ESL Activities
By James Murray
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About this ebook
If you`ve stepped foot in an ESL classroom, I bet you understand just how necessary it is to have fillers and other sort of engaging educational activities. Class material is as good as it gets but it should not lack a set of activities, to keep your students happy and active. Forget about trying to get an activity, a game for your next class. This book comes with 201 different well laid out activities, perfect for all ages. I've tried them myself with my younger and older students then compiled them all here.
The activities are laid out in a super simple structure, you just pull out the book, pick any page and bam! Just like that. You have shy students, active students the book and each activity takes care of all of that. Your class size doesn't matter, there are enough activities for the rest of your teaching years.
Jump right in and try it out, the students will definitely surprise you by how engaged they`ll be. Never get stuck in class without an activity, a fun engaging and educational game. With that said, hope this book comes in handy for not just ESL teachers but all around the world.
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ESL Activities - James Murray
2. I Whisper
In this game/ activity, the teacher writes down a word and shows it to one of the students. The student then proceeds to whisper the word to the next student all the way to the final student. The final student then tells the whole class what he heard. Basic rules include not repeating the word twice and therefore students have to pay attention and get it the first time. Sometimes, you can divide the class in two (or more groups) and have them do the same. This requires them to be ever more careful to whisper so low the other group doesn’t hear and at the same time loud enough for their own group mates to get it.
For students whose level allows it, you can try a sentence rather than a word. Much more fun and helps learn correct sentence structure, grammar and tenses.
3. Last Letter First
An all-time favorite, it`s good both for a whole class and for one group against another. Here, you write or let a student write any word could be cow or space or encyclopedia. The next step is the student has to write a word beginning with the last letter of the previous word. A good example is
Encyclopedia
Apple
Elephant
Trombone
First word encyclopedia ends with the letter a
. The next word apple ends with e
and therefore a student has to start the next word with e and in this case they chose elephant. The next student chooses to go with trombone which starts with T.
Hint
To make sure everybody takes part, have the activity on the white board and each group member gets their turn. To also have order, have only one student per group at a time standing at the whiteboard. If one of them is not sure, they can always pass it on to the next student in the group but they got to take the second.
4. Truths and Lies
This game requires students to act as individuals. Based on their writing speeds, you can have them write like three true things about themselves and two lies without indicating which ones are true and which ones are lies. They should also write down their name so you all know who it is. The next step is reading out the sentences and asking the rest of the class which ones they think are true and the ones they think are false. Later, let the student clarify and shed some light on what’s true and what’s not.
Example
Margaret
I like swimming and diving
I am a good cook
I`m not good at basketball
I’m the best at soccer
I am 12 years old.
At its best, students not only learn more about each other but get some grammar mistakes corrected and have a laugh about it.
5. I Know Who It Is
This game bears some similarity to truths and lies. A student describes one of the other students in very vague terms just to confuse everybody and make it a bit difficult to tell who they’re describing. Everybody else then tries to guess who it is.
Example
This person likes beef and chicken
They don’t like waking up early.
They can play basketball.
Try to avoid using he/she as it will make it that much easier for the students to narrow it down to a couple of people. It`s a good way for students to practice speaking out and everybody gets to try.
6. Describe Me
In this activity, ask all the students to write down what they think about one student in class. Everybody can write down a maximum of two things without writing their own name down. Collect all the papers and read them in front of the class for everybody. In some cases and to save on time, each student writes something about everybody on a piece of paper. It leads to a lot of laughter and everybody gets to be more relaxed.
7. Letters To Words
For this activity, the class can go forward one by one to the whiteboard or as group versus group. Choose any two letters like ae
and have students come up with different words that have these two letters in them. You’ll be surprised at how many they can come up with.
8. Yes/No Questions
One student sits in front of the class. The rest of the class asks him different questions to get him to answer No
. It’s a good way to practice language skills by asking questions like can you swim? Are you a better swimmer than your brother? Do you like History homework? If a student says No, it`s someone else’s turn to sit in front of the class and have the rest ask the questions.
9. Letters In Shapes
First things first. Draw any shape might be a circle or triangle. Get the students to say a number of letters they want to have in the shape while you write them in the shape. Make certain to not have all the 5 vowels as part and not all the 26 letters. A maximum of 15 is okay. Next, let students make a list of words from just those letters. Again, one after another on the whiteboard or group versus group.
10. Lists
In lists, choose alphabet letters like A and B. Students then write lists of say animals, types of food, fruits, and countries. What this means is you’ll have two animals, two types of foods, fruits and two countries and for each, one will begin with A and the other with B.
Example
You can always add more categories based on the number and level of students like having at least two for each category.
11. Odd One Out
Come up with a list of four words and have students give reasons which word they think is different and exactly why they think so.
A good example is monkey, parrot, ostrich, and leopards. In this case most will go with ostrich as it obviously has no way of going up a tree. However be ready for different and mind blowing reasons from students.