biographies for unique, emoji-inspired personas. Students learn to use new vocabulary - like occupations, food, and hobbies - in a creative speaking exercise.

7. Travel Agent Speaking assignment

Are you teaching your students about traveling in a particular language? Let your students become travel agents as they spin wheels for transportation, landmarks, and weather emojis. They craft dream vacation itineraries, practicing descriptive language and speaking skills.

8. Christmas Story Speaking Activity With Random Emojis

Even though Christmas has just passed, you can use this speaking activity for other holidays or themes. Just switch up the emojis and instructions for this task. In this particular activity, you celebrate the holiday season with storytelling magic! Students spin emoji wheels to create festive tales with Christmas cheer, imaginative adventures, and holiday surprises.

That’s it!

Wrap up

By combining random emojis with dynamic widgets like the Randomness and Split Worksheet activity from BookWidgets, teachers can transform speaking lessons into immersive, interactive experiences that are never the same. These digital lessons enhance speaking skills and empower students to connect with newly learned vocabulary through storytelling.

Please let us know how you plan to use these digital speaking learning materials. You can also share your creative lesson ideas. We’d love to hear from you through our social media channels.

Remember, All the featured speaking lesson plans are designed with BookWidgets. You can duplicate the lesson plans from this group, adapt them, and share them with your students. You can also create digital lessons like these from scratch. Want to learn more about creating engaging lesson activities with BookWidgets?

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