Listening Activities 1) Dual dictation Ask students to get into pairs to write a dialogue. When student A is speaking, student B should write down what they are saying and vice versa. When they have finished the conversation, they should check what each other has written and put the two sides of the conversation together. You could then ask students to perform their dialogues again to the rest of the class, or to swap with other pairs. This activity works best if you give students a theme or role-play, e.g.
A conversation between friends about holidays
An argument between siblings
An interview with a famous person
A scene from a film
2) Class memory quiz Ask one student at a time to go to the front of the class. Ask the rest of the class to ask them any questions they like (as long as they are not too personal!),e.g.
What is your favourite colour/food/band?
What did you have for lunch?
Which country would you most like to visit?
Try to make a note of some of the answers. When all of the students (or half of the students, if you have a large group) have been interviewed, explain that you are going to hold a quiz about the class. Get the students into small teams and ask them to put their hand up if they know the answer to a question, e.g.
Which student likes Oasis?
What is Marie's favourite food?
Which two students would like to be famous actors?
Award a point to the first team to answer correctly. This game can be a lot of fun, and encourages students to listen to each other.
3) Listen for lies Divide the class into two teams A and B. Ask one student at a time to come to the front of the class and read aloud a passage which you have chosen, e.g. a story or newspaper article. Then ask them to read it aloud again, but to make some changes. Each time a lie (or change) is read out, the students must stand up. The first team to stand up gets a point. This game requires students to listen carefully and encourages them to remember important information and details. 4) Listen and draw a story The teacher reads or makes up a story and as the students listen they draw the different scenes. You can help them by explaining which scene to draw. This can be done individually or in small groups on larger paper. This really helps you to see if the students are understanding and they will often ask questions if they don’t understand (because they’ll be so keen to draw the picture!) 5) Adjectives draw After teaching various adjectives (big, small, long, short, tall, high, low, etc.) give each S a piece of paper. The teacher says an adjective / noun combination and the students have to draw it (e.g draw a long snake, draw a big house, etc.). It is fun to make silly words (draw a small elephant). The teacher should also draw so he/she can compare with the students’ pictures at the end. 6) Blindfold walk This is really fun. Teach: go forward, go backwards, (3) steps, turn right / left. Then place a blindfold on a student and direct him/her around the room to eventually pick up a flashcard or object (e.g. “Go forward 3 steps, turn right, go forward 5 steps, now go backwards 2 steps, turn left, etc.). Finally, have students work in pairs – one blindfolded and one giving directions. 7) Listening with flashcards Scatter a lot of flashcards that students have already leaned around the room and have the students sit on floor. Make up a story and incorporate all of the flashcard pictures … as you say the flashcard word the student nearest that card must touch it. For example, if students have learned lots of animal vocab the story could start “Once upon a time there was a farmer who had some cows (touch), sheep (touch) and pigs (touch). One day he was surprised to see lots of new animals on his farm. Next to the gate was a zebra (touch) and in the pond was a hippo (touch …), etc.
8) Secret Message Make two teams and have each stand in a line (parallel with each other). Take two students from the front of each line outside the classroom and whisper a sentence to them (e.g. “Tonight it is going to rain and tomorrow it is going to be sunny”). Then the students come back and whisper the sentence to the next S, who in turn whispers it to the next, and so on down the line. The student at the end either writes the correct sentence on the board or says the sentence to the teacher (depending on the level of the class). Points are awarded: 2 points for a perfect sentence, 1 point for nearly perfect and a bonus point if the team finished first and got the sentence right. Then do it again with two new students.
9) Guess what it is Put students into teams of 3 or 4. Then everyone sits and listens carefully to the teacher for a description of something or someone (e.g. “This is an animal which lives in Africa and Asia loves taking baths. It flaps its ears to keep cool. It has a really long nose” – answer: elephant). Then each team discusses what they think it is before giving an answer. You can give the description sentence by sentence, encouraging the students to guess each time, until one group wins. You can start off with easy clues and slow speech but then progressively choose more difficult words and speak more quickly so the students really have to concentrate.
10) Put in order Put your students in teams and have them sit together. Give each group around 10 objects or picture flashcards – each team must have the same things. The T now says all the words for items in front of the students … the students listen but mustn’t touch the objects. Finally, the teacher says “Put the objects in the correct order” and the teams have to put in order the objects in the order that the teacher said them. Make sure you write down the order as you say it or else you’ll forget! 11) Listening dialogues Before class, prepare some dialogues based on the lesson theme. Also, prepare some comprehension questions based on the dialogs. In class, have two students read the dialog and the other students have to listen and then answer the questions. In higher level classes, make groups and give each group 15-20 minutes to write a dialog and questions (questions
on a large sheet of paper). Then each team reads their dialogs while the rest of the class answers the questions which have been taped to the blackboard. 12) Number / Word bingo Playing bingo requires students to listen carefully. You can use either numbers or words that they have been learning. Creating the bingo sheets and words takes a bit of time but once done can be used with other classes, time and time again. 13) Spelling Messenger Put students in teams of three. S1 is given a word on a piece of paper and mustn’t show it to his/her team mates. He/She stands at the end of the room furthest from the board facing the wall. S3 is at the board facing the board. S2 acts as the messenger. S1 whispers the first letter to S2 who then runs and whispers it to S3, who in turn writes it on the board. S2 goes back and forth until the word is written on the board. All the teams compete – they have different words but all with the same number of letters. The first team to complete the word correct wins a point. - See more at: http://www.eslkidstuff.com/blog/top-10-lists/top-10-listening-activitieswithout-a-cd#sthash.gPwLoD7O.dpuf
Reading activities 1) Sequence: Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Use pictures to retell the story and help your students to remember main plot points, characters and events of the text. Here’s how: To prepare, you’ll need to make a worksheet of a bunch of pictures that are labeled with either numbers or letters. Make sure that there are spaces or lines immediately below the pictures so your students can label the pictures based on what they see. Depending on the level of your students, you can turn the labeling exercise into the perfect drill for practicing spelling and sentence construction. You’ll also need copies of two stories. Make sure each is single spaced, and printed on a separate piece of paper. Label each story “Story 1” and “Story 2.” Give your students the picture worksheet and talk about what’s happening in each picture. Ask your students to turn over the picture worksheet, and hand out the two stories to read. After students finished reading, have them turn to the back side of the story papers. Without looking at the story, students should cut out the pictures and glue them to the back of the right story in chronological order.
If you need some inspiration on how to create a great picture reading comprehension worksheet, try ESlFlow.com. There are also some interesting picture worksheets on Cal.org that focus specifically on health literacy for ESL adults. In the end, you’ll probably find (like me) that it’s more fun to find a story online and download images from Google to make your own picture stories.
2) Story Re-creation: It’s Alive! This is a great activity, especially for your drama lovers. Story re-creation is about reading a text or story and acting it out to other students. Depending on the level of your students, you can read the story together in class before dividing them into groups for further discussions. If you want to have students figure out the plot on their own, make sure the group you create has members with different English skill sets. In other words, you don’t want to put all the strong readers in one single group. Spread them out so they can help others to succeed. Then: Go to ESLfast.com or any place to find short stories. Print them out and make copies. Divide students in small groups, and give each group a different story that they’ll need to act out in front of the class. Prepare or have your students prepare a list of short answers/multiple choices/true or false reading comprehension questions to not only engage the audience, but also to evaluate how well the actors capture the events of the story. Then, once students have had enough time to prepare, it’s showtime!
3) Cause and Effect: Who Solves the Mystery? Cause and effect questions help students to think outside the box and better understand the ripple effect of events. Text materials that have a mysterious plot or a historical background are excellent choices because they require students to understand the context of the mystery, the clues and the characters to fully appreciate the thrills of crime solving. Give this interesting crime scene a try by reading it together with your students in class. The story also ends with the question: Why isn’t Inspector Coderre satisfied with Ms. Webb’s version of the event? Divide students in groups and answer this question together: Create a cause and effect map to capture the first part of Ms. Webb’s testimony, which ends right before the sentence, “The inspector was very sympathetic and told her that it was very natural to not want to damage somebody’s property.” Here is an example of the map based on what we read:
(effect) Ms. Webb could see the study room → it was well-lit (cause).
(cause) Ms. Webb broke a small window → to get into the house. (effect)
It doesn’t matter how we order the cause and effect. The point is to help students notice details in the story and make an effective analysis. Ask the students to identify the part of testimony that made the detective lose his sympathy. Analyze that testimonial section with another cause and effect chart. Do they notice any inconsistency? Discuss student findings as a whole class or in small groups.
4) Following Directions: It’s a Treasure Hunt! When we think about reading comprehension materials, stories and short stories are usually the top resources that come to our minds. However, ESL teachers can do some hands-on activities to encourage students to read and thrive in a fun environment. The treasure hunt reading comprehension game does just the trick. To play:
Hide different treasures (cards, small balls and beanies) in the classroom or schoolyard. Write a short story and clues that tell where to find each treasure. Divide students in groups and give them a map and a clue sheet to locate the treasure. The map can be hand drawn or printed. Give unique names to the basic geographic features of the classroom/schoolyard so students can navigate the rain forest or dark caves without getting lost! The clue sheet should begin with a short text that describes an actual or fictional event in the past. The story should include the name of the characters and vague descriptions of the treasures involved. The rest of the clue sheet should be filled with hints, codes and even secret messages for students to decode. For example, if you hid a diamond playing card on the third shelf of a bookcase in the corner, you can give the following clue: It stands in a corner with lots of pages for you to read. The diamond is on the third floor and right under a fairy tale. The first group that finds their treasure wins the game. But they are always welcome to join other teams to help them find their treasures too! 5) Label It. This works well with newcomers of all ages who need an introduction to basic vocabulary. As long as the learners are able to identify beginning letter sounds, they should be able to do this activity. To familiarize my students with names of objects found in the classroom, I label everything with an index card that has the item's name on it. Then I have them repeat what I read as they point to the item. The next day, I remove the cards and go through them one at a time and we place them on the correct item together. The third day, I let them label whatever they can on their own. I continue this for a few days. When they are able to independently label most of the items, I surprise them by having them labeled incorrectly. Then they have to straighten out the mess. You can adapt this to any noun-based vocabulary list (e.g. types of foods, body parts, parts of a room in a house, animals, etc.). (submitted by KMMP). 6) Reading Board Scramble. This activity encourages students to read words or short phrases quickly. T writes words or phrases on the blackboard in a scramble here and there, but low enough that the Ss can reach. Examples include "elephant", "I love chocolate", "My sister's name is Mary", etc. Have two teams and call out a word / phrase. The person that is able to find and circle it first wins a point for their
team. Even more challenging- have four teams all looking for the same word. The kids just love it. (Submitted by Susie). 7) Rhythmic Reading. This activity is fast-paced and lively, and improves Ss' word recognition, speed, and confidence in reading. Choose a reading passage (one page if using a basic text, maybe one paragraph if using a more advanced one). Start a rhythm (clapping or tapping on your desk). Choose one student to start. Each student must read one sentence (or word, if you want), exactly on the beat and pronounced correctly. Immediately after the first student finishes, the next one starts with the next sentence, and so on. If someone misses a beat or stumbles over words, they lose a 'life' or they are 'out'. If you use the 'out' method, it isn't so bad, because the 'out' students help to keep the beat and follow along. In my experience, all students, whether 'out' or not, have focused intently on the reading - waiting like hawks to hear someone's mistake. Of course you can vary the tempo, making it much easier or much harder. This can also be played as a team game (which team can make it to the end of the passage, on beat, with no stumbles or mispronunciations?). Good luck! (Submitted by Melanie Mitchell). 8) Tic Tac Toe Read. Draw a basic tic tac toe grid on the board with new vocabulary words written in each block. One student from each team is called up and must draw the picture of a word underneath. If the drawing is correct they can put a cross or circle in the block. If the drawing is wrong, the drawing is erased and the block remains open for another go. The team with three correct drawings in a row wins. (submitted by Shawn). 9) Word Recognition Game. Write some words the Ss have learned in previous lessons on some cards (postcards are ideal). Have all the Ss stand at one end of the room and the T in the middle. Hold up one card and Ss come forward and whisper the word in the T's ear. If correct they can go over to the other side of the room. Ss can have as many guesses as possible. 10) SUMMARIZE This method incorporates many skills: reading, listening, speaking, vocabulary, and writing. Students must thoroughly analyze and understand a section of the reading, and only by working together can they understand the entire reading. Instructions: First, assign a paragraph of the reading to each student. If you have a lot of students, assign the paragraph to a pair of students instead. Explain that each student (or pair) will be responsible for relating the information from their paragraph in their own words. Have students silently read through their paragraphs. If you want, get them to write out their summaries, but I usually prefer to have them give an oral, and more natural, summary.
To help them and their classmates understand the reading well, have each student (or pair) choose 3-5 vocabulary words that they are unfamiliar with. Have each student (or pair) define their vocabulary words (via a dictionary: English-toEnglish is best) and write out each definition in their own words. Get each student to write down an example sentence for each word; this will ensure that they’ve truly understood the word. Once all the students are finished their reading and vocabulary, have each student (or pair) present their vocabulary and their summaries (in the order of the original reading). Then, in pairs or as a class, answer the comprehension questions and correct them before you let the students see the entire reading.
S PEAKING 1. T HE MAGIC PEN This activity involves the whole class creating a story together. The story is not written down, and is made up spontaneously by individuals in the class. 1) Find a suitable pen (or other object) which can be passed around the classroom easily. 2) Tell the children that the pen / object which you are holding up is M A G I C because people who hold it can tell wonderful stories. 3) Explain that no-one is allowed to talk unless they are holding the pen (that includes the teacher!). 4) Start off a story. There are a number of story starter resources available to download across our site. 5) When you have finished the introduction, give the pen to another child (preferably a more confident one if this is the first time you have tried this activity with the class) and ask them to continue the story for a few sentences. 6) When they have finished their part of the story, ask them to pass the pen on to someone else who will continue. 7) Carry on passing the pen around until someone decides to finish the story (or if you are in a hurry to finish, indicate that you want them to finish off the story in some way - discuss such signals with the class before you begin).
2. Show and Tell Students can be asked to bring to school an object to show and tell about. This is lots of fun because students will often bring in something that’s meaningful to them or which gives them pride. That means they’ll have plenty to talk about! Encourage students to ask questions about each other’s objects. Instead of having students bring their own objects, you could provide an object of your own and ask them to try to explain what they think it is and what its purpose is. Another option is to bring in pictures for them to talk about. This could be discussed with a partner or in a group, before presenting ideas in front of the whole class. Generate a stronger discussion and keep things flowing by asking students open-ended questions.
3. Surveys and Interviews Becoming competent at asking and answering questions is invaluable in language learning. In the simplest form of classroom survey practice the teacher hands out ready-made questions— maybe 3 for each student—around a topic that is being studied. For example, let’s say the topic is food. Each student could be given the same questions, or there could be several different sets of questions such as questions about favorite foods, fast foods, breakfasts, restaurants, ethnic foods, home-style cooking, etc. Then each student partners with several others (however many the teacher requires), one-by-one and asks them the questions on the paper. In each interaction, the student asking the questions will note down the responses from their peers. At the end of the session students may be asked to stand up and summarize what they found out from their survey.
4. Discuss and Debate More mature students can discuss and debate issues with a partner. They can even be told which side of the argument they should each try to promote. This could be a precursor to a full-blown classroom debate. Working with a partner or small group first gives them an opportunity to develop and practice the necessary vocabulary to speak confidently in a larger forum. 5. Taboo
In this game, one player has a card listing four words: The first word is the secret word. The aim of the game is to get another player to say this word. The student with the card will need to describe this word until another student figures out what the secret word is. The other three words are the most obvious words that you might use to explain the secret word. They are all “taboo” and cannot be used in the student’s description of the secret word. This game can be played between two teams. It can also be played between partners. You can create your own sets of words based on what you’ve been studying, or you can find sets in your textbook and on the Internet. 6. Power Point presentations
Students can have a lot of fun speaking while giving a presentation to the class. Using projected images helps to distract some attention away from the speaker and can be helpful for shy students. You could also add rules such as “no more than 3 words on each slide” (or “no words”) so that students must really talk and not just read the slides. They need to be given a good amount of time, either at home or in class, to prepare themselves and practice their timing. It can also be prepared and presented in pairs, with each partner speaking for half of the slides.
Role- Play Be part of a group presenting a drama or role-play in front of the class.
What’s Your Secret? What’s your secret? is a pair work activity that truly involves the whole class. In this game, which is a play on investigative journalist, each student writes a secret down on a piece of paper, things like: “I play the clarinet.” or “I have a twin.” The papers are placed in a hat and each student draws one: that’s where the game begins. What’s your secret? Can either be played by allowing students to mill about the classroom freely or by setting up a speed dating scenario, where each pair has 1 minute to speak before rotating. Students may ask one another yes/no questions—they may not ask directly if what’s on the piece of paper is true about them or not. Students then must guess to whom the secret they drew belongs.
Games! Guess Who Guess who is a version of 20 questions that focuses entirely on people. Students draw the name of a famous person out of a hat (you’ll need to prepare these slips in advance!) and their partner tries to guess who’s on the paper by asking a series of yes/no questions. Like yes, no, guess who can be turned into a tournament-style game.
It’s Your Turn: Teach a Class! Teach a class! is a fun activity for advanced ESL students. In this activity, you assign each pair a grammar, vocab or culture point that they’ll have to teach to the class. The pair works together to prepare activities and lesson plans and teaches the point to the class. Unlike many of these other activities, the conclusion portion of this activity is built right in: when the pair teaches the class, the teacher should play the role of the student, but you may evaluate the lesson at the end and feel free to correct any mistakes the “teachers” make!
WRITING
1. Write Informative, Useful Emails Emails have become the backbone of our world. They’re essential in both our personal and professional lives. Not many people today send real letters, written or otherwise. Emails are the main source of communication between people around the world. That’s why email writing is a key ingredient to effective communication. This ESL writing activity is more for young adults and adult learners, since children aren’t sending too many emails, in theory.
2. Create Creative Advertisements Advertisements surround us on a daily basis and you can probably bet that your students will have a few favorite ads of their own. This activity can be for all ages and can be adapted to most students and their needs. Advertisements are a great way to show your students how to write with flare.
3. Craft a Class Newsletter/Newspaper
This ESL writing activity is a bit more intensive and will allow your students to employ many different aspects of their ESL knowledge. Crafting a class newsletter will build collaboration, communication, listening, speaking and, of course, writing skills. This project could be a lengthy, ever-changing ESL writing activity that’s fun and exciting for your students. Sharing their class information with the world will keep them excited for the next writing lesson.
4. Story Rewriting The teacher reads a story or the class listens to an audio story. After, students make a story board (just fold a blank page so you have 8 squares) and draw pictures. Then, they write the story based on those pictures. Very simple and powerful!
5. Pop Song Rewrite Play a familiar pop song. One with a “catchy” chorus. Afterwards, write out the chorus on the board with some of the words missing. Students can then rewrite the chorus and sing their own version. Higher level students can simply write their own version without help. Here’s a very simple example – He’s got the whole world in his hands He’s got ___________ In his hands. (3x)
and
He’s got the whole world in his hands
6. Journals / Reflection / Diaries
___________
This type of free writing activity should be done on a regular basis if used in class. Use a timer and for X minutes, students can write upon a topic that is important to them, that day. Alternatively, students can write at the end of the day and record their thoughts about the lesson or their own learning. These are all excellent ways for the teacher to get to know their students. One caution – don’t correct student writing here! Comment positively on the student’s writing – the goal is to get them feeling good about writing and “into” it.
7. Timelines Use a time line to describe any event. Brainstorm as a class. Then students use the key words written on the board, to write out the time line as a narrative. Really effective and you can teach history like this too! Biographies of individuals or even the students themselves are a powerful writing activity and timelines are a great way to get them started.
9. Notes Students are given notes (the classic example is a shopping list but it might be a list of zoo animals / household items etc…) and then asked to write something using all the noted words. This usually focuses on sequence (transitions) or location (prepositions).
10. Grammar Poems
Grammar poems are short poems about a topic that students complete using various grammar prompts. This form of guided writing is very effective and helps students notice various syntactical elements of the language. Put the grammar poem on the board with blanks. Here are some examples but it could be on any topic (country, famous person, my home, this school, etc..). Fill out as a class with one student filling it in. Then, students copy the poem and complete with their own ideas. Change as needed to stress different grammatical elements. And of course, afterwards SHARE. Present some to the class and display on a bulletin board. Your students will be proud of them!