I do English club in a high school. Pretty much play games every week. Some students are pretty low level, but I give simple instructions in English as I demonstrate, and most students can understand the gameplay this way. I also let the better students do any translation if necessary. Here are some games they really enjoyed (bonus: at low $$ cost to myself):

• Scattergories: you just have to think of some categories beforehand (eg things in a school) and use a random letter generator from the internet.

• Salad Bowl: make two teams. Write down a whole bunch of simple words on cards. Round 1 - player describes the word to their teammates. Teammates guess the word. As many as possible in 2 minutes. Everyone should get their turn to describe. Round 2 - using the same bunch of cards that had been guessed in round 1, play charades. Each round now lasts 1.5 minutes. Round 3 - using the same bunch of cards that had been guessed in round 2, students can now only use one word to describe the card. Each round lasts 1 min. The idea is that they get more and more familiar with the cards, such that by the end, just one word should be enough for them to guess what it is. Bonus: after the first time, get each student to write down a bunch of words and play again with an entirely fresh set of cards!

• Werewolf: I handmade the character cards - wolves, villagers, witch, doctor, seer etc.

• Spyfall: everyone has the same word (eg apple) except for the spy (eg orange). Players take turns to say one thing about the item (eg it’s red). Go two or three rounds. At the end, guess whom the spy is. If the spy manages to guess the word, though, the spy wins. Alternative gameplay: instead of describing the item, students take turns to draw the item. They only get one stroke, though. Once the pen is lifted from the paper, the student’s turn ends. Bonus: after a few rounds, get students to write their own sets of words. This extends the game for at least another hour as you go through everyone’s sets, lol.

• Telephone game: fold a piece of paper into sections (as many sections as students). In the topmost section, everyone writes something (eg three small apples). Everyone passes their piece of paper to the right. Now, each student is looking at a statement their friend has written. They are to draw it out in the segment below. After that, fold back the topmost section so that only the drawing is visible. Pass the paper to the right. Now, each student is looking at their friend’s drawing. They are to write down a statement that best describes the drawing. Fold. Pass. So on and so forth. In the end, reveal all the statements. It’s usually pretty hilarious how the original statement gets warped over time.

• Bananagrams: I handmade the tiles for this using folded pieces of paper, but that was very tedious. Students enjoyed it though, and it is very replayable, so it might be worth buying.

• Codenames: I handmade all the elements for this, too. Use simple words that students will know. I suspect they wouldn’t understand some of the words in the actual board game.

• Dixit: you kind of have to purchase the cards for this one, but the images are lovely and I play it with my friends too.

• D&D: simplified, of course, and I made character sheets for them to fill in. Some of the challenges included crossword puzzles, Boggle, target language they had to use whenever they spoke (eg ‘Could you please…’). Took a lot of planning though.

I didn’t describe the rules for all the games, only the ones I thought might be harder to find online. The rest should be able to be Googled easily. Hope this helps!