Everyone has their favorite activities in the ESL classroom (hangman, a game, perhaps a toy doll), but we have found that we reach for one toy over and over for many different ages and purposes: the ABC foam blocks. These are the kind that we use:
Chenille Kraft WonderFoam Learning Blocks, available on Amazon.com
These blocks can be used from ages 1-10 (and probably older!). Here are a few ways to incorporate these activities into your lesson:
Very Young Learners:
Name the colors
Count the blocks
Build a tower (4 blocks per student) and then make them count to 5 before knocking it down
Do different actions with your blocks: put them on your shoulder, on your hand, on your foot, on your leg, on your tummy, on your head. Count to three and then tip your head so that the block falls on the floor (a big hit!).
Read the numbers
Race to the end of a room to get a specific color out of the pile of blocks (great for when your students are so hyper that your lesson plan is sinking!)
Young primary students:
Group the colors, numbers, letters, etc.
Identify the pictures (show them quickly so it’s not so easy!)
Guess the color (number, etc.) with your eyes closed
Build a big tower, letting each student add one block, until it falls down. The student to place the last block is out!
Play hangman with the pictures on the block.
Older primary students:
Write one of the words on the blackboard from the blocks and have the group give the student that is “it” hints to guess the word. Obviously, the student that is “it” can’t look at the blackboard and the group can’t say the word on the blackboard.
Hide the blocks around the room and have them write prepositional statements about where they find the blocks (“The block is between the book and the pen.”)
Use them as conversation starters (“This block has a penguin. Penguins are animals that live in cold terrain. They eat…”)
As you can see, if we could only invest in one teaching toy, it would definitely be this one! What’s your favorite teaching toy? Leave us a comment and let us know!
One of the keys to keeping very young learners (ages 2-5) interested and involved in the class is to switch games or topics frequently. An activity can be anywhere from 1-5 minutes; more than that and the students simply don’t have the attention span to stay connected to the material. Particularly for young students, it’s important to use English in a natural way rather than attempting to “teach” vocabulary and grammar out of context. That’s why playing with things that don’t seem very much like a serious English lesson is often so effective at helping young learners speak more English!
We are always trying to come up with new activities that can be fun for young learners and don’t require a lot of set-up or tear-down. The longer we spend preparing an activity, the less time that our students are getting active language practice, and the more likely they are to become distracted (although you can read about some passive teaching techniques here!). We need things that work quickly and are fun!
We have been trying out a new upcycled pasta shaker and have found that it’s lots of fun! It’s also a great way to practice numbers, colors, the “stop” and “wait” commands, and to turn nervous energy into a positive learning experience!
Pasta shakers require very few things that you probably have around your house or school:
a clean, dry plastic bottle with a lid
something that children can touch and count to fill the bottle
Here’s how we play pasta shakers:
Show the students your plastic bottle. Ask what it is. Ask them if it’s an apple or a banana (no!). Tell them that it’s a bottle! What can we drink out of a bottle? Milk or water!
Tell the students to listen (shhhhh, listen! in a quiet voice). Shake the bottle. They won’t hear anything. Look disappointed and even be a little silly with your bottle trying to make a noise.
Bring out a small box with 10 pieces of pasta (You can repeat this activity with other fillers, like marbles, clean rocks or colored pasta. Make sure that it is an age-appropriate filler and that, should a student get it in his or her mouth, there is minimal choking risk!). Show the students and say Wow, pasta! We can shake the pasta!
Count each piece of pasta as you drop them into the bottle. The students should count with you. Shake the bottle and tell them, Look! We’ve made a pasta shaker!
Ask the students if they would like to make a pasta shaker. You can use “Yes, please” for very young learners, or “Can I make a pasta shaker?” for older learners.
Hand out the bottles to the students. Give 10 fillers to the students one-by-one and help them count as they put the fillers in the bottle.
Let them shake! You can invent songs, dances, etc., to make this even more fun!
You can expand later by telling students when to stop shaking (and count to a certain number before resuming their shaking!). This will help them learn to focus on you and wait for their reward.
It’s that time of year! We are rehearsing “Jingle Bells,” we are juggling exams and grading, and we are trying to teach our students a bit about our English-speaking cultural holiday traditions! At our school, we focus on Christmas, although many of our activities have a general winter theme so that we don’t interfer with anyone’s cultural or religious followings.
Today we’re sharing our three new activities for this year!
1. Very young ESL learners and The Christmas Tree
One of the first things that we teach students when studying about Christmas is the tradition of a Christmas tree. This can tie in nicely with their science courses (the parts of a tree; deciduous vs evergreen; trees around the world; etc.) and the vocabulary is easy enough.
We use the Christmas carol O Christmas Tree as a sing-a-long in the class. Then, each student gets to decorate an ornament (which we found on Google Images and pasted to card to make them sturdy) and hang it on our big primary tree.
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Finally, help them read the lyrics to O Christmas Tree that you’ve printed out on a piece of paper. Add a color-by-number Christmas tree to half of the paper and fast finishers can color another beautiful decoration!
This activity is great paired with a cute story about a snowman or playing in the snow. We found three appropriate stories in English in the youth section of our local library, and Amazon.com and Abebooks.com has lots of possibilities! (Don’t forget that you can download lots of ebook options if you have a projector in your class!)
Then we make a little snowman out of a recycled toilet paper roll (ah, the neverending craft supply box!) and a recycled sock. Googly eyes and white stickers that can be painted as buttons and then stuck on quickly help this activity to run smoothly. This requires a bit of preparation, but this website walks you through it. These are super adorable but not for tiny fingers!
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Copyright lessonplansesl.wordpress.com
3. Late Primary Students and The Snowflake Wonderland
Moving away from the traditional themes of Christmas and more towards the theme of winter wonderland, this activity allows us to talk about the science behind snowflakes. Why do snowflakes form (lesson on solids, liquids and gases)? How many sides do snowflakes have (lesson on geometry and symmetry)? Where can we see snowflakes (general winter vocabulary lesson)? Have you seen any films with snowflakes (our students are going crazy – in a good way – when they sing “Let it Go” from the film Frozen and then gap fill the lyrics)?
As a craft, they can make their own paper snowflakes and create a winter wonderland in a room or corridor. This website teaches you how to make them (depending on the age, your students might need a bit of help with the last step before cutting).
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All of these activities will please parents and other teachers, decorate your learning space (think less bulletin board duties for you!), and give your students a great use for their pre-holidays energy.
What’s your favorite Christmas activity? Share it with us in a comment! And have a happy holiday season!
In our school, one of our favorite secondary-level activities is the “PHRASE OF THE WEEK!” This is such a fun opportunity to make students laugh, expose them to authentic English and involve them in the class.
I saw this picture on Facebook and it made me realize how perfect puns would be for the “Phrase of the Week”:
By the way, did you know that you can follow our blog on Facebook? Check out https://www.facebook.com/esllessonplanssantaeugenia. That’s ESLLessonPlansSantaEugenia on Facebook!
“Phrase of the Week” is super fun and super easy. All you have to do is google “English idiomatic expressions” to come up with a full database of phrases that will take you through the whole school year.
Every Monday, we give the students the “Phrase of the Week.” You can write it on the blackboard and ask the students to try to guess the meaning. For example, “an arm and a leg.” If it’s very difficult, you can write it in a sentence: “This shirt costs an arm and a leg.” If you have a student guess the meaning, great! If not, you can explain it to students.
A great activity is to ask the students to write their own definition in their “Phrase of the Week” section of their notebooks. Ask for three or four volunteers to write their definitions on the blackboard and then formulate one acceptable class definition. Have them copy the class definition below their own definition in their notebooks.
(If you have extra class time, you can always put up 10 definitions and have the students vote for their favorite! To keep things fair, you can write them or have students exchange notebooks so that the author is a mystery. The student with the most amount of votes can win a prize, like a positive point or a homework pass! This will keep students super motivated to learn the “Phrase of the Week.”)
But don’t start there! Continue incorporating the “Phrase of the Week” throughout the week. Here are a few ways to do that:
Pop quiz: What’s the phrase of the week?
Bonus point on exam: Write and explain the phrase of the week.
Come to class, say hello, call on a student, and ask “What’s the phrase of the week?” immediately.
If you notice that the class is getting a bit unruly, ask “What’s the phrase of the week?” and have them choral repeat a few times before continuing with the lesson.
Towards the end of the year, have a contest in groups or individually to see who can write down the most phrases of the week. Give a prize to the winner!
Come into class and write a phrase of the week in a different way (back to the example of “an arm and a leg,” you can write “This shirt is very expensive.”) Ask the students to say it in a different way, using a phrase of the week.
Let the students come up with a phrase of the week! Assign each week to a different student and let them present and define the phrase of the week.
This is a great ice breaker activity that will get your students motivated and your class off on the right foot! The bonus? It’s been shown in our classrooms to get students’ attention immediately and quiet them down – quite a feat for Spanish secondary students!
During an ESL class, we want as much active learning time as possible! Repeating vocabulary with flashcards, role plays to practice a new theme, communicative information gaps, all of these activities and many more are what make up the meat and potatoes of our class time.
But did you know that students can still learn even when they aren’t actively engaged with the teacher? Everyday moments in the classroom that aren’t part of “active teaching” can be effective at helping your young learners gain more contact with speaking and understanding English.
Think about these moments when the class is not engaged with the teacher:
Before the class begins, particularly in class situations where the students or teacher change classrooms and have to prepare for the lesson
If the teacher needs to work one-on-one with a student who has a particular difficulty and the other students are engaged in completing an activity
When students are completing a cut-out, a coloring activity, a self-test at the end of a chapter, or a worksheet on their own for practice (5 year olds already do all of these alone in Spain.)
If an emergency occurs and the teacher must leave the classroom momentarily to get help or to help another teacher or student
When the class is wrapping up
While these aren’t ideal situations, they occur everyday in the classroom, and they take away time from the student’s direct engagement with the teacher. But by using passive teaching techniques, we can keep the students involved with the target language!
These passive moments don’t mean that students have to lose contact with the target language! Image Copyright The Guardian
A passive learning technique is any tool that the teacher uses to expose the students to English when he or she is not directly in front of them, commanding the attention of the class and interacting directly with the class.
Let’s take the example above, when students are waiting for the class to begin. In our school, teacher must switch classrooms every hour (and every 45 minutes in the afternoon) beginning in first grade of primary, and the students must sit for about 5 minutes while the teacher moves and prepares for the next class. Well, it doesn’t take much (a forgotten book, a crying child, a bathroom emergency) for those 5 minutes to turn into 10 minutes, and then you’ve lost a portion of your time to expose students to English. What passive learning techniques can we use to avoid that loss?
One of my favorite passive learning techniques is the mini-teacher system. The mini-teacher is responsible for controlling the behavior of the students while the teacher is absent from the class. The mini-teachers are chosen randomly each week, and if a student needs to say something while the teacher is away, he or she must raise his/her hand until the mini-teacher says that s/he can speak. This interaction should be done in English (and the questions that they ask are part of everyday English vocabulary: “Can I go to the toilet?” “May I drink water?” “What class is next?”, etc). If you begin this tradition at the start of the year, by the end of the year, you will walk into well-controlled classrooms that are already getting into the “English mode.”
Have each student decorate their hand print at the beginning of the year, put a bit of velcro on the back, and shuffle them in a box to “pick” the mini-teacher fairly each week. Display their handprint in the classroom so that everyone knows who is the mini teacher! Image Copyright theneighborhoodmoms.com
Another one of my favorite passive learning techniques is the calendar. The calendar manager is also chosen each week and is responsible for updating the calendar at the beginning of each English class. If you invest in an awesome calendar like the following, your calendar manager can do lots of activities that the class – after a week or two of practice – will be able to complete quickly and in English:
Picture Copyright learningenglish-esl.blogspot.com I have seen similar calendars in English and French at Dideco in Spain!
What can your calendar manager do each day?
Days of the week – The calendar manager leads the classroom in a choral recitation of the days of the week and then puts the proper day on the calendar.
You can expand on this by asking “What day was yesterday?” and “What day will tomorrow be?” when students get used to this step!
Months of the year – The same as Days of the week, but with months of the year
What’s the weather like today? – The calendar manager asks “What’s the weather like?” and students raise their hands to answer. The calendar manager chooses a volunteer and puts up the proper picture on the calendar
What year is it? – It seems overly simple, but this really helps students get used to how we say the years in English!
Is today a special day? – This gives students the opportunity to tell the class something important about their lives, like “It’s my birthday!”, “It’s Halloween!”, or “I have a new baby sister!” There’s nothing that primary students love more than to talk about their own lives, so you might have to cut off this activity!
Another great passive learning technique is using background music in the classroom. We are huge fans of using multimedia in the classroom, and this is a great way for students to sing along to familiar and new songs when they are engaged in individual activities, like coloring, cut-outs, tidying up, etc. You can bring a USB with great songs ready to go and put it on when students are working individually, or if you need to give special attention to one or two students for a few moments.
And lastly, for those moments when the lesson is finishing up and it’s time to go home, try singing a song as a class during those last few moments. This will also help with your classroom routine, sending the signal to students that it’s time for the class to end. I love this one by The Learning Station:
If you have more than a few moments (say, 10 minutes), but you don’t want to start the next lesson and are allowing the students free play time, try to encourage them to play in English. You can do this by:
providing puzzles or play dough (plasticine) and ask them to make something that you’ve spoken about in the lesson and show their friends
keeping an English library in the classroom where students can look at or read books in English
letting students play with a selection of English board games. I love the Orchard Toys games in English for primary students, but they love them more!
Orchard Toys games are awesome! They’re available at Dideco – with a 20% teacher’s discount! – in Spain.
So the next time that you are thinking about “wasted” class time, think of a passive learning technique that will expose students to English for those moments when they aren’t actively involved in a lesson. What passive learning techniques work well for you? Share them with us in a comment!
You need very few materials to make a popsicle stick puzzle, and you can use them for specific lesson themes or as an extra activity! They are a great activity for fast finishers in the classroom!
You can make several popsicle stick puzzles to work on a particular vocabulary set, such as these animal puzzles:
Copyright 2corinthians1311.blogspot.com
Or you can have students create their own popsicle stick puzzles as a time filler:
Copyright blog.austinkids.org
In order to make popsicle stick puzzles, you will need:
10 popsicle sticks per student (I buy popsicle sticks in bulk at Asian bazars or “chinos” here in Madrid)
tape
decorations, like:
paint and paintbrush
markers
crayons
pictures and glue
scissors
Here’s how you make popsicle stick puzzles!
Line up 10 popsicle sticks and tape the top, middle and bottom of the sticks together.
Turn the popsicle sticks over and decorate.
After they are dry, remove the tape. If you have glued a picture to the front of the popsicle sticks, you will need to use a razor blade or scissors to cut apart the picture between the sticks. Do not let children complete any steps with razors or scissors if they are not able to do so safely.
Mix up the sticks and let students put them together!
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Here are a few of the popsicle stick puzzles that I made with my students this summer! One student was two and one was five. Since we were working on colors and numbers at the time, I focused on the primary colors and numbered the back of each popsicle stick (1-10) so that they could put them in order based on numbers and then based on the picture.
ESL Lesson Plans 