I've been asked to teach a few classes this summer to some extremely low level students at my school, and the only stipulation is that I teach them through activities that involve movement, etc. I'm already planning on using the track outside the school for a "sentence relay" game where, instead of passing a baton to each other, the students are passing a sentence.

Does anyone have any other recommendations for active games like this? They don't necessarily have to be outside, but I just need to get the students moving. Some sort of song/dance would be okay, but their level is so low that it might be too difficult to learn a song.

Oh, and I'm going to teach them some basic survival phrases like "Where's the bathroom?" and "Can you help me? I'm lost," and maybe a few things for ordering in a restaurant.

Thanks a bunch!

One of my favorite games, kids always like it:

Have the kids move all of their desks out of the way and put their chairs in a big circle in the room. There should be the same number of chairs in the circle as there are students, no more.

Write on the board "If you _______, change chairs."

Give them a few examples. "If you wear glasses, change chairs." The kids with glasses have to get up and switch chairs with another kid who has glasses.

After a couple times when you've seen that they understand, do another but sit in one of the kids' chairs who had to change. There won't be a seat for someone at that point, so the person standing has to make a "If you _____, change chairs." sentence. Since you're sitting down, you have to play too. If you don't want to play, just remove a chair from the circle instead of sitting down. I find it's better if I play though, because it gives you an easy way to rescue a kid who isn't up to it or fix another problem like that.

A few notes:
-It's good to establish that there should be new sentences every time. A lot of kids will just say 'If you're human, change chairs." over and over because they like the chaos of everyone having to get up and move.
-Keep them calm. If you see kids start to run full speed to other chairs or they start grabbing each other to keep their friends from sitting down, calm them down and make a no running/no touching rule. There's a lot of movement in this game and you don't want anyone getting hurt.
-Depending on your group, it might be important to make a rule about not using anything about families for their "If..." sentences. I've played this game with a lot of groups and sooner or later there's always some jerk kid who says "If you don't have a father, change chairs." or something equally hideous. Try to keep them focused on clothing, hair length, smartphone brand, things like that.

What about a running dictation? But with really simple things like single words or even sections of the alphabet if they are extremely low level.

The way I play running dictation is I put the students into groups of 3 or 4. One student has a pencil and a paper (writer). The others are the readers. The readers"run" to reading stations around the classroom, and read a few words on the paper and run back to the student with the pencil and paper. They have to say what they read to the "writer", and he or she has to write it down.

The first team to get everything written down is the winner. I usually enforce a rule that it must be perfect spelling and punctuation. But I guess that depends on the level.

Also no shouting, if someone needs a word spelling out, the reader should go back, double check, and then run back again to the writer and spell it out. They must also try one time to say whole words. Sometimes low level students won't read the words at all, but simply spell out the whole sentence. If a lot of your students are doing this, then it's probably too hard for them.

It's sometimes useful to have an extra sentence or two hanging around in case you need a way to punish someone who is cheating. i.e. that team has to complete two more extra sentences.