From the article: Short Activities for the ESL / EFL Teacher
Sooner or later all English teachers need some fun activities to help fill in the gaps in class, or to provide some extra fun for students. Most ESL / EFL teachers have some standard short activities that help out and that are tried and tested. Here are activities that teachers from the around the world have chosen to share so that we can all have a few more great activities up our sleeves. Share your quick lessons
increasing word power through daily use
- I teach my students by giving them calls of animals their houses, babies their food habits and allow them to speak about their experiences in jungle and allow them to speak and sometimes correct them without mentioning the name of grammar which I FELT they could catch faster and talk easily .This is one major part of grooming.
- —Guest rumasen
Give me the question
- While Serife's idea is good, I do something else. I give an answer and the students have to give a question that matches the answer. I also like to put spaces on the board for a sentence. They give me letters and at a certain point I stop and they have to figure out the sentence.I also likes Ania's idea.
- —Guest Chaya
activity
- everybody mingles,constantly moving until the leader shouts out a number. all players must then try to get into groups of that number,any group that don't suceed are out.
- —Guest aha
Shorter activities in ESL
- We can use short descriptive question clues and get the students attented to listening and speaking bits of English. Short narratives, travelogues, incidents, experiences, etc. can be used as icebreakers.
- —Dineshthapa
numbered slips of paper with adjectives
- As a quick recap activity, these adjectives selected are distributed amongst the students. Since they are numbered we have a capsule ready with the participation of the students, believe me there is a of lot energy in doing this.
- —Guest pinkie
Eye Spy
- This is a great way to eat up five minutes at the end of a lesson. Just say "I spy with my little eye something beginning with..." Then say a letter of the alphabet, and students must guess the word that begins with that letter. It must be something you can see in the classroom e.g. 'T' for table, 'S' for socks etc. Write all the incorrect guesses on the board, students usually come up with very creative answers! To add a competitive element divide the class into teams.
- —Guest Pepe
opposite
- I find this task really useful and it gets the creative juices flowing in class. I ask my students to name a character if they say man then i'll write woman down on the board, I then ask if they are old or young If they say young then Ill put old.rich/poor/married/ get the picture. always write the opposite of what they are thinking as they should always expect the unexpected. we have great fun with this.
- —Guest jill malloy
LETTER SOUP
- Everybody enjoy using letters pasta, the one to make letters soup. After a reading I divide the group in teams, they are told to form words using this pasta related to the reading. The winner team is the one with more words different from the other teams!
- —lakeshoredriver
comparative and superative
- I found the following activity to practise the comparative and superative really helpful .I asked my students to imagine they are in a car exhibition and each group leader participates by drawing his car on the board .when they finish, the students compare the cars using the comparative and superlative forms and expressing their opinion at the same time .by the end they try to select the best car . ( each pupil writes the price , the speed ... of his car to be able to create more sentences)
- —Guest chahira
Working Together
- Write the words "working together" on the blackboard. Ask students to write down or call out any words from the fifteen letters - e.g work, king, get, her, teeth etc. You'll be amazed at how many words you can find. It's a great challenge for ESL students and helps to fill in the gaps.
- —Guest Bohanka
Conversation Questions
- In my bag I always carry small colorful cards on each of which an interesting conversation question is written and I want the students to choose one of the cards and answer the question written on it. I also divided the cards according to their level, for example, black cards are for advanced learners,yellow are for beginner,etc...Students are also given two or three minutes to think about their questions before their response.
- —Guest Serife Kalayci
speaking activitis
- teaching young larners how to speak fluently. practicing phonics, reading stories , retelling and act out,songs ,tongue twister
- —Guest Afaf
Spelling train
- I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this but I play this all the time with my students when we have even 5 minutes to spare. First decide how the trail will go. Then, I, the teacher, give a word and spell it (example: Tiger) The first student will say and spell a word beginning with the last alphabet (in this case, 'r') Let's say she says 'rain', so the next student will have to provide a word beginning with 'N', so on and so forth. Allow a minimum of 3 alphabets & specific duration, depending on students' capabilities. This activity got some students to actively look for difficult words (to show off) and increase their vocabulary and spelling, too. The count down to the allowed time frame keeps everyone interested and the game exciting.
- —Guest fern
scrambled word
- Choose a word, rewrite it in a circle making sure you have scrambled up the letters. The students must try to guess the word while they make up new words using letters from the mystery word. I wish to thank my daughters' English teacher for introducing it to me. My students love it!
- —Guest arinak
comparative and superative form
- I like Janis Shuller's idea that blowing bubbles. But I find it difficult to blow bubbles in the traditional school like ours in Hong Kong. So I'd rather let three children come up and each of them draws a big cirle on the board. Then I ask them to tell me that whose circle is big, whose circle is bigger and so on... :D
- —Guest Connie Yip
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