CONTENTS
ESL SECRETS A-Z
1-2 A: Giving and Receiving
Advice
3
B: Thinking Outside the
Book (Textbook, That Is)
4
C: Comparing and
Contrasting (And
Writing, Too)
5
D: Dream Big: How To
Teach Talking About
Dreams, Plans and
Strategies
6-7 E: Exploration Exploits:
Activities to Take Your
Students Around the
World
8
F: Following and Giving
Directions: Using the
Imperative
9-10 G: Games that Work
Without Fail in the ESL
Classroom
11 H: Talking About Our
Heroes
12 I: Ice, Ice, Baby
13-14 J: Journaling in Seven
Out of the Ordinary
Ways
15 K: Let’s Go Try a Kite
16 L: LOL – Have Some
Laughs While Learning
English
27 W: Weather Caster for a
Day
17 M: Magical Mystery Tour
28-29 X: X-Ray Vision: What
Will You See?
18 N: Fun ESL Activities
You Can Do With A
Name
30 Y: Younger Years:
Talking About the Past
19 O: Once Upon a Time:
Fun with Fairy Tales
31 Z: Creating a Paper Zoo
in Your Classroom
20 P: Planning Out a
Pleasing Plot. Starting
Your Students on Story
21 Q: Quiet Conversations:
Taking a Softer Approach
to Speaking Class
22 R: Ridiculous Recipes
- Giving Instructions for
Crazy Concoctions
23 S: Savvy Senses - It’s All
About Observation
24 T: Top Ten Count Down:
What Are Yours? How
To Teach A ‘Top 10’ ESL
Lesson
25 U: Underwater and
Under Earth Adventures
26 V: Valentine’s Day Any
Day
A: Giving and Receiving Advice
Did you ever have a problem that
you needed help solving? Did you
get any useful advice? Who did
you ask for that advice? Did you
follow the advice that you got?
What happened?
If you want to give your students some
practice giving and following advice as
they learn to speak fluent English, try
some of the following activities which
exercise listening, speaking, reading
and writing skills.
HOW TO TEACH
GIVING AND RECEIVING
ADVICE
1
DELVE INTO THE PROBLEM
Before you can give advice,
you have to know what the problem is. In small groups or as a class,
take some time to brainstorm some
problems that your students face.
They might be problems that they
encounter every day, like how to get
your homework done or how to wake
up in the morning, but they can also
be problems that are unusual like
what to do after you have a house fire
or how to get out of a bad relationship.
Once you have compiled the list, you
may want to keep it for the following
activities.
Once your students have a list of
some problems, ask them what they
would do if they had any of those
problems. Would they talk to a friend
or family member? Would they ask
a professional? Make a second list
with strategies for dealing with a
problem. They should not be specific
solutions, like get a tutor to help with
homework, but generalized solutions
that could be applied to any problem
like talk to your parents.
2
DO A GRAMMAR REVIEW
If your students are not familiar with the use of the modal verbs
should, would and could, you will
want to review them in more detail.
For most students though, a quick
review will be enough. Remind your
students that these modals are used
as helping verbs to communicate the
certainty of the verb.
•
Could suggests a possibility. You
•
Should serves as a recommendation and is therefore a stronger modal verb than could. You
could call a doctor or take any
of many other actions.
should call a doctor. You could
do other things as well, but
calling a doctor will be the wisest decision.
•
Would suggests a definite course
of action. I would call a doctor.
When giving advice, would must
be used with I rather than you: If I
were in your situation, my definite
course of action would be to call
the doctor.
Encourage your students to use
all three of these verbs when they
give advice, and to choose the best
one according to the certainty they
have for each solution. If they are
more experienced in a situation, they
will probably use should. If they are
uncertain, they would probably use
could to give advice.
3
GET SOME ADVICE
One of the most popular sources for advice over the last fifty years
has been Dear Abby (en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Dear_Abby). The popular
column was syndicated in 1956 and
continues today. Just one year earlier,
the Ask Ann Landers (en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Ask_Ann_Landers) column
was begun written by Abby’s twin sister. This family had a lot to say then
and has a lot to say now about lots of
problems. Either of these columns is
a great written resource for your students when you are talking about giving advice.
Give your students several examples
from either of these columns or use a
local advice column. Point out to your
students how the readers first explain their problems and then how
the writer answers them. Make sure
they notice the grammar that is used
in the response.
With the examples in front of them for
a model, ask your students to write
their own letter requesting advice.
It could be on one of the problems you
listed in the first activity, or it could be
a problem that was not listed earlier.
Your students should write about their
problems using the form of a personal
letter. Once the letter seeking advice
is written, collect and redistribute the
letters. Now each student should
write advice in response to the
original letter. These responses can
be serious or silly. The only thing that
really matters is that your students
are using the correct grammar for giving advice.
4
LISTEN CLOSELY
After looking at the advice columns from one or more newspapers,
ask your students if they have ever
listened to a radio program that gives
advice to its listeners.
Discuss with your class whether that
would be a good way to get advice for
a problem. They will likely say it depends on what the program is as well
as what the problem is. If you have difficulty locating an actual radio advice
program, you can use portions from
the movie Sleepless in Seattle and
The Truth About Cats and Dogs.
A great television source would be
portions of episodes from Frasier in
which Kelsey Grammar plays a radio
psychiatrist on an advice program.
Use portions of these movies and
programs to exercise your students’
listening skills. Play the audio and visual for them, and stop the scene after the caller explains his or her problem. Then ask your students what the
problem is. Play that portion again
now that they know what the speaker’s problems is. Before listening to
the advice that the host gives, ask
your students to volunteer advice
to the caller. What would they suggest the troubled person do? Then
listen for the advice that the expert
gives to the caller and determine if
you would agree or disagree with it.
You can then set up your own radio advice show by asking for a volunteer from the class. This person
should sit in front of the class and act
as the radio host. Then another student acts out the part of the troubled
caller. The first student must then give
advice for the problem. As a class,
1
discuss whether the person gave good advice, and ask your students if they would follow the advice. Now the student
with the problem becomes the expert advice giver and takes a call from another student. Have your students take turns
in this manner until everyone has had an opportunity to be the expert.
THESE ACTIVITIES WILL HELP YOUR STUDENTS BECOME COMFORTABLE WITH THE IDEA OF GIVING ADVICE TO
THEIR PEERS. IF YOU WANT TO TAKE IT A STEP FURTHER, ASK IF THERE ARE SITUATIONS IN WHICH IT IS NOT
APPROPRIATE TO GIVE ADVICE TO A FRIEND WHO HAS A PROBLEM. YOU CAN ALSO DISCUSS WHAT YOUR STUDENTS CAN DO OR SAY WHEN THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY GOOD ADVICE FOR A FRIEND’S PROBLEM.
If you ask us, advice is a great way to get your students speaking and even writing and improve their overall English
skills. You should try it.
2
B: Thinking Outside the Book
(Textbook, That Is)
TEXTBOOKS ARE AN IMPORTANT
PART OF AN ESL CLASS. THEY
PROVIDE DIRECTION AND EXPLANATIONS OF KEY ESL CONCEPTS. WHILE
TEXTBOOKS ARE OF GREAT VALUE
TO THE ESL TEACHER, THE WORLD
OUTSIDE THE TEXTBOOK IS VAST AND
HAS LIMITLESS POTENTIAL.
If you think about what resources you
have around you, there are many possible activities you can do with your
class, outside the textbook. Read on
to get started thinking outside the textbook.
HOW TO THINK
OUTSIDE THE BOOK
1
DIG A LITTLE DEEPER
Magazines and newspapers are
some of the best reading materials that
you can use with your ESL students,
and there are several activities you
can do with just one paper. With just
a newspaper you can review and practice all three reading strategies that
your students should know.
•
Skim some articles for the main
points. Encourage your students
not to read every word, but to focus
on headlines, subheadings, and
portions of the rest of the article.
•
Scan the paper to see when a
movie might be playing or for the
events that will happen locally this
weekend. When scanning, students should look for answers to
specific questions.
•
Finally, do some careful or detail reading for other articles, and
ask comprehension questions.
Also, review unfamiliar vocabulary
with your students. You will find
many opportunities to expand their
knowledge of vocabulary in the
newspaper. There is also culture to
be learned from the paper, especially in the obituaries.
Your students can see what a culture
value is by noticing what is mentioned
in an obituary. In addition, do some
compare and contrast work between
this newspaper and one from a student’s native language. If possible,
borrow a foreign newspaper from
the library and ask your student to explain the different sections. He will be
challenged to use English to explain to
the rest of the class, and they will learn
more about his culture.
2
SOMETHING MAY CATCH
YOUR EYE
Now that you are out of the book,
keep going with a movie. Movies
are a great resource for many different
classroom activities. Some ESL programs have entire classes devoted to
American film. How you decide to use
movies in your classroom is up to you.
Generally, you can choose to use one
movie and do several activities with
the whole movie or particular scenes.
The other option is to pick and choose
scenes from different movies and do
one or two activities with each.
One activity you can to with any move
scene is a cloze listening exercise.
Be warned, this will take some preparation ahead of time. Before you meet
with your class, type out the dialogue
from a particular scene of the movie.
Then delete key words in that dialogue
and leave blank spaces for your students to fill in as they listen. If you have
already taught them the vocabulary,
play the scene one or two times and
have them fill in the blanks. Then have
students compare answers and give
them the correct answers. Then have
groups of students read the dialogues
as if they were the actors.
If you have not taught the vocabulary
to your students prior to watching the
movie clip, give them a word bank from
which to choose the answers. Before
watching, read through the words in the
word bank and review their pronunciation so your students will be able to recognize the words when they hear them.
It is also beneficial to your students if
they think of words that would logically
fit into the blanks in the dialogue before
watching the clip. They may be able to
guess some words correctly, but most
likely your students will come up with
synonyms for the words actually in the
scene. You can then explain to your
students that guessing in this manner
is a useful strategy for ESL reading.
When they encounter an unfamiliar
word in their English readings, they
can guess at the meaning of the word
based on the context, and they should
be able to determine a synonym or a
word with similar meaning to the target
word. This will increase thier comprehension without them having to use a
dictionary.
3
GET OUT (AND ABOUT)
To get your students using language in authentic situations, take a
field trip. It does not have to be something elaborate or requiring special
transportation. Think of the resources
that lie within walking distance of your
school, and make use of them. This
may mean that your students go to a
restaurant and place an order or ask
the server questions about a menu
item. If you teach in a city and there are
public courthouses nearby, take your
students to listen to some of the proceedings and then discuss what was
said with them after returning to your
classroom. If you teach near a beach
or a public park, take your students out
to do some surveys with people who
might be there. There are also many
restaurants, theaters, post offices and
other businesses that will give free
tours to students. All of these trips are
great speaking activities and listening comprehension activities for your
class, and it can also be a way to learn
less common vocabulary in a purposeful way.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO KEEP YOUR
STUDENTS’ NOSES IN THEIR TEXTBOOKS TO ENSURE A PRODUCTIVE
ESL CLASS. SOMETIMES THE BEST
THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR STUDENTS IS TO GET OUT OF THE BOOK
AND INTO THE REAL WORLD.
Your students will be challenged, but
the opportunity for learning will be unlike anything chapter six has to offer.
So next time you want to liven up your
class, get out of the book and into some
real life situations to practice English.
3
C: Comparing and Contrasting
(And Writing, Too)
The combination of comparing and
contrasting form one of the most
popular essay forms in English
classes today, but comparing and
contrasting in and of themselves are
not purposes for writing. Though we
use comparing and contrasting often
in our writing, the purpose of papers
that use this type of organization
should be to persuade, to inform or
to explain.
HOW TO WRITE
A COMPARE AND
CONTRAST ESSAY
1
CLARIFY THE PURPOSE
While the purpose of a compare/
contrast essay is to persuade, inform
or explain, the reasons one might want
to do those things have more variety.
Usually, a compare/contrast essay
will aim to do one of the following 4
things:
•
To show that one item is superior
to another like item (that Ninten-
gram, draw two circles of the same size
with part of the circles overlapping. Each
circle will represent one item that your
student will compare in the essay. Label
each circle for one of the two items, and
then in each circle, write ideas about that
item. Where the circles overlap, write
ideas that are true of both of the items.
If your students do this correctly, they
will have all the similarities in the overlapping section of the diagram, and the
places that do not overlap will have the
differences. Then students should select
three or four key points on which to compare the two items. If an essay contains
more points than that it may become too
lengthy or disconnected, so students
should choose those points which will
support their thesis most clearly.
3
There are 2 ways to successfully organize a compare/contrast essay.
•
do video games are superior to
Sony video games)
•
To explain something that is unknown by comparing it to something
that is known (explain the Pres-
byterian church government by
comparing it to the U.S. government)
•
To show that two dissimilar things
are actually quite similar or vice versa
•
To show how something has changed
over time (the Unites States now
as opposed to the United States
before September 11, 2001).
2
GATHER SOME IDEAS
With any essay, it is helpful to invest some time in prewriting. The process of prewriting helps a person think
about a particular topic and collect her
ideas before trying to organize them
into a logical essay. A Venn diagram is
a good way to prewrite for a compare/
contrast essay. To make a Venn dia-
4
ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE,
ORGANIZE
The first structure is called block organization. With block organization,
your essay will have four paragraphs.
The first paragraph will be the introduction. The second paragraph
will discuss all the points about one
item. For example, give all the pertinent information about apples, their
nutritional content, popularity and
availability. The third paragraph will
discuss all the points about the second item, in this case oranges, again
examining their nutritional content,
popularity and availability. Students
should present the points about the
two items in the same order in the two
body paragraphs so that the essay
has unity and parallel structure. The
final paragraph is the conclusion.
Block organization is most effective
when there is not a large amount of
information included in the essay. If
a student tries to put too much information in block organization, the
overall essay will seem disjointed
and lacking in coherence.
•
The second method of organization for a compare/contrast essay is
called point-by-point organization.
This structure will elicit an essay with
five or six paragraphs depending on
how many points of comparison your
student has chosen. The first paragraph is again the introduction. The
second paragraph will discuss one
point and how it factors into both
items. For example, one paragraph
may discuss the nutritional content
of both the apple and the orange.
The third paragraph will then discuss another point about both items.
Here it may examine the popularity
of both the apple and the orange.
The fourth paragraph does the same
with the third point, and if there is a
fourth point of comparison it is examined in the fifth paragraph. The final
paragraph is again the conclusion.
The advantage to point-by-point organization is the two items are examined simultaneously, and the reader
gets a clearer value judgment for
each point. Using this type of organization can make body paragraphs
unusually short if students to not
elaborate adequately, so encourage
students to have at least four sentences in each of these paragraphs.
It is now time to write the essay, do some
editing and revising and make revisions.
In the conclusion, make sure your students have accomplished the goal they
set forth in the introduction. They should
have persuaded, explained or informed
their reader adequately. They should remind the reader of their thesis and offer
some final thoughts to round out the paper.
ONCE OUR STUDENTS UNDERSTAND
THAT COMPARING AND CONTRASTING ARE NOT REASONS FOR WRITING
BUT ARE MERELY ORGANIZATIONAL
STRATEGIES, THEY WILL WRITE STRONGER MORE COMPELLING PIECES.
Using a Venn diagram for prewriting will
help the process, and then students can
choose either block organization or
point-by-point organization. A strong
conclusion that echoes the thesis will
complete a successful compare/contrast
essay for your students.
D: Dream Big: How To Teach
Talking About Dreams, Plans
and Strategies
If someone asked you, “What
kinds of dreams do you have?”
how would you respond? Would
you talk about dreams you have
while you are sleeping? Would
you talk about daydreams you
have when you take a short
mental vacation? Would you talk
about your dreams for the future?
Dreams are something that a person
encounters every day. Whether you
are dreaming big or running from a
nightmare, these activities will give
your students opportunities to talk
about their dreams and further their
English skills in the process.
HOW TO TEACH
TALKING ABOUT
DREAMS, PLANS AND
STRATEGIES
1
LET’S TALK
Introduce your students to the
idea of dreams by showing a clip from
The Wizard of Oz, a movie that they
have probably already seen. A good
scene is the end of the movie when
Dorothy wakes up from her dream after the tornado. If your students are
younger, you may also want to share
the book Ben’s Dream by Chris Van
Allsburg. Then ask them what it
means to dream. Can they think of
any other examples from books, movies or television where the characters
wake up to find that everything has
been a dream? Encourage your students to share their ideas.
Then ask your students what types
of dreams they have had. They will
most likely share dreams they have
had when sleeping. Most dreams that
students will remember will be ones
that have touched on strong emotions.
They may be dreams that were funny,
frightening, silly, weird, sad or fanciful.
Divide your class into small groups
and allow them to share their dreams
with one another. This is a good time
for you to get a candid measure of
their English skills. When people become emotional, their speech will
revert to its most natural state. If
you can listen to all of your students
during this activity, you will know what
English issues with which they struggle. After the discussion, give each
group a chance to share one or two
stories they found most interesting.
You can ask that another person in
the group retell a classmate’s dream.
Now introduce the concept of a dream
being something you hope to achieve
in the future, and teach your students
the phrase dream big. Share one of
your dreams whether it is to travel or
make a special purchase. Then have
your class reform into their groups
and share this type of dream with one
another. Before you do, though, you
may need to review the structures “I
hope to...” and “I would like to...”
Also, encourage your students to start
their explanations with some day, one
day, or in the future.
2
PLAN AHEAD
At this point, your students may
have a good idea for a dream they
would like to write about. If they have
decided on one dream for the future
that they would like to write about, give
them an opportunity to compile some
details about the dream by using a
cluster map. In a cluster map, your
students should put the topic of their
dreams in the center of a page and
put a circles around them. From that
center circle, students should draw
spokes that reach out to other circles.
These other circles will hold the details about the dreams. You may want
to have your students draw six spokes
and write along each spoke one of the
question words: who, what, where,
when, why and how. They should
then answer these questions about
the dream they have for the future.
By getting these ideas down on paper
before writing the essay, your students will not be floundering for ideas
in the middle of the writing process.
It will also be easier for them to organize the essay before they write.
Now give your students time to write
out their dreams or assign it for homework. You may also want to design a
bulletin board where you can display
what your students have written. Encourage your students to read about
one another’s dreams and talk to their
classmates about them.
3
STRATEGIZE
After your students write about
their dreams, let them strategize how
to achieve those dreams with this
activity. Write the phrase five-year
plan on the white board. Ask your
students if any of them know what a
five-year plan is. If no one can explain
a five-year plan, ask a volunteer to explain what a plan is. Then have them
guess at what a five-year plan would
be. Help them understand that a plan
is more definite than a dream so the
verb tense to use when writing a fiveyear plan is the simple future. In one
year, I will... In three years, I will...
Have your students think about their
dreams and create a five-year strategy for achieving their dreams. If
they cannot achieve the dream in five
years, allow them to create a ten-year
plan. If time permits, allow each student to share his five-year plan in front
of the class and allow the class to ask
questions and offer advice. Remind
the presenter to use simple future for
definite plans or to use may or might
when talking about possible actions in
the future.
THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE
CAN BE BENEFICIAL FOR ALMOST
ANYONE NO MATTER WHAT HIS OR
HER AGE. GIVE YOUR STUDENTS
THE CHANCE TO DO THIS BY DISCUSSING THEIR DREAMS FOR THE
FUTURE AND PLANNING A WAY TO
ACHIEVE THEM.
It will help your class to get to know
each other better and may also give
your students some useful plans for
achieving their dreams.
5
E: Exploration Exploits: Activities
to Take Your Students Around
the World
THE WORLD IS A VERY BIG PLACE,
BUT IN TODAY’S SOCIETY THE
PEOPLE OF OUR WORLD ARE
BECOMING MORE AND MORE CONNECTED EVERY DAY. THE INTERNET
AND OTHER VENUES FOR COMMUNICATION HAVE OPENED THE
WORLD TO STUDENTS NO MATTER
WHERE THEY LIVE. ALSO, SO MANY
STUDENTS DECIDE TO STUDY
ENGLISH OVERSEAS THAT OFTEN
OUR CLASSROOMS BECOME A REPRESENTATION OF THE GLOBE.
The following activities will help your
students learn more about the world
around them and have fun using English in the process. You may even
learn a thing or two as well as you all
travel around the world with the following activities.
EXPLORATION
EXPLOITS: HOW TO
TAKE YOUR STUDENTS
AROUND THE WORLD
1
FLY YOUR FLAG
Every country has its own flag,
but how much do students know about
the meaning behind those flags? Create a display of flags from around
the world. You can either bring in
small flags and display them in a vase
or other arrangement, or print pictures
of various flags from the internet. See
how many of the flags your students
can identify with their countries.
Make sure you have a flag for each
of the countries represented in your
class. Then group your students by
country of origin, and give them their
country’s flag. Have each group work
together to write an explanation of
the flag’s design. If you have older
students, they may be able to do this
without research, but younger students may need to use the internet
or other sources to explain the significance of colors and pictures on the
6
flag. After your students have written
an explanation of their native countries’ flags, tell them the story of your
country’s flag. Then ask each group
to come to the front of the room and
share the story behind their flag and
get some practice in public speaking.
2
PIN THE TAIL
ON THE WORLD MAP
Now that your students have shared
with the class about their home countries, assign some research topics
with the following game. Did you ever
play pin the tail on the donkey when
you were a child? This game follows
the same concept.
Give each student a pushpin with
his name and/or picture on it. Blindfold the student and spin him three
times, then point him in the direction
of a world map on the wall. Make sure
the map is not mounted too high for
your students to reach. Allow your
students to pin their marker on the
map. Whatever continent or ocean
your student lands on, that is the area
he must research. Hopefully you will
have students scattered around the
map so every continent and ocean
are researched. You can also make
this a group project by grouping students depending on where their pushpins landed. Give your students some
time to do the research either in class
or at home, and then take some time
for presentations on the different areas of the world.
You may want your students to research the climate, animal life or terrain of the areas they are researching.
3
CASH ONLY
Can your students name the
currencies used throughout the
world? Start your global monetary
travels by explaining the word currency and then brainstorming a list of
currencies that are used throughout
the world.
Do this activity either in small groups
or as a class. How many total currencies can the class name? Did
they include dollars, Euros, pesos,
and lira? What other examples did
they give? Now see if they can name
the countries that use those monetary
units. There may be more than one
country that uses each unit. Test your
students’ general currency knowledge
in groups by giving them a matching
game with the following pairs. How
many of the following countries can
they match to their units of currency?
Bulgaria (Leva)
China (Yuan)
Czech Republic (Koruna)
Ghana (Cedi)
Hong Kong (Dollar)
India (Rupee)
Italy (Lira)
Ivory Coast (CFA Franc)
Philippines (Peso)
Norway (Krone)
Venezuela (Bolivar)
Serbia (Dinar)
If possible, start a collection of
foreign money to display in your
classroom. Encourage your students
to bring in small amounts of money
from their home countries and/or from
places they travel. Give your class an
opportunity to examine the money,
the language, shape and appearance
of each coin or bill. If your students
are willing to leave the currency with
you, over a few years you may have
an impressive collection to use with
future classes. See other money activities and worksheets we have on
BusyTeacher.
4
IN GOOD TASTE
Bread is one of the most common foods throughout the world, but
the personality of each country shows
through in this basic food. Complete
your journey around the world by
bringing in sample bread from different areas of the world that are
available in your grocery store. You
may want to include white bread, a pita, flour tortillas, a baguette, matzo and naan. Then pair your students for the following activity. Each pair should create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast two of the types of bread they have
samples. To make a Venn diagram, draw a large circle on the paper and overlap it with a second large circle. Label
each circle with one of the items being examined. You can assign the two types of bread to each pair or let the students
choose the ones they will write about. They should then describe each of the two types of bread in one of the circles. The
characteristics that are true for both types should be written in the overlapping area of the diagram. The characteristics
that are unique to each type should be written in the areas that do not overlap. Now your students should write one
paragraph about the similarities between the two types of bread and a second paragraph about the differences. If you
would like, you can also ask your students to write an introduction and a conclusion to create a complete essay.
THESE ARE JUST A FEW OF THE MANY WAYS YOUR CLASS CAN TAKE A MINI-TRIP AROUND THE WORLD.
THROUGHOUT YOUR JOURNEY, ENCOURAGE YOUR STUDENTS TO SHARE FROM THEIR OWN EXPERIENCES AND
PERHAPS SHOW SOME PICTURES.
Learning about the world is so important for people in the 21st century. Have fun as your journey, and you may even
want to keep a scrapbook of the experience.
7
F: Following and Giving
Directions: Using the Imperative
In any language, a person must give
and follow directions whether it is in
a cab, when explaining a process,
or giving instructions.
FOLLOWING AND
GIVING DIRECTIONS
1
WHAT IS THE IMPERATIVE?
In English, the imperative form is
the command form of a sentence. The
imperative is most often used when giving directions or giving instructions. “Do
your homework. Study for the test.”
Forming the imperative is very simple.
Verb conjugations follow the normal
pattern, but the subject of the sentence
(you) is dropped. “You do your homework” becomes “do your homework.”
For negative sentences, do not is added to before the verb. “Do not sleep in
class.” Often, sentences in the imperative can seem very forceful and often
rude, so point out to your students that
the use of “please” will soften the feeling of an imperative sentence. “Please
pass out the papers” will sound more
courteous than “Pass out the papers.”
If the intention is a forceful sentence,
your students may want to use an exclamation point rather than a period at
the end of the sentence.
2
RULES TO LIVE BY
If your classroom has rules,
start your lesson on the imperative
by reviewing those classroom rules.
Make sure each of them is written in the
imperative. “Raise your hand before
you speak. Be courteous to other
students.” Point out to your students
that these rules have an implied subject (you) but that it is omitted in the
sentence. Encourage your students to
think creatively about wishes or rules
they would like to see people follow.
They can be rules for school or rules for
life. They may want to have rules such
as “Be kind to someone every day.
Smile when you pass people in the
street.” Whatever they are, have your
students make a list of five rules they
want people to follow in life. Then encourage your students’ creativity by letting each student create a poster with
his or her life rules. If you assign this
as homework, students can purchase
8
their own poster board, but if you want
to spend time in class creating the posters simply use butcher paper or bulletin
board paper. Once your students have
finished their posters, display them
around your classroom or in the hallway. Perhaps the life rules will encourage your students to behave kindly to
one another.
3
A LITTLE HELP PLEASE
If you are looking for a fun way
to practice the imperative with your
students, take them outside for a little
excitement with this directional game.
Before starting the game, spend a little
time reviewing directional words with
your students. Make sure they understand right, left, turn, go straight, turn
around and any other directional words
you can think of. Then divide your students into pairs, and take them outside
to an open play area. Have one person
in each pair put on a blindfold. This person will be the mover. The other person
in the pair will be the direction giver.
Once each pair has one person blindfolded, place an object at the other end
of the playing area. The direction giver
must then shout directions to the mover
who will proceed to the object and retrieve it. All of the pairs give directions at
the same time, so the mover must focus
on his partner’s voice. The first mover
who reaches the object wins that round.
Then have the pairs switch roles and
place the object in another area. Award
points to the team who reaches the object first in each round. Play as many
rounds as you like and award a prize to
the winning team.
4
THE HOSTESS
WITH THE MOSTESS
English speakers also use the imperative when politely offering something to
a guest. “Have a slice of pie. Have a
cup of tea.” A little role playing is a fun
way to practice this form of imperative.
Put your students into groups of four to
act out a dinner party. Two of the students will be the hosts and the other two
will be the guests. In front of the class
if possible, have the students act out a
polite dinner party where the hosts offer
different options to their guests. They
can offer drinks, food and desserts. The
guests can accept or politely decline.
Then reverse roles and have the guests
be the hosts. Encourage your students
to use their imaginations and use the
imperative as much as possible. Depending on the creativity (and attitude)
of your students, this activity can be
quite entertaining, and the rest of the
class will take inspiration from the previous groups making their own demonstrations even more entertaining.
5
ALWAYS TRUE
For imperatives that are universally true, have your students begin their
imperative statements with always and
never. “Never put your finger in an
electrical socket. Always bring your
passport when you travel to another country.” To practice this structure
with your students, cultural norms are
the perfect context. As a class, start a
discussion about the culture shock they
felt when they first arrived in their host
country. What did people do that your
students did not expect? What did people not do when your students expected
them? After each of your students has
been able to share from her experiences, have each person make a list of universally true imperatives for someone
visiting their home countries and then
explain why those imperatives are true.
In the U.S., these imperatives might include “Never ask a woman her age.
Never tell someone she looks fat.”
These statements are offensive. They
may write “Never give white flowers
to your host. White flowers represent death.” Or “Always bring a gift
when you go to a business meeting.
It is considered polite.” After all your
students have written their lists, encourage discussion among your class. Ask
all of your students if the statements
would be true of their home cultures or
what the appropriate behavior in their
home countries would be. In so doing,
you will raise the cultural awareness
among your students and hopefully
avoid cultural conflicts in the future.
THE IMPERATIVE IS A SIMPLE STRUCTURE TO FORMULATE IN ENGLISH,
AND YOUR STUDENTS WILL HAVE
FUN GIVING DIRECTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS TO THEIR CLASSMATES.
G: Games that Work Without Fail
in the ESL Classroom
EVERYONE LIKES TO HAVE FUN AS
THEY LEARN. ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES TO BEING AN ESL TEACHER
IS THAT THERE ARE ALWAYS GAMES
CENTERED AROUND LANGUAGE
AND WORDS.
You can use these games either to
take a day off from the normal classroom routine or to enhance what you
are already teaching your students.
Either way, your students are sure
to have fun while they improve
their English skills.
GAMES THAT WILL
WORK WITHOUT
FAIL IN YOUR ESL
CLASSROOM
1
PRE-PURCHASED GAMES
In stores today, there are many
games made for native speakers that are effective in the ESL
classroom. One of the most popular
games to use with your ESL students
is Scrabble. Most people know that
Scrabble is a game where the players make up words using preprinted
tiles. They score points based on the
letters they use and where they place
the word on the board. Ultimately, the
player with the highest score at the
end of the game is the winner. This
game is useful for ESL students
because it builds their vocabularies in a fun way.
If you allow your students to use an
English dictionary, they will learn
words as they search for plays on
the board. More often, you, the native
speaker, will play a word that they are
not familiar with without even trying.
In this case, your students will usually
ask the meaning of the word which
you should then explain to them.
Catchphrase is another good game
that you can buy to play with your
students. The object of the game is
to not get caught on your turn when
the buzzer goes off. If you ever played
hot potato when you were a child,
this is similar. The way you pass on
the display is by getting the rest of the
players to say the word that the display gives you. You can pass to another word if the word is too hard of
you don’t know the meaning of it, but
there are no restrictions in the words
you can use to get the other players
to guess, so there should be some
word each student can describe. For
example, if your word was “farm”
you might say, “a place where they
grow vegetables for money.” The
rest of the players can shout out answers at any time. Once one of them
gets the word correct, the player taking his turn passes the display on to
the next person.
The newer versions of Catchphrase
are electronic, so there are no pieces
to change or lose. This game will also
increase the vocabulary of your students as they play though they may
not want to stop to ask for a definition
when they are trying to pass the display to the next student.
2
NO PREPARATION
Several games you can play with
your class require little to no preparation. Charades and Pictionary are
both good for reviewing vocabulary
with your class. For both games, divide your class into two teams. One
person from each team will play at the
same time as the other. Give each
player a word, usually one from a vocabulary list you have already taught
with a previous unit. In charades, each
player must act out the word for his
team without using any words. While
he acts out the target word, his team
should watch him and guess at the
answer. The first team who correctly
guesses the word scores a point. Pictionary is similar except that instead
of acting out a word, the player must
draw a picture of it on the white board.
She cannot use numbers, letters or
symbols in her drawing. Again both
teams guess at the answer, and the
team that guesses correctly scores
a point. Continue until you have reviewed all your vocabulary words
or until one team has reached a set
amount of points to win the game.
Twenty questions is another game
that requires no preparation though it
is not as lively as the previous games.
In twenty questions, one player thinks
of an object. The rest of the class then
asks yes/no questions to try to narrow
down what the object is. They may
ask, “Is it an animal? Is it smaller than
a breadbox? Does it live under water?” After each question, the player
answers either yes or no. Based on
those answers, the class must strategically develop a course of questioning. If the class can guess the object
within the twenty-question limit, the
class wins. If the class cannot guess
the object, the player wins. You can
then choose another player to select
an object for the class to guess.
If you want to make sure all your students get practice asking and answering questions, divide your class into
pairs and have each pair play against
each other. Though it is an old-fashioned game, twenty questions is very
useful for reviewing question grammar and getting in speaking practice.
3
MAKE YOUR OWN GAMES
When you have the time or inclination, these games take some prep
work but usually only the first time you
use them, and you can use them any
time you teach the lesson in the future.
Icebreaker tumbling blocks is good
for more advanced students and
takes more physical skills than the
other games mentioned here. Purchase a set of stacking blocks (like
Jenga though any brand will do) and
gather several icebreaker questions.
Then take a permanent marker and
write one icebreaker question on each
block. You can use questions like, “Do
you prefer a hug or a kiss? What
is your earliest memory? Do you
write with pen or pencil? What is
the last song you purchased from
i-tunes?”
These or any other questions will
work. Then as each person takes his
9
turn, he must pull a block from the bottom of the tower (the top two rows are off limits), answer the question and then
place the block on the top of the tower. Play continues around the table until someone knocks the tower down. Your students will enjoy learning more about each other and find the game itself exciting. No one will want to make the tower fall!
A simple game that you can use with any vocabulary list is the memory game. In this game, a set of cards is arranged on a table face down and each player may turn over two cards on her turn. If the cards are a matching pair,
she may keep them and then turn over two more cards. If they do not match, she must turn them back over and try to
remember where each of the cards is located for her next turn. If you are using this game with beginning students, you
can have one card from each pair have the vocabulary word and the other a picture of the object.
For more advanced students, have the word on one card and the definition on another. You can also make matching
pairs with either synonyms or antonyms depending on the skills of your students and your goals in teaching. If you provide your students with index cards, they can even make the pairs themselves. You can then compile all the cards your
students have made and use them together as one set. With this game, you will need a relatively large playing area, but
you can use the cards any time you teach the same material in the future.
You can also change it up a little and use the same matching pairs to play Go Fish for some variety.
PLAYING GAMES IN THE ESL CLASSROOM IS ALWAYS FUN AND A NICE CHANGE OF PACE FROM THE NORMAL
DAILY ROUTINE.
You can use any of these games to fit in with a unit you are teaching or just use them to break up the semester. Your
students will enjoy themselves as they increase their vocabularies and laugh with their classmates.
10
H: Talking About Our Heroes
EVERY CHILD HAS A HERO. FOR
SOME, IT MAY BE A SPORTS FIGURE
OR A CELEBRITY. FOR OTHER CHILDREN, THEIR HEROES ARE PEOPLE
WHO HAVE MADE GREAT ADVANCES
IN THE WORLD LIKE JESUS OR
EINSTEIN.
Most children name one of their relatives, a parent or grandparent, aunt
or uncle, as their heroes. Regardless
of who the hero is, we look up to our
heroes as examples and role models,
and we seeking to live our lives in similar ways to them.
These activities will get your students
speaking and writing English while
talking about the important people in
their lives, their heroes.
HOW TO TALK ABOUT
HEROES IN YOUR ESL
CLASSROOM
1
WHAT IS A HERO?
What makes a person a hero?
Is it something he has done? Is it a
quality she possesses?
Start by explaining to your student
what the word hero means, and then
brainstorm the qualities that a hero
might or should have. They may be
characteristics such as bravery, fear-
lessness, strength, intelligence or
boldness among many others. Allow
your students to share what they value in the people they look up to.
After talking about the qualities of
heroes, give your students some examples of heroes by reading selections from The Children’s Book of
Heroes by William J. Bennett. Do
these people exemplify the qualities
your students said a hero possesses?
How do they meet those descriptions?
How are they different?
Break your students into groups
and assign one hero to each group.
Then have that group discuss how
that person either does or does not
meet the class’ criteria for a hero. If
you are teaching adults, you may prefer to read portions of newspaper articles that talk about local people who
have done heroic acts in the community rather than selections from the
children’s book.
2
WHO IS A HERO?
After examining the heroes in
groups, encourage your students to
share with one another who their
heroes are. In their groups, they
should tell their classmates who their
heroes are and what qualities those
people possess that make them heroic as well as the heroic actions they
have performed. These people can be
living or dead, people that your students know personally or people they
have never met.
You can create a display of heroes
in your classroom that you can add
to throughout the year. Start with examples from the books or people in
your community. Post a picture of that
person as well as a description of him
or her and what he or she has done
for the community or the world. You
can include well-known heroes like
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi as
well as local heroes. Also, encourage
your students to contribute to the wall
with heroes from their home cultures.
Now your students will write about
their heroes. For younger children
or beginning students, you may assign two to three sentences for each
of the following questions. For older
children and advanced students, you
may want them to write a paragraph
answering each of the following questions. In either case, tell your students
to give the following information about
their heroes in their writing.
1. Who are they?
Give some information about the
person and his or her personal
life and history.
2. What did they do?
Explain the acts that classify that
person as a hero.
3. How do they measure up as a
hero?
Point out what qualities that person has that match those characteristics of a hero your class
brainstormed earlier.
4. Why is he or she your hero?
Explain why you admire that person’s actions or character.
5. What would you say to your
hero?
If you could meet that person,
what would you say to him or her
and why?
Once your students have written their
pieces, display them on the wall of heroes. Make sure that each person has
a picture of his or her hero to display
with the writing assignment.
After your wall of heroes has grown
a little and your students have had
time to read the information about its
members, break your class into small
groups to talk about the heroes. In
those groups, ask students to decide how they would classify the
heroes. The classification could be
based on past and present, by country or by accomplishment. Let your
students decide, and challenge them
to think of as many classifications as
they can.
3
ARE YOU A HERO?
To round out your unit on heroes, put your students in groups and
have them discuss heroic actions
that each of them has performed
in the past. Their examples could be
walking an older person across the
street or doing yard work out of kindness, or they could be as dramatic as
saving someone’s life. Only your students will know. Then, if you desire,
have your students write about their
own heroic act. You may or may not
want to add them to your wall of heroes or make a special section on the
wall to display their own stories.
WE ALL LIKE TO HAVE SOMEONE
IN LIFE TO ADMIRE. THIS UNIT ON
HEROES WILL GIVE YOUR CLASS
PRACTICE WITH LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING AS
THEY LEARN ABOUT HISTORICAL FIGURES AND SHARE ABOUT
HEROES IN THEIR OWN LIVES. YOU
CAN CARRY THE THEME THROUGHOUT THE SCHOOL YEAR OR JUST
FOCUS ON IT FOR A FEW DAYS.
In either case, your students will be
encouraged to be thankful for the influential people in their lives and to
live more heroic lives themselves.
11
I: Ice, Ice, Baby
WHETHER IT IS WINTER AND THE
SNOW AND ICE ARE ALL AROUND
OR WHETHER IT IS SUMMER AND
YOU AND YOUR STUDENTS WOULD
RELISH SOME WAY TO COOL OFF A
BIT, ICE IS ALWAYS CLOSE AT HAND.
The thematic unit that follows explores
ice in four significantly different ways.
You can do all of these activities or
just choose those that tie in to what
your class is already studying. Either
way, your students will be shivering
with excitement.
HOW TO TEACH A
THEMATIC ESL UNIT
ABOUT ICE
1
BREAK THE ICE
An icebreaker is a fun activity
to do with your class. Here is one
you can do with either a new class
or a group that has been together
for a longer time, the more students
in the group the better. Make a list
of twenty to thirty questions for your
students to ask one another. They
can be Present Perfect questions like
“Have you ever ridden a motorcycle? Have you ever been to Europe? Have you ever taken a spin
class?” The more your class knows
each other, the more specific or unusual your questions should be. Then
give each student a blank bingo board
(five by five empty grid) with boxes
big enough to write the questions in.
Ask each student to write some of
the questions in random order on the
bingo board. They can also make up
their own questions and use them in
the blanks. Then tell your students to
exchange their boards with someone
else in the classroom. All at one time,
send your students to mingle among
the class to ask one another the
questions. When someone answers
in the affirmative, the student can
mark that square. If a student marks
five squares in a row, up and down,
across or diagonally, he should shout,
“Bingo!” and he wins that round.
Play as many rounds as you like
changing the cards that students use
and/or changing the questions in the
squares. Your class will learn many
fun and interesting facts about each
other while practicing their speaking
skills.
12
2
ICE TO EAT
Making ice cream is an easy
cooking project for your class to do,
and it does not require any special
equipment. In a small, heavyweight
zip lock bag, add ½ c. milk, ½ teaspoon vanilla and 1 ½ Tablespoons
sugar (or to taste). Seal the bag tightly.
In a large, heavyweight zip lock bag,
put 6 Tablespoons of salt with a lot of
ice. Place the smaller bag (the one
with the milk mixture) into the larger
bag (the one with the ice and salt) and
shake it about ten minutes until the
ice cream thickens. It is a very simple
process that almost anyone can do.
One way to integrate this activity into an ESL class would be to
orally give the directions for making the ice cream to your students
and have each of them follow those
directions to make his own bag of ice
cream. If your goal is a speaking activity rather than listening, make one
batch of ice cream for the class. Ask
a discussion question, and whoever
is shaking the ice cream is the only
one allowed to speak. After she has
answered, have her pass the bag to
another student who will then answer
the question. Either way, once your
ice cream has thickened enjoy it together as a class.
Just one note of warning: make
sure no one in your class has a
milk allergy before attempting this
activity.
3
ICE EXPERIMENTATION
If you are responsible for adding
science activities into your curriculum,
this activity will do just that. Stage an
experiment to examine the speed at
which ice will melt. You will need five
ice cubes, some plastic bags, salt and
other granulated materials. In this activity, your students will make predictions about which ice cube with melt
the fastest. The control cube will be
unaltered and placed on a desk to
melt. Each of the other four cubes will
have a granulated substance applied
to it. Students should predict which
ice cubes will melt the fastest. You
can have your students discuss their
predictions in pairs or have them write
the predictions down. In each of four
zip lock bags, place one of the granulated materials. Use salt in one, soil in
another, sand in a third, and a fourth
material in the last such as breadcrumbs, ground spices or baby powder. After sprinkling cubes two through
five with the granulated substances,
place each of the five ice cubes on a
desk and have your students observe
which ice cubes melt the fastest and
which take the longest. Your students
should take notes and measure the
amount of time each cube takes to
melt. Then have your students compare the actual results to their predictions. Were they right? What was the
order that the cubes melted in? If you
like, have them write a report that
discusses their predictions and the
actual results of the experiment.
4
ICE SPORTS
Ice hockey is a sport popular in
different areas of the world, but that
is not the only icy sport colder weather has to offer. Give your students
some independent research time to
learn more about one of the following
icy sports: ice hockey, ice surfing,
ice-skating, curling, ice climbing,
broomball, and bobsledding. Then
have them present the information
they have learned to the class. Each
person should take notes on their
classmates’ presentations in preparation for an ice sport quiz. After the
presentations, you should compile a
list of ten to fifteen true/false questions about ice sports and see how
well your students listened and how
much they understood.
If it is winter and the ground is snow
covered, you can take your students
outside for an Easter egg style hunt.
For an easier game, the day before
you play, freeze water tinted with
food coloring in ice trays. Then the
day of the hunt, hide the ice cubes in
the snow for your students to find. To
make a more challenging game, hide
raw white eggs among the snow and
see how many your students can find.
Be careful to get them all before you
go inside or you’ll have a mess once
the snow melts.
ICE CAN BE FUN FOR YOUR CLASS
ANY TIME OF THE YEAR.
J: Journaling in Seven
Out of the Ordinary Ways
OFTENTIMES WHEN PEOPLE
HEAR THE WORD JOURNAL THEY
THINK OF A DIARY THAT RECORDS
SOMEONE’S DAILY ACTIONS, BUT
A JOURNAL CAN BE MUCH MORE
THAN THAT.
A journal is a place to write and explore ideas, think of new things to
write about, and keep track of those
great ideas that are so fleeting.
Try some of the following activities
with your students to broaden their
understanding of what a journal is and
what it can be used for.
COLLECT
1
A journal is a great place to
keep a collection. No, not a collection of stamps or a collection of
roosters, a collection of words.
An easy place to start is to title a page
of your journal “Words I Like.” Your
students can then add words as they
learn them or encounter them. These
are not vocabulary words they need
to learn per se - they should be words
that have some sort of appeal to your
students. They may like words with an
interesting sound like okey-dokey,
onomatopoeia, or cellar. They may
collect words with meanings that they
like, for example, loved one, romance, or achievement. They may
collect phrases that are funny or interesting to them like rain cats and
dogs or a toothy grin. They may collect words that do all of these things.
Then when they write, your students
can look back on these words and
use them in their own writings. They
can also use these lists for vocabulary
study to increase their vocabulary.
2
Your students can collect
more than words in their journals:
they can collect information, too.
Have your students set aside one
page and title it with a subject that interests them. It may be a page titled
monkeys, robots, or eggs. Whatev-
words.
er the topic, have your students start
collecting information on that subject
and listing it on that page. This not
necessarily a research project. They
may encounter information about
their subjects while watching television, surfing the internet or from other
experiences they may have. At some
point, encourage your students to
use that information in their writing,
either in a fictional piece or in a report
of some kind. With all the groundwork
done, they will have easy access to
a large amount of information and will
be able to dedicate more time to writing rather than researching.
4
OBSERVE
3
Everyone today has a busy life,
and students are no exception. With
our intense schedules, we often do
not take time to just look at what is
around us. A journal is a great place to
just take a few minutes and observe
the things around us. Challenge your
students to do a one hundred
observation list. A one hundred
observation list is just what it sounds
like: one hundred observations about
one thing. One of the easiest things
to make one hundred observations
about is your hand. Since most people
are right handed, tell your students
to make one hundred observations
about their left hands. These should
not be pieces of information that they
research like the bones in the hand
or the muscle structure. They should
be qualities they are able to observe
just by looking at, listening to, feeling, smelling or tasting their hands
(of course, washing hands is recommended).
After making observations about their
hands or even instead of making
them, you can have your students
make observations about any object: an apple, a pen, their classroom.
They will be challenged to pay more
attention to what is around them as
well as put those observations into
If weather permits, another observation challenge is to go outside,
find a comfortable spot and observe
the world around you. Allow your
students some independent time to
write about the world around them.
You will be amazed at the details your
students write about what they see,
hear, smell and feel. They do not have
to contain their observations to one
spot, either. Have your students take
an observation walk either in class
or as homework. Ask them to write as
they walk or to take in all the details
and write about them when the walk
is finished. The more detail they can
give, the better.
REMEMBER
5
Many times, writers think their
journals have to contain only the experiences they encounter each day,
but a journal is also a place where a
writer can remember her past. The
personal narrative is one of the
first places to start when trying to
teach your students how to write
a fictional story. We know our own
stories better than we know anything
else, so what better place to start writing than with our own lives.
Sometimes simply starting with the
phrase “I remember” is enough to get
your students writing on and on, but
sometime they need more than this.
“I remember a time I felt proud... I
remember one time I was angry...
I remember when I was excited...”
Start your students’ memories with an
emotion. We are so closely linked with
our emotions - we remember feeling
all different kinds of ways. Moreover,
when we feel those emotions again,
we can remember what we did or
what we were thinking. These reminiscences are good for the times you
just want your students to write with-
13
out interruption and without criticism. Later, after your students have gotten their stories on to the paper, is the time to
revise, edit and adjust.
6
Closely linked to the idea of past emotional experiences is writing about people from our pasts. All of us have
people that were significant to us whether they impacted us positively or negatively. Challenge your students to remember someone from their past – perhaps someone they loved and lost, perhaps someone they wish they could get revenge on, perhaps someone they simple lost touch with but would like to find again. Have your students write a letter
to that person knowing that the letter will never reach him or her. This may free your students in a way they could not
otherwise experience and may even help them work through some difficult times of their pasts.
PLAN
7
Your students can use their journals to plan future pieces of writing. Start by explaining the words character,
setting and conflict. These terms are simple for your students if you tell them that the character is the person in a story,
the setting is where and when it happens, and the conflict is the problem that the character has to face in the story.
Give your students an example of story planning by listing a character, setting and conflict on the white board. Then
do one or two more with your students supplying the information. Then challenge your students to a five-minute race.
Have your students list in their journals as many sets of character, setting, conflict as they can in the five-minute time
limit. After the race is complete, count the examples and declare a winner. Now show your students how you can go
to that plan and determine the resolution to the conflict. Remember that the character should solve his own problem
rather than having someone else come and solve it. Now give your students five to ten minutes to go back to their sets
they made in the five minutes and add resolutions to each of them. Now have your students plan their own futures. “One
day I hope to... I will... Someday I am going to...”
YES, A JOURNAL IS A GOOD PLACE TO RECORD OUR DAILY ACTIVITIES AND THOUGHTS, BUT A JOURNAL IS SO
MUCH MORE THAN THAT.
These activities are only a few of the many creative ways you can use a journal to encourage writing in your students.
Let these be a starting place for you and your class, and look forward to the many things your students have to say.
14
K: Let’s Go Try a Kite
MOST EVERYONE HAS FLOWN A
KITE, BUT HOW MANY STUDENTS
HAVE PUT THEMSELVES INTO THE
HIGH IN THE SKY POSITION OF A
KITE?
You class will be able to say that they
have after this lesson on writing from
a high in the sky perspective.
HOW TO HAVE A ‘KITE’
LESSON ON WRITING
FROM A ‘HIGH IN THE
SKY’ PERSPECTIVE
1
LAY THE FOUNDATION
Before you jump into the high
sky view of a kite, read your students some books about kites. You
may want to use Catch the Wind!
All About Kites by Gail Gibbons or
The Great Kite Book by Norman
Schmidt.
Ask your students if they have ever
imagined what it might be like to be
a kite high up in the air. Introduce the
term “bird’s eye view” to your class.
What might they see from a bird’s
eye view outside? In the classroom?
At home? Give your students an opportunity to share times they have
seen the world from a bird’s eye view.
These times may have been on a fer-
ris wheel, in a plane, from the top
of a building or some other time they
were high in the air. You may even
want to have your students stand
on their chairs or desks to see how
the room looks different based on
your point of view. What are the
similarities when they view the room
from a high position? What are the differences?
Artists also use the term “worm’s
eye view” to describe looking at the
world from a position on the ground.
You may also want to have your class
lie on the floor on their stomachs and
observe the room that way. What are
the similarities? What are the differences?
If you like, have your students make
notes about the similarities and differences they saw from a bird’s eye
view, a normal view and a worm’s eye
view of the classroom.
2
TAKE FLIGHT
Now that your students are
thinking about the world in different
ways, have them close their eyes
and imagine what it would be like to
be a kite up in the sky. What would
they see? What could they observe?
Give your students five to ten minutes
to freewrite. Freewriting is an exercise in which the goal is to never let
your pen or pencil stop moving. If
your students know the term stream
of consciousness, freewriting is similar. For the allotted amount of time,
they should keep writing absolutely
anything that comes to mind. They
should not worry about grammar,
punctuation, spelling, getting off topic
or organization. This activity is simply
to get ideas on the paper.
Once time is up, have your students
go back and read what they have written. They may want to highlight any
phrases or ideas they wrote that they
find particularly interesting or inspiring.
They should then use these ideas to
write an organized and descriptive
piece on what it is like to see things
from a bird’s eye view. They may
write about what they see from their
high position. They may write what it
feels like to be so high in the air flying on the breezes. They may want
to imagine that they themselves are
a kite and write about their dreams
and fears. Anything is okay as long
as they are taking a high above the
world view. While your students write,
you may want to play some light and
airy music to set the mood. Flute
music or the sounds of birds in nature
would be good choices.
Once your students have completed
their pieces on kites, you may want to
repeat the activity taking the perspective of an ant on the ground.
You can display the kite pieces in your
classroom suspended from the ceiling or clipped to a clothesline strung
in the classroom. If your students
write the ant pieces, designate a bulletin board for displaying them and cut
out a simple anthill from brown paper
to decorate the board and post their
pieces in the burrows.
3
SOAR
To follow up the writing activity,
you may want to launch message
balloons as a class. Have each student write a note to the person who
will find their balloon stating their
name, the date, the school’s name
and a brief message including a request to write the postcard and place
it in the mail. Then have your students
attach a prepaid postcard addressed
to themselves. They should each attach their notes to a helium balloon,
and as a class release the balloons
together. See how many people in
class receive the postcards from people who found the balloons and make
a display to show where the balloons
were found.
Another way to round out your high
in the sky unit is to get out of the
classroom. If you are able to take a
field trip, schedule a visit to a high
place near your school. It may be a
tall building, an observation tower or
a mountaintop. Encourage your students to write about what they see
and how they feel as they observe the
world from so high up. You can also
ask them if they have changed their
ideas since writing the kite piece. Any
thoughts or feelings that they share
should be encouraged.
EVERY TEACHER WANTS HER STUDENTS TO SOAR IN THEIR EDUCATION. WHY NOT GIVE THAT FLIGHT
A LITTLE BOOST BY LOOKING
AT THE WORLD FROM A KITE’S
PERSPECTIVE.
Your students will enjoy using their
imaginations, and doing so may just
help them look at the world in a new
and interesting way.
15
L: LOL – Have Some Laughs
While Learning English
There is nothing wrong with having
a little fun as we learn. One of the
advantages with teaching English
is there are many different fun and
funny things you can do with the
language as you teach.
LET YOUR STUDENTS
HAVE SOME LAUGHS
WHILE LEARNING
ENGLISH
1
TONGUE TWISTERS
Tongue twisters are tough.
Tongue twisters are tough. Tongue
twisters are tough. Can you say that
quickly? The point of tongue twisters
is to challenge the pronunciation of the
speaker, native speaker or second language speaker. Giving your class some
time to practice tongue twisters should
help them get a few laughs out of their
studies. There are many tongue twisters you can use with an ESL class. If
you choose to, you can select a specific tongue twister to supplement
activities on a particular sound you
are teaching. For example, if you are
stressing the difference between /r/
and /l/ here is a simple tongue twister.
“Red leather, yellow leather.” If you
are stressing the pronunciation of the w
sound that many ESL students struggle
with, use “How much wood would a
wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck
could chuck wood?” How about “rubber baby buggy bumpers” when
teaching /b/ or “Sally sells sea shells
at the sea shore” when distinguish-
ing between /s/ and /sh/. If you want a
real challenge, try having your students
read portions of Dr. Seuss’ book Fox in
Socks. Whatever you use, make sure
your students understand that these
are challenging phrases even for native speakers, and assure them that it is
okay if they struggle or make mistakes
with these silly sayings.
2
JOKES
Even among native speakers of
English, humor often does not communicate across cultures, but that
is no reason you should not give your
class time to share English jokes with
one another. The best jokes will be
those that tell a story and have an unexpected punch line. Whether your students understand the jokes you have to
16
offer or not, ask them to share some of
their favorite jokes from their native languages. They may need to explain the
humor to you as you may need to explain English jokes to them, but you will
all have fun even just trying to explain
the humor to one another.
A whole genre of jokes that work well
with ESL students are knock knock
jokes. Usually the punch line is a
play on words, or a pun. For example,
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Olive.
Olive who? I love you. In this case,
olive sounds like I love. After introducing this or another knock knock joke,
introduce your students to the concept
of puns. You may use egg-cellent or
“I think a job as a shoe salesman
would be your best fit.” There are
websites available whose entire purpose is for puns. Look there for limitless ideas. Then allow your students
to share examples that they may have
encountered with puns or even share
some from their native languages.
3
LIMERICKS
Limericks are another funny
activity you can do with your students.
These may tie into a unit of poetry or
some other topic you are teaching, or
you can use them in class for a change
of pace. Explain to your students that
limericks are usually lighthearted
and often silly, and that they follow
a specific structure and rhyming
pattern. If you like, use the following.
There once was a girl with a camel
The camel was made of enamel
She ate it up quickly
Then felt rather sickly
And never again ate a mammal
Ask groups of your students to count
the number of syllables in each line,
and see if they can explain the rhyming
scheme. After they have had enough
discussion time, come together as a
class and review the structure of a limerick: lines one, two and five have
4
GAMES
Games always bring fun to the
classroom, and here are two that are
sure to have unexpected results. The
first is one that has been very popular
historically – telephone. Sit your students in a circle and whisper a sentence
to the first. That student should then
repeat what he heard in a whisper to
the next student. The pattern continues
around the circle until the last person.
The first person should tell the class the
original sentence, and then the last student should say aloud what she heard.
Students will be amused at the change
the sentence underwent as it travelled
through the class.
The second game is a writing game
but also produces unexpected results.
Arrange your class in sets of four. You
may want to have them sit in circles
or just in the rows of desks or tables.
Each person starts with a blank piece
of paper and starts a sentence at the
top. The sentence should start with “If.”
For example, a student might write, “If I
could fly...” She then folds over the top
of the paper so the next student cannot
see what she has written. Each student
should then pass the paper to the next
student and write the next phrase starting with “then.” A student might write
“then I would be king...” Students
fold over the tops of their papers and
again pass them to the next student
who writes a phrase starting with “and.”
She may write “and eat lots of ice
cream...” Students fold over the tops
of the paper for the last time and pass
to the final student who concludes the
sentence with an “until” phrase: “until
the sun goes down”. Now collect the
papers or have each group collect their
own and read the sentence as it is written. The result will be nothing you would
expect, but may sound something like
this: If I could fly, then I would be king
and eat lots of ice cream until the
sun goes down. The silliness of the
nine syllables each and rhyme with
each other while lines three and four
have six syllables and rhyme with
each other. Then challenge your stu-
completed sentence will entertain your
students while giving them practice with
the composition of clauses.
dents either individually or in groups to
write their own limericks. Give them
time to share with the class and, if age
appropriate, to illustrate their poetry.
EVERY STUDENT BENEFITS FROM
OCCASIONAL HUMOR IN THE
CLASSROOM.
M: Magical Mystery Tour
ABRACADABRA! IN JUST AN
INSTANT, YOU HAVE TRANSFORMED
YOUR ESL CLASS INTO AN AMAZING
SPECTACLE. YOU WON’T BELIEVE
WHAT IS BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES.
Your students will be amazed when
they bring a little magic into their own
lives and English lessons.
HOW TO BRING SOME
MAGIC INTO YOUR ESL
CLASSROOM
1
INVISIBLE INK
What do you get when you
combine a science experiment with
a speaking activity? Invisible ink, of
course.
This is a simple experiment with just
a few necessary materials. All you
need is some lemon juice, water, cotton swabs and paper. Explain to your
students that fruit juices contain carbon compounds (molecules made
with carbon and other elements).
When those compounds are heated, they break down and the carbon
separates from the other elements.
When it does, its natural, dark color
comes out. Allow your students to
make a mixture of lemon juice and
water and use a cotton swab to write
a secret message on the paper. It will
be invisible. They can then exchange
messages and hold them up to a light
bulb. The heat from the light bulb will
break down the carbon compounds,
and the ink will become darker. They
can now read the secret message.
Group your students together for
some discussion time after the experiment. Have them discuss what
they think would happen if they use
more water in their ink or more lemon
juice in their ink. Allow them to work
together to discover the perfect formula for invisible ink and then make
a recommendation to the class as to
the perfect formula.
2
A MAGIC LANTERN
Do your students know the
story of Aladdin and the magic lantern? Start this exercise by reading
them the story or showing them part
of the popular movie. Make sure you
include the part where the genie of-
fers Aladdin three wishes. Group your
students together to discuss what
wishes they would make if they had
three wishes. This is a good time to
use the conditional tense. “I would
wish for riches. I would wish for
fame. I would wish for love.”
Once all your students have decided
on their wishes, ask them this question. What could go wrong with that
wish if the genie were a trickster?
Then give them some more discussion time to talk about the consequences of having wishes granted
and see if they would change their
wishes at all.
After students have discussed their
wishes, have them write about those
wishes. You may want your students
to write a paragraph on each wish or
just a few sentences depending on
their age and language level. Either
way, they should write what their wish
is, why they would wish for it and what
the results of that wish would be. Are
they wishing for themselves or someone else?
You can also set up a wishing “wall”
where your students can post their
compositions or other wishes they
make later. You can keep a supply of
sticky notes handy so they can add
their wishes as they come up with
them. You may want to have a student
read one wish each day and have the
class try to determine whose wish it
was.
3
A MAGICIAN’S SECRETS
A lesson on magic is the perfect
time to have a local magician visit
your classroom and do some tricks for
your students. A professional would
be nice, but even an amateur can be
a good presenter to your ESL class.
Ask the magician to do some tricks
for your students. As they watch, they
should try to figure out how the magician performs his tricks. Have your
students discuss in groups what they
think the magician’s secrets are. After
some discussion time, bring the class
together to ask the magician if they
are correct. “Did you already have
a rabbit in your hat? Did you put
the coin between your fingers?”
They should listen carefully as the
magician either confirms or denies
their solutions and then shows them
how he performs some of his tricks.
Then challenge your students to do
their own magic tricks. Have groups of
students do some research on magic
tricks, and then give each group some
time to perform in class. They may or
may not reveal the secrets behind
their tricks to the class after their performance.
If you do not have access to a local
magician, you can also use video
from the well-known magicians
Penn and Teller. They have a reputation for explaining magic tricks and
taking down the veil of mystery. Simply show your students the beginning
where they perform the various magic
tricks, give your students time for
discussion, and then play the rest of
the clip where they explain the trick.
Your students will still get practice
with making predictions and critical thinking though Penn and Teller’s
tricks will most likely be far more complicated than those of a live magician.
4
VISIT HARRY
The most well known magician
in the world today just may be Harry
Potter of J.K. Rowling’s books. If you
have time, view one of the Harry Potter
movies in class or on a field trip. Since
Harry attends a school for magic, you
can have your students compare his
educational experiences with their
own. Show your students how to create a Venn diagram to get their ideas
on paper. Then either have them discuss the similarities and differences
of Harry’s education to theirs or have
your students write about them. You
can also have your students compare
Harry’s friends to their own or ask
them what they would do if they were
Harry in his dangerous situations.
MAGIC IS FASCINATING TO PEOPLE
FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD.
THESE ACTIVITIES MAY NOT HAVE
YOUR STUDENTS SPELLBOUND, BUT
SPENDING SOME TIME ON MAGICAL
LESSONS WILL CERTAINLY GIVE
YOUR STUDENTS SOMETHING TO
THINK ABOUT.
They will have fun practicing their listening, speaking and writing skills as
they explore the mysterious world of
magic.
17
N: Fun ESL Activities You Can
Do With A Name
“Jimmy... I mean Johnny... I mean
Jason get over here.”
Did you ever hear a similar sentence
from a parent, grandparent or teacher
as she ran down a list of all your siblings’ names before getting to yours?
Everyone has a name, even if parents
cannot remember them at times, and
what better place to start your ESL
class than with some fun activities
that use their names?
FUN ESL ACTIVITIES
YOU CAN DO WITH A
NAME
1
ACROSTIC ORIGINS
Acrostics are a fun place to start
when doing a lesson using names.
Before introducing what an acrostic
is, write your name vertically on
the white board. Then challenge
your students to think of an adjective
which describes you that starts with
each of the letters you have written.
For example, for the name Sue you
might say sweet, understanding
and energetic. Once your class has
completed the acrostic, write another
name on the board and repeat the activity. You can also use short phrases
in the acrostic instead of single words
to describe a person if you or your
class is struggling with a particular letter. This activity is also a good time
to put the English dictionary to use
by checking for entries that begin
with a specific letter. Round out the
activity by having your students write
acrostics of their own full names, and
then post them in your classroom
to give students a chance to get to
know each other a little better. You
may also want to have your students
write acrostics for other names, perhaps for a pet or family member or
for a famous person or celebrity.
2
ORIGIN OF NAMES
Many people have a story of
how they got their name. For some,
the name has been handed down
through generations in the family.
18
For others, children are named after a family friend or important person in the parents’ lives. For some,
their names are chosen because of
the meaning behind the name or the
hopes the parents have for their child.
Discussing names is a natural place
to get in some conversation practice
as your students share their stories
and ask questions of their classmates.
In groups, have your students discuss how their parents chose their
name and the story behind it. If
your students do not know the story
of their name, have them discuss
what names they have either given
pets or want to give to their future
children. Students should explain why
they chose a particular name and
what their hopes were for the recipient of that name. You can also use
this opportunity to discuss the English names your students may have
chosen to use. Ask them how they
came about using these names and
what their thoughts were behind the
selection. Just make sure that none
of your students feels criticized
about his choice of a name for either
himself or someone else. Each student should be able to share about
at least one type of name, and some
may be able to share about several.
Encourage your students to practice
their speaking as much as they can,
and give groups enough time so that
everyone has a chance to share.
3
PARTY NAMES
Not all activities about names
have to be serious. This game combines general knowledge with speaking practice, particularly practice asking and answering questions. Prepare
for the game before class by writing
names of well-known people on slips
of paper. Make sure your students will
know who these people are. To start
the game, tape one of the names to
each person in your class. After everyone has a name, your students
are free to move about the classroom asking yes/no questions of
their classmates to try to figure out
who they are supposed to be. Once
a student has determined his or her
correct identity, he can sit down. Continue until the whole class is sitting.
You can tailor this game to the goals
of your class. You can play a serious
game by giving historical names to
your students, or you can play a lighthearted game by giving very unlikely
names to unlikely students (for example, placing the name Lady Gaga
on a male student’s back). Either
way, your class will be actively participating and practicing their language skills as they play the game.
4
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER
NAME
Perhaps one of the most famous
quotes about names is Shakespeare’s
“a rose by any other name would
smell as sweet” spoken by Romeo.
Give this quotation to your students and ask if they agree. Then
have a class discussion about the following topic: does your name deter-
mine your character, or does your
name have no influence on the
person that you become. Students
are sure to have varying opinions on
the idea of a name determining who
you are. Encourage open communication among your students, and
ask each one to explain his thoughts
behind his answer. Then have your
students spend some time writing a
paragraph that either agrees or disagrees with Shakespeare’s statement. Make sure they give examples
or evidence to support their opinions.
EVERYONE HAS A NAME, AND
SOME PEOPLE HAVE MORE THAN
ONE. USE THESE ACTIVITIES ABOUT
NAMES TO HELP YOUR STUDENTS
GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER AND
THEMSELVES A LITTLE MORE AND
PRACTICE THEIR ENGLISH IN THE
PROCESS.
Do you know any great activities
around names? Or maybe some tricks
to remember each student’s name in
the first 5 minutes of the first back-toschool class? Please share them with
us online!
O: Once Upon a Time:
Fun with Fairy Tales
ONCE UPON A TIME, A DEDICATED
TEACHER WANTED HER STUDENTS
TO EXCEL IN ENGLISH.
One day, she met a great wizard who
needed her help. She gave him a peer
evaluation and in return, he shared
some fun activities with fairytales she
could do with her English students.
The teacher used these activities, and
she and her class lived happily ever
after.
ONCE UPON A TIME.
HAVE FUN WITH FAIRY
TALES IN YOUR ESL
CLASSROOM
1
SET THE STAGE
Start your fairytale themed lesson with a few fairytales from around
the world. You can use examples from
the brothers Grimm (e.g. Cinderella
or Hansel and Gretel) or something
more contemporary like Misoso:
Once Upon a Time Tales from Africa by Verna Aadema. Give your students an idea of the story’s plot and
characters, and then read it aloud to
your class. See how high their listening comprehension was with a short
true/false quiz or group discussion
questions. After your students have
answered the questions, read the story again and give them a chance to
change their answers.
Once they have heard one or two examples of fairytales, discuss what
the word fairytale means and the
characteristics of a typical fairytale.
Most will begin with “Once upon a
time” and end with “and they lived
happily ever after.” Other qualities
you should look for include that they
are made up stories and they often
teach a lesson to the reader or listener. After your students understand
the basics of a fairytale, take the discussion to a deeper level. Help your
students understand that fairytales
often portray a conflict between
opposite types of people: good
and evil, rich and poor, clever and
mean. Other characteristics often
found in fairytales are help in a magi-
cal way and a happy ending for the
main character.
If you have time and your students
have the courage to do it, break your
class into groups and give each
group a well-known fairytale. Allow your students some time to plan
a skit, and then have each group act
out the fairytale in front of the class.
This will give your students practice in
their reading comprehension as well
as their public speaking not to mention giving the rest of the class some
free entertainment.
2
MAKE A PLAN
Now that your students understand what fairytales are and what
elements they usually contain, have
them start thinking about their own
fairytales. If they were going to write
an original fairytale, what would they
say? Have each student create a
story plan which outlines what his
or her tale will be about. Your students should decide on good characters and bad characters that will
play a role in the story. They should
then determine the problem or conflict and the solution to the problem or
the resolution. If your students are not
familiar with these vocabulary terms,
explain them before the brainstorming
session.
Once each student has a plan in place,
pair them together to review the plans
with a classmate. If the other person
has any questions or thinks a part of
the story is unclear, let your students
revise their plans before they sit down
to write the whole story out.
3
WRITE ON
Now is the time for your students to use their plans to write their
fairytales. They should follow the plan
they have already laid out and make
sure that the fairytale has all the elements of this type of story. Have them
check for good and bad characters,
a beginning, middle and end, magical help and a lesson for the reader. If
your students are not at the proficien-
cy that they can write an original tale,
have them retell a fairytale that they
know, perhaps one from their native
language. Either way, your students
will get practice writing and communicating their ideas through the written
word.
4
SHARE THE LESSON
Once the fairytales are written, give each student a chance to
read his or her fairytale aloud to
the class. After each presenter, have
groups of students discuss what they
liked about the story. Also, challenge
them to look for the typical ingredients
of a fairytale. Then have the groups
compare and contrast the story to
well-known fairytales. If you have
younger students in your school, you
may want to set up a reading date
with another class so your students
can read their fairytales to the younger students.
Finally, bind the stories your class has
written into a large volume (you can
use a three ring binder) with a fanciful
cover. Title it “Once Upon an ESL
Class” or another title that you prefer. Give each student the opportunity
to illustrate his story and then make
the book available to your students
so they can read it during free reading time.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE YOUNG
TO ENJOY FAIRYTALES. NO MATTER
WHAT AGE YOUR STUDENTS ARE,
YOU CAN HAVE FUN WHILE PRACTICING LISTENING, SPEAKING,
READING AND WRITING SKILLS ALL
WITH LESSONS BASED ON FAIRYTALES AS YOUR STUDETNS LOOK AT
SOME WELL-KNOWN STORIES AND
THEN WRITE AND SHARE THEIR
OWN.
Perhaps you will find that your class,
too, will find a happily ever after.
19
P: Planning Out a Pleasing Plot.
Starting Your Students on Story
WRITE A STORY. MAKE IT THREE
PAGES, AND MAKE IT FICTIONAL.
READY? GO! THIS IS NOT THE BEST
PREPARATION FOR WRITING A
NARRATIVE.
For anyone who is writing, coming
up with an effective and well-written piece takes time and effort and
some planning at the start of the
process. Nonnative speakers will be
even more intimidated by jumping into
the cold water of story writing without
a little preparation ahead of time. Use
the following steps with your students
to help them establish the foundation
of their plot before they set to the task
of writing a fictional narrative.
PLANNING OUT A
PLEASING PLOT
1
PROCURE A PROTAGONIST
The first step in planning a plot
for a piece of fiction is deciding on
your protagonist or main character. If you were to write a personal
narrative, the protagonist would be
the writer of the story. Each of us is
the main character in our own stories.
For fictional stories, on the other
hand, the main character may be a
little more difficult to create. If your
students need help coming up with
an original character, have them start
with lists of characteristics that they
like and another list of characteristics
that they dislike in people. Write down
at least five of each. Then when creating their main characters, have your
students select two qualities that they
view as positive and one that they
view as negative.
For example, your student may decide
his main character is innovative and
courageous but is clumsy or she may
be beautiful and sophisticated but talk
too much. By including a negative
characteristic along with the positive
ones, the reader will be able to better
identify with the protagonist and your
students will avoid having a character
who it too aloof and unrelatable.
20
2
PRODUCE
A PREDICAMENT
The second step in creating plot is
to give the character a problem.
There are an infinite number of problems that a character may have, but
the key to an effective problem is to
make sure the character may or may
not be able to solve it. By bringing
the main character’s success into
question, your students will create
tension which drives plot and keeps
the reader’s interest. When deciding
on the problem for a main character,
consider his or her setting and role
in life. Is she a doctor in a third world
country? Is he a garbage collector in
Beverly Hills? Performing surgery will
be a more interesting problem for the
second character while finding a way
to make quick money may be more
challenging for the first.
3
PILE ON THE PROBLEMS
No good character solves his
problem on the first try. Encourage
your students to think of ways their
character may try to solve the problem
and fail. Does the doctor try to have
a spaghetti dinner that no one can
afford to attend? Then does she
try to sell her collection of antique
novels only to find that the people
in the village cannot read?
In each case, the attempt to solve the
problem will fail. A good rule of thumb
is to have two failing attempts to
solve the problem before the final
successful solution. The character’s
failed attempts should make the overall situation worse than it was before
he or she attempted the solution making the reader question whether the
piece will have a happy ending.
4
PLANT QUESTIONS
With each step in the plot, there
should be some question the narrative has not answered. How will
the doctor get the money? Why
does no one in the village eat spaghetti? Why has no one learned
to read? As your students plan an-
swers to the problems they present,
have them present more problems
that the reader does not yet have an
answer to. This pattern of answering
one question but bringing up another
should continue throughout the story.
When all the questions are answered,
the narrative is finished. Post it’s are a
great tool for kids (and adults) at this
stage in the writing process. By writing a short note or drawing a simple
picture on each of several post it’s,
your students can keep track of the
events in their stories and play with
the ordering and arrangement. They
can also see what the plot will look
like if they decide to remove an event
all together. These little slips of paper
give your students flexibility and make
arranging the events of a story less
intimidating.
5
POSE A POSSIBILITY
As your students are answering and planting questions, they can
use questions of themselves to help
further the plot. What would happen
if...? What if this event were the
next thing to happen?
By asking themselves questions, they
can think ahead to the next step in the
story. They should do steps four and
five at the same time while constructing their plots. With each event will
come a question that the reader will
want to have answered.
WRITING A STORY COLD IS SOMETHING VERY FEW PEOPLE CAN
DO. EVEN MOST PROFESSIONAL
WRITERS HAVE SOME SORT OF
PLAN IN PLACE AS THEY WRITE.
By plotting out the structure of a story,
your students will have a path to follow as they write. This will alleviate
stress and give them more confidence
as they express themselves through
words. By guiding your students
through this five-step process, you will
give them the foundation for a fictional
piece of writing that will be engaging
and interesting and that your students
will be proud of.
Q: Quiet Conversations: Taking a
Softer Approach to Speaking Class
ASKING YOUR ESL CLASS TO BE QUIET
ALMOST SEEMS COUNTERINTUITIVE.
AFTER ALL, ISN’T THE GOAL OF A
FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS TO SPEAK
THE TARGET LANGUAGE?
You can achieve this goal of fluent speech
even when you are doing quiet themed
activities. Take a look at the following
possibilities to get inspired to get quiet.
QUIET CONVERSATIONS.
HOW TO TAKE A
SOFTER APPROACH TO
SPEAKING CLASS
1
WHISPERING
If you have ever studied phonology, you may know that the sounds
that make up spoken words are not
the same sounds used in whispered
words. While spoken English uses a
complete set of voiced and voiceless
consonants (b versus p, g versus k, etc.)
whispered English uses only voiceless
consonants (p instead of b, k instead of
g). When a native speaker whispers, the
pronunciation of words is very different.
Give your students some practice deciphering whispered English with a little
class activity. Introduce the following
conversational pattern. In a conversation between two people, the first person asks, “Can I tell you a secret?”
with normal pronunciation. The second
responds, “Yes.” Then the first person
whispers a secret to his listener. For example, he might say, “I forgot to brush
my teeth this morning.” The listener
should then check his understanding of
what his partner said. “Did you say you
forgot to brush your teeth this morning?” If that person heard right, the first
person should say, “Shhh, yes.” If the
listener did not hear the secret correctly,
the first person should whisper, “No, I
said...” and then repeat the secret. The
two students should continue until the
listener has correctly heard and repeated the whispered secret. Then the two
speakers change roles and play again.
Students will likely find this activity very challenging, but for a
true fluency in English, speech of
this
2
type
should
be
addressed.
QUIET MUSIC
There have been many studies on the effect of classical music
on the brain. The conclusion is consistent that people are more creative
when they listen to classical music.
Give your students a chance to respond to music with either a writing
or a discussion activity. To practice
your students’ writing, dim the lights in
the room but do not turn them off completely and then put on some classical
music. You can choose whatever style
you want, or give your students some
variety by playing several selections
during the class period. Ask your students to write while they listen to the
music. They may write a fictional story
as they listen, they may write about experiences they have had in the past, or
they may write about how they feel at
the moment. The most important thing
is that your students write. Encourage
them to be creative and get in touch
with how the music makes them feel.
If you would rather practice speaking, play short selections of the music and then break your class into
groups. Each group should discuss
how the music made them feel and
why each person thinks they felt that
way. Then students can discuss if they
liked the particular selection or what
type of music they would rather listen
to. Repeat with as many musical selections as you have time for in class.
3
QUIET AS A MOUSE
A quiet unit can be a good time
to make sure your students understand what a simile is. A simile is a
phrase that compares two objects
using the word like or as. One example might be, “He is as quiet as a
mouse.” Challenge your students to
think creatively as your class makes a
list of similes. Start by brainstorming a
list of adjectives. Then, in groups, have
your students use those adjectives to
make similes. She is as loud as a
train. He is as busy as a beaver. Af-
ter the groups have finished, give them
a chance to share their creativity with
the class. Did any two groups come
up with the same similes? Are there
any consistencies across cultures?
4
NOT AS QUIET
AS YOU THINK
Our lives are very noisy. At any given
time, we are bombarded by so many
sounds that we do not even notice
them most of the time. Challenge
your students’ powers of observation by taking some time out of typical class activities to listen quietly.
For example, as I write this I can hear
the fan on my computer, the washing machine in my basement, and my
roommate breathing as well as the air
blowing through the vents in the back of
the room. Normally, we do not notice
the sounds around us all the time,
but by focusing for just a few minutes we can hear a completely new
world. If you can take your students to
an unusual place, a courtyard, a park,
some nearby woods or a stream, do so
and then take some time to listen to the
natural sounds around you. If you cannot leave the school, your students will
still benefit from this activity in the classroom. After spending a given amount
of time listening, have your students
share what they heard either through
discussion or in writing. This might also
be a good time to teach the word onomatopoeia – a word that is structured
to sound like the noise it represents.
Examples that you can give might include bang, bark, meow and crash.
JUST BECAUSE YOUR CLASS IS BEING
QUIET DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE
NOT LEARNING AND PRACTICING
ENGLISH. THESE ACTIVITIES MAY
DECREASE THE VOLUME OF YOUR
TYPICAL CLASS PERIOD BUT THEY
WILL ALSO INCREASE YOUR STUDENTS’ PROFICIENCY IN ENGLISH.
Through whispering, listening and simply taking time to let creativity flow, your
students will benefit from this quiet
class time.
21
R: Ridiculous Recipes - Giving Instructions for Crazy Concoctions
NOT EVERY PERSON LIKES TO COOK,
BUT THIS ACTIVITY WILL ENGAGE
EVEN THE LEAST INTERESTED STUDENTS, NO PREVIOUS COOKING
EXPERIENCE NEEDED. WITH THE
FOLLOWING LESSON, STUDENTS
WILL CREATE A SILLY, FICTIONAL
RECIPE AND GIVE INSTRUCTIONS
FOR COMPLETING IT.
Your students should stretch their creativity and get some laughs in the process in this not so traditional cooking
lesson.
RIDICULOUS ESL
RECIPES
1
MIS EN PLACE
When starting your lesson on ridiculous recipes, get your students in
the right mindset by providing some
cookbooks for them to browse.
You will want to select the cookbooks
based on the age of your students. The
examples you give can be whimsical
like Mud Pies and Other Recipes:
A Cookbook for Dolls or serious like
Kids’ First Cookbook: Delicious Nutritious Treats to Make Yourself. You
may also want to cut out selections
from the weekend newspaper which
often contain recipes. Allow your students to look at these books and see
the format that recipes generally take.
To make sure your students understand how to read a recipe, make copies of one recipe for the entire class or
project a recipe on your front board.
Lead a discussion with your students
in which you point out what types of
information a reader can get from a
recipe (ingredients, number of serv-
ings, sequence of steps and time
of preparation). Then allow your students to share cooking experiences
they have had in the past. You may
even want to share a cooking video
available on YouTube.
One of the most well known concoctions has to be the secret potion mixed
up by the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “Eye of newt and
22
toe of frog... Wool of bat and tongue
of dog...”
You may have to review some of the
vocabulary with your students before
they understand, but once they do ask
them how this differs from a traditional
recipe. You can also read portions of
the book Stone Soup to give your students another example of a cooked up
mixture.
2
PREHEAT OVEN
Before assigning the writing topic, brainstorm, as a class or in small
groups, real foods that you and your
students like to eat. Then tell your
students that they will make up a recipe
for a strange and imaginary food. They
can take a twist on a food that is on
your list or come up with a new idea all
together. The food that they choose to
write about should be something completely strange and not something you
would ever really make. They might be
something like pickle ice cream, hot
dog salad, or shoelace pasta. The
more creative and outlandish your students’ ideas, the better.
Now compile a list of cooking techniques that someone might find in a
real recipe. Your students can use the
cookbooks for examples such as dice,
sauté, bake, whip, steam, etc. Encourage your students to use strange
techniques in addition to standard
cooking methods when writing their ridiculous recipes, the more outlandish
the better.
3
COOK UNTIL GOLDEN
BROWN
Give your students time to write
their recipes. Make sure they understand that the ingredients should be
listed before the steps in the cooking
process and that those ingredients
should be listed in the order they appear in the instructions. If desired, allow your students to illustrate their
recipes and then share them with the
class. You can compile all the recipes
into a class book and make it available
with the other cookbooks for free reading time. Your students should have
fun as they stretch their imaginations
and creativity when writing their recipes.
After writing their ridiculous recipes,
you can repeat the writing exercise by
having students write out real recipes for foods that they know how to
cook. You can even give them an opportunity for public speaking by letting
them demonstrate their recipes in front
of the class. It may also give you and
your class a free lunch which is sure to
lift everyone’s spirits.
Take it to the next step by writing process essays. Your students can use
either of their recipes, but this time
write them in essay format rather than
recipe format.
THESE RIDICULOUS RECIPES ARE
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUR STUDENTS TO STRETCH THEIR CREATIVITY TO THE LIMIT. BY COMBINING
SILLY INGREDIENTS WITH BIZARRE
COOKING TECHNIQUES, YOU WILL
HAVE A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS WITH
YOUR CLASS.
The practical benefits will allow your
students to read and follow a traditional recipe, too. Who knows? There may
be a future chef among you.
S: Savvy Senses It’s All About Observation
THE KEY TO BEING A GOOD WRITER
IS HAVING GOOD OBSERVATION
SKILLS.
How can you write about the world
around you if you do not first notice
it? By encouraging your students to
heighten their observation skills, you
are half way to improving the quality
of their writing.
HOW TO HAVE A
‘SAVVY SENSES’ ESL
LESSON
1
THE FABULOUS FIVE
Most people know that humans have five senses, but for ESL
students trying to express what they
take in from these senses can be a
challenge. Start by writing the five
senses across the top of your
white board (hearing, touch, smell,
sight, taste) and ask your students
to explain what each one is. Now
that they know the vocabulary for the
senses themselves, list under each
one words that relate to that sense.
Ask your students to volunteer words
that they already know.
For example, under smell you might
write sniff, nose, odor, scent or other related words. Under sight, your
students might volunteer the words
vision, look, appearance, watch
or stare. Write down whatever words
your students offer, and then add
some more of your own. It is always
beneficial when you can introduce
new vocabulary in some tangible context, and learning groups of words is
one way to do that, so take advantage
of this vocabulary activity to teach
your students some new sensory
words. Think along the lines of different textures or obscure colors when
coming up with the words.
You might also want to read your
class some books about the five
senses. You can use My Five Senses or The Five Senses or any number of others. After reading these
books, allow your students to add
more words to their vocabulary lists.
You can keep these lists posted in
your classroom or ask your students
to copy them into a notebook and add
to them throughout the year. Either
way, they will have an increased vocabulary bank to draw from and know
where to look when writing sensory
details.
2
SPIN THE DETAILS
Now that your students are familiar with what the five senses are
and they have some specialized vocabulary to talk about them, it is time
to start using them for observation.
Tell your students that they are going
to do an observation exercise. As
part of the exercise, they will create a
sensory web. They should begin by
selecting an object to observe. It
can be something in the classroom or
something at home.
An apple is a good object to use, but
your students can also use items such
as their hand, their desk or a book.
Whatever object they choose, they
should write that object in the center
of their page.
Next, your students should draw five
spokes coming out from what they
have written in the center of the page.
At the end of each spoke, they will draw
a circle in which they will write their
sensory observations. They should label the circles “looks like, feels like,
tastes like, sounds like and smells
like.” Then give them plenty of time
to make their observations and write
notes in the circles. You may want to
set a minimum of tem observations for
each spoke. However, warn your students that they should not taste anything without permission since putting
foreign objects in their mouths could
be harmful. After completing the web,
you may want students to share with
partners the observations that they
made. This will give them speaking
practice as well as help them formulate complete thoughts before they
write their complete descriptions.
3
ILLUMINATION
Now is the time for your stu-
dents to write their descriptions.
Encourage them to use as much detail as possible but not to name the
object that they are describing. They
can use the word “object” whenever
they need to refer to what they are
describing in their writing. Also, challenge them to use some of the vocabulary that you listed on the board
earlier. They should try to use variety
in their word choice as well as give
thorough descriptions.
When your class is done writing, collect their pieces and take turns reading the descriptions in front of the
class. Challenge your students to
guess what the object is that is described in the paper. Award a simple
prize to anyone who guesses correctly
and the one who wrote those details.
Wrap up your observation lesson by
playing a game with your students.
Have them eliminate one of their
senses and try to guess objects using the other senses. You can place
objects in paper bags for them to feel,
play sound clips for them to listen to,
or provide simple liquids dabbed on
cotton balls for them to smell (vanilla
extract, hand soap, vinegar or milk
just to name a few). See who can get
the most answers right among your
class. This will provide a whimsical
conclusion to your observation challenge.
OBSERVATION IS KEY TO PRODUCING STRONG WRITING. IF YOUR
STUDENTS ARE ABLE TO OBSERVE
THE WORLD AROUND THEM THEY
WILL BE ABLE TO BETTER ELABORATE THEIR WRITING. IF THEY
CAN BETTER ELABORATE THEIR
WRITING, THEY WILL KEEP THE
READER’S ATTENTION AND MAKE
THEIR AUDIENCE WANT TO READ
MORE.
Taking some time to focus on observation is a first step to getting your
students to write strong, descriptive
language. Have fun while you do so,
and your students will be more likely
to write descriptively in the future.
23
T: Top Ten Count Down: How To
Teach A ‘Top 10’ ESL Lesson
10..., 9..., 8..., 7..., 6..., 5..., 4..., 3..., 2...,
1..., BLASTOFF! CAN YOU PICTURE
THE EXCITING MOMENT WHEN
THE SPACESHIP THRUSTS ITSELF
INTO THE SKY HEADED FOR LANDS
UNKNOWN? THIS COUNTDOWN,
LIKE ANY OTHER, CREATES EXCITEMENT AND DRAMATIC TENSION. WE
ALL KNOW THAT THE BIG EVENT
IS COMING WHEN THE SPEAKER
FINALLY GETS TO NUMBER ONE.
In the following activities, your students will think creatively as they write
and present their own countdowns.
HOW TO TEACH A ‘TOP
TEN COUNTDOWN’ ESL
LESSON
1
THREE...
2
TWO...
There are a variety of events
that use a countdown, so showing your students pictures of these
events will get them thinking along
the right lines. You can show videos
of a rocket launching or a building
preparing for implosion. You may
also want to show the countdown
before a race, especially if the Olympics will be held any time soon. You
could also show a clock ticking down
Once your students understand
the purpose and structure of a top 10
list, it is time to start thinking about
what they will write. As a class, brainstorm a list of topics that they could
use to write a top 10 list. They may
be topics dealing with language learning like the top 10 reasons to study
Superbowl.
be more general topics that anyone
might relate to like top 10 pets, top
at the end of an important sporting
event like the Stanley Cup Final or the
You will need to practice the countdown with your class since numbers
are always a challenge in a second
language. Though counting from 1 to
10 may seem mundane to your students, counting backwards from 10
to 1 will likely be a challenge no matter what level their fluency is. If counting from 10 to 1 is too easy, or if you
are just looking for more of a challenge
for your class, try counting backwards
from one hundred. Warn your students
before you start that if they get stuck to
jump back in whenever they can.
After watching some countdowns and
practicing counting, it is now time to
get your students in the mindset
for writing their own top ten lists.
Show them examples of top ten lists
from other sources. For younger stu-
24
dents, you can use a top 10 from a
children’s magazine or make one
up yourself. For older students, use a
video of Dave Letterman who is very
well known for his comedic top ten’s.
After listening to the examples, make
sure your students understand the
purpose of the top 10 list. Make sure
they understand that there is a theme
to each top 10 list and that all the items
on the list relate to that theme. Also,
point out that the items are arranged
in order of importance with ten being the least important and one being
the most important. They should also
understand that when presenting a
top 10 list, the writer should start with
number ten and countdown to number
one and the most significant example
of the set.
English, the top 10 most interesting
English words, or the top 10 ways
to get to English class. Or they may
10 ways to get rid of a younger
brother, or top 10 snack foods. Dur-
ing this process, encourage your students to think creatively and not to
criticize another’s ideas. Remind them
that the goal of brainstorming is to
compile as large a list as possible and
not to list practical items only.
Once you have a list of topics, you can
either assign one to your students or
allow them to choose their own. Coming up with the 10 examples may be
easier to do in small groups than individually. Either way, have your students write each of 10 examples on
an index card. Help them understand
that at this point they are only thinking
of the examples and that they will arrange them in order of importance after
they have all ten. If you have your stu-
dents write these examples on index
cards or scraps of paper rather than in
list format, it will be easier for them to
arrange them for their final lists. Once
they decide on the final order, have
your students write their lists. Each list
should start with a title and then count
down to the number one answer.
3
ONE...
Now that your students have
written their lists, give them a chance
to do some speaking practice. Have
each group read their top 10 list in
front of the class. When reading, they
should be dramatic and build tension
until they end with the number one
reason. Once they have finished, encourage the class to ask questions
of the presenters. They may ask why
they chose the items that they did, why
they did not include a particular example, or why they arranged them in the
order that they did. Students should
answer the questions as best as they
can.
You can extend the Top 10 Lesson
beyond these activities in two ways.
First, you may take the concept of a
top ten list into subject areas that you
may also be teaching. You may ask
your students to list the top ten cities
in the province by population as a
social studies lesson, for example.
For older students, you can also extend this countdown idea to writing
a five-paragraph essay. In this basic
type of essay, the three examples that
your students give to support their thesis should also be arranged in order
of importance with the most important
example appearing last. You should
also help your students write an introduction as well as a conclusion to
round out their essay.
LISTENING TO OR WRITING A TOP 10
COUNTDOWN IS FUN.
By doing this activity with your class,
you will help them think critically and
logically but also have fun in the process.
U: Underwater and Under Earth
Adventures
DARK, DAMP AND QUIET? DIRTY OR
WET? WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE TO
LIVE UNDER THE GROUND OR UNDER
THE WATER?
If you have already challenged your
students to think like a kite high in the
air, this underwater and under earth
adventure is the next step. Even if you
have not, imagining what it would be like
deep in the earth will be fun for your students and get them writing creatively.
UNDERWATER AND
UNDER EARTH
ADVENTURES IN YOUR
ESL CLASSROOM
1
GET EQUIPPED
Are your students young enough
to enjoy a dance party? If so, play one
or two songs that describe what it is
like to be deep underwater. You can
use “Under the Sea” from The Little
Mermaid or “Octopus’s Garden” by
the Beatles. Let your students listen to
the music and move their way around
the room pretending they are underwater. To set the scene even further, post
pictures around your room of life under
the water or under the earth. If your students are too old to dance, give them
copies of the lyrics and have them read
along with one of the songs still imagining what it would be like to be there.
Once they have imagined themselves there, ask your students what
it might be like to be deep under the
water or deep under the earth. Encourage your students to use all their
senses when they picture themselves
in one of the places. How does it
feel? Cold? Damp? Can they hear
animals or water moving around
them? Is it dark, or can they see?
Can they smell anything? Make a
class list of the sensations your
students imagine it would be like
underwater. Make a second list
of what it would be like deep under the earth. Your students can use
these lists as a resource later when
they write about these environments.
Now work on their listening skills by
reading some books about these un-
der the surface locations. You might
want to use Exploring the Deep,
Dark Sea by Gail Gibbons or Under
the Ground by Claude Delafosse. You
can also ask your students if they have
had any experiences in these places
and allow them to share with the class.
Add to your class descriptive lists as
new ideas come to your students.
2
DIG DEEPER
At this point, your students should
have some idea what the depths of
earth and sea might be like. Now they
will write about one place or the other.
Explain to your students that they
will write a descriptive piece of writing. That means that they will be describing the depths of either the sea or
the earth. They can approach the subject two different ways. They can imagine that they are an explorer or scientist or another person who is visiting or
exploring the deep places. On the other hand, they might choose to pretend
they are an inhabitant of the deep sea
or the deep earth, a fish or a mole for
example, and write from that creature’s
perspective. Have your students write
one or more paragraphs and then illustrate if desired. They may find the writing easier if you allow them to consult
with a small group as they write, and
the group will also help them get some
conversation practice at the same time.
You can design a bulletin board to
display the written pieces and illustrations easily. Along the top boarder
of your designated area, draw the surface of the earth and a shallow band
of what one may find beneath it: plant
roots, rocks or animal burrows. At the
bottom of the designated area, draw
the ocean floor and a band of what you
might find at the bottom of the ocean:
plants growing in the sand, fish, shells
or coral. Use the space in the middle of
the area to display what your students
have written and illustrated. If you like,
you can post the underground pieces
toward the top of the blank area and
the underwater pieces toward the bottom. You can also bring art into the curriculum with an easy craft project that
makes fish and post them on the wall
as well. If you lack the wall space for a
large display, compile the pieces your
students have written into class books
that they can read during their free
reading time. You can assemble one
book about being under the earth and
another about being under the sea.
3
VISITORS AMONG US
To take the activity even further,
ask your students to find pictures
of special tools that people use under the water and under the earth.
You might want to give them some old
magazines to look through for this activity. Post these pictures around your
classroom to set the under the surface
mood. You might want to include pictures of scuba gear, flashlights, hard
hats, shovels, rope, gloves, cameras or any of many other possibilities.
This is also a perfect opportunity to invite a guest speaker to your class.
You can have a miner speak to them
about working under the earth, or you
might want someone with experience
scuba diving to talk to your class about
the deeps of the oceans. Either way,
prepare the students by having them
write questions for the presenter the
day before that person comes. Have
your special guest give a short presentation to the class and then allow
your students to ask any questions
he or she did not already answer. Afterward, you can have your students
compare and contrast how they imagined the depths would be with what
your guest knows from experience.
CHILDREN LIKE TO PLAY IMAGINATIVE GAMES, SO WHY NOT USE
THEIR IMAGINATION TO FURTHER
THEIR ENGLISH STUDIES. WHEN
THEY PICTURE THEMSELVES DEEP
IN THE EARTH, YOUR STUDENTS WILL
LEARN NEW VOCABULARY AND GET
PRACTICE USING SENSORY DETAILS
IN THEIR WRITING.
If you can bring a guest speaker
in your class will have even more
fun. In any case, their imaginations will be stretched as they live
under the surface in their minds.
25
V: Valentine’s Day Any Day
WHEN YOU HEAR THE WORD
‘VALENTINE’, DO YOU THINK OF
HEARTS, CANDY AND CARDS? DO
YOU THINK ABOUT THOSE SAME
THINGS WHEN YOU HEAR FEB. 14?
WHO SAYS VALENTINE’S DAY IS THE
ONLY TIME TO TALK ABOUT LOVE?
WE CAN TELL THE PEOPLE WE CARE
ABOUT HOW WE FEEL ANY DAY OF
THE YEAR.
Don’t wait until Valentine’s Day to let
your students express how they feel
about someone close to them with the
following love-ly activities.
VALENTINE’S DAY ANY
DAY. HOW TO HAVE
A LOVE-THEMED ESL
LESSON
1
LOOKING IN
There are countless books
about love that appeal to young children. These books may address romantic love, but more likely they will
show love for one’s friends and
family. You probably already know
which ones are your class’ favorites,
so read them again to get in the mood
for love. You can also ask your students to bring in books from home
that deal with the topic of love.
If they are written in the students’ native language, ask for as much translation as the child can give or just
show the pictures to your class and
guess together what the story might
be.
Along with all the books, many songs
address the topic of love. Play selections from some songs about love
with your class. You might want to use
“All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles or some other piece that appeals
to the age group you teach. There are
countless songs about romantic love,
but try to find other examples for your
students.
You can also have them talk about
different kinds of love in small
groups. Have your class brainstorm
all the different kinds of love that
they can think of, for example roman-
26
tic love, friendship love, parental love,
brotherly love, etc.
As a final example of love, bring in
a selection of cards that express different types of love. You can include
romantic cards, but be sure to have
examples of friendship and family in
some of your cards. Ask your students
if they notice any common phrases
throughout the cards. Are there any
phrases they see multiple times? If
so, make a list and talk about what
type of love that expression is used
for.
2
SPEAKING OUT
After your class has talked
about the generalities of love, ask
your students to think about someone specific that they love. It can be
a parent, relative or friend. Group
students and allow them to share with
each other some information about
that person. They may want to explain
how they know that person, what
makes them care for that person, and
a favorite memory of that person. Allow your students to ask questions of
one another. Once your students are
almost finished, have each person
talk about what that person likes.
Using the information from the discussion time, your students should
design a card for the person they
have been talking about. They can
think about colors and hobbies that
the person likes. Have your students
write a practice draft on regular paper.
They may want to model their cards
after some of the ones you showed
your class. Make sure the cards are
available to your students when they
are planning their own. Once each
person is satisfied with what he or
she wrote, have your students make
a final draft on a folded piece of card
stock. They can then decorate the
card with pictures and art materials.
Let your students share their cards
with each other in their small groups.
Students will enjoy getting a look at
the personalized card since they know
so much about the recipient from the
discussion time. Then provide your
students with envelopes and show
them the correct way to address
them. If possible, give each student a
stamp and mail the cards. If your students have chosen to write to loved
ones out of the country, you may want
to send a letter home explaining that
the class made personalized cards
and that Mom and Dad should mail
the card to the appropriate person.
Ask your students to let the class
know if they get any response from
their everyday-valentine. You may
even want to make a chart or graph
that shows how many responses the
class received.
VALENTINE’S DAY IS A FUN OCCASION FOR YOUR STUDENTS, BUT
YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL
FEBRUARY TO LET YOUR STUDENTS
EXPRESS THEIR LOVE. GIVE THEM
AN OPPORTUNITY AT AN UNEXPECTED TIME OF THE YEAR TO
SHOW SOMEONE THAT THEY CARE.
AFTER ALL, LOVE IS ALL WE NEED.
W: Weather Caster for a Day
NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE,
NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE
FROM, EVERYONE KNOWS
ABOUT WEATHER. MOST PEOPLE
EVEN HAVE FAVORITE TYPES OF
WEATHER.
Some people like the hot sunny days
of summer. Others like the cool crisp
air of autumn. Still others love the
adventurous possibilities that come
with the year’s first snowfall. Whatever type of weather your students
are fond of, they will enjoy acting as
weather forecaster for a day in this fun
filled weather themed unit.
HOW TO USE WEATHER
IN YOUR CLASSROOM
1
THINK ABOUT IT
Get your students thinking about
the weather in different ways. You
may want to share some books that
talk about the weather such as What
Will the Weather Be? by Lynda Dewitt or How’s the Weather? by Melvin Berger. Your students may have
other books they like that mention
or discuss weather conditions. Encourage them to share these books
and why they like them. As you finish
reading about weather, drop a little
tune on the same subject. Kids like to
sing, and there are songs about the
weather that they probably already
know. They might enjoy singing “It’s
Raining, It’s Pouring” or “You Are
My Sunshine.” You can even make
up simple songs about the weather by
taking a common melody (like “Mary
Had a Little Lamb” or “Row, Row,
Row Your Boat”) and writing a simple set of new lyrics. Your students
may even take to the challenge if you
explain the concept to them.
After reading and singing, show
your class some clips of weather
forecasters giving their daily message. You will want to have a variety
of newscasters, and make sure you
have both males and females for your
class to see. Discuss with your students the similarities and differences
between the people. Ask your students what they liked about the newscast and what they would change.
Then take some time to talk about the
different symbols they used in the programs to represent different types of
weather. As a class, brainstorm different types of weather and decide
on graphics to use for each type. You
do not have to use the same ones that
they use in the videos. In fact, keeping a simple representation for different types of weather will be better for
your students. If you have calendar
time every day, your existing set may
already have a set of symbols for different types of weather that you can
use with your class.
2
TALK ABOUT IT
Now that your students are familiar with weather forecasters, explain to them that each of them will
make a weather report similar to the
ones you watched as a class. Have
each person first decide what type of
weather he or she would like to present.
Then group your students by those
types of weather: put all the sunny
weather students together, all the
rainy weather students together, etc.
In these groups, ask your students to
think about different words they know
that talk about this kind of weather.
Give each group some weather books
and newspapers to use as references
for additional words. Have each group
make a list, and you may want to offer
some additional words as well.
This is also a good time to introduce
your class to the thesaurus. By looking up one weather word, the group
will find similar words that they may
also be able to use in each of their
forecasts. Then give each student an
opportunity to share with his group
some things that he might say in his
presentation. The other students in
the group should give him some feedback and then take their turns.
In preparation for the presentation,
each student should draw a picture of
the weather he or she will present. If
you have butcher paper or any other
large sheets available, have your students draw on these and then use
them as a backdrop for the presentation. Allow each student to create his
own backdrop for the presentation,
and encourage him to use some of
the symbols that your class decided
upon for weather symbols.
3
WRITE ABOUT IT
Before giving the presentation,
each student should write out some of
the things she would like to say. She
can use the feedback she got from
her group earlier to write out the best
weather forecast that she can. If possible, make others resources available to your students such as maps
and computers so they can research
the weather accurately. Also, point out
that weather forecasters are generally
upbeat and pleasant, even when the
weather is less than ideal. Have your
students write out their weather reports in this friendly and informative style and then get ready for a
presentation in front of the class.
4
PRESENT IT
The time has finally come for
your students to give their weather
presentations. Give each student
some time in front of the class with his
backdrop to talk about the weather.
Record each presentation to use later.
After everyone in class has presented, ask the class which report was
most informative. Which was most
entertaining? Which was most
original?
Next time you have an opportunity to
talk with your students one on one,
show each person his broadcast and
discuss areas he needs to improve
and what strengths he showed in the
presentation.
GIVING EACH OF YOUR STUDENTS
AN OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE HIS OR
HER OWN WEATHER FORECAST
WILL BE A GREAT CHANCE TO WORK
ON PUBLIC SPEAKING WHILE ALSO
LEARNING ABOUT THE WEATHER.
YOU CAN FOLLOW THIS ACTIVITY WITH A SCIENCE UNIT ON THE
WEATHER AS WELL.
Weather is a topic that everyone can
relate to which makes it a good subject for use as a class presentation.
Your students will have fun with their
presentations while having many opportunities to practice their speaking
skills.
27
X: X-Ray Vision:
What Will You See?
IF YOU HAVE EVER READ A
SUPERMAN COMIC, YOU WILL
PROBABLY UNDERSTAND SOME OF
THE APPEAL X-RAY VISION HAS FOR
PEOPLE OF ALL AGES.
We are intrigued by the idea of looking inside something or someone and
seeing what is really going on beyond
the mysterious outside barrier.
These x-ray themed activities will
give your students a chance at x-ray
vision, both imagined and authentic,
and it will give them lots to talk about.
X-RAY VISION LESSON
FOR YOUR ESL
CLASSROOM
1
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK
Depending on the age of your
students, they may have had little experience with x-rays. Especially for
younger classes, x-rays may seem
like a frightening thing, and you will
want to help them understand the
process of taking an x-ray so they
can appreciate the science behind the
unusual photos. You can get some
books about x-rays from your library
and make them available for your
class to read during free reading time.
They won’t be as knowledgeable as
an x ray technician but good enough
for class. You might want to include
Bones by Stephen Krensky or the
Mysterious Rays of Dr. Rontgen
by Beverly Gherman.
Then before starting the other activities in the unit, read these stories
aloud to your class. If possible, you
can also bring in actual x-ray films for
your class to look at. When your students see that they are pictures of the
bones inside a person, they may feel
less frightened.
Viewing x-rays as a class is also a
good opportunity to review some body
part vocabulary. For more advanced
students, especially those at the college level, you may want to teach them
some words for the major bones in the
body. You can include the skull, ribs,
28
sternum, humerus, pelvis, radius,
femur, patella, tibia and fibula. You
can find a diagram of these bones on
the Internet. If you give your students
the new vocabulary words and a bone
diagram, see if they can guess which
bones belong to which words.
After this introduction to x-rays, move
on to talking about them.
2
TELL ME ABOUT IT
There may be some students in
your class who have had x-rays done
for various reasons. Encourage those
students to share their stories with the
class and allow their fellow students
to ask questions. Then start a discussion among the class. Asking questions like the following, you can help
your students use their imagination
and also see the advantages to scientific advancement like the x-ray.
If you could look inside the body,
where would you want to look?
Why would you want to look
there?
What do you think you would
see?
Have you ever had a medical test
that looked inside the body? Tell
your group about it.
How can these tests help doctors
help their patients?
What would you like to know
about the human body?
Why do you want to know that?
What are some questions you
would ask a doctor who could tell
you about those places?
This activity would work well with partners or in groups. After the discussion
time, you can ask someone from each
group to share some of the answers
that group discussed. This may be
a good opportunity for you to learn
about your students and their families.
Someone may share some personal
information you did not know, and this
information might be important especially if someone in the family is having a medical struggle.
3
I’M PUZZLED
Now that your class has some
shared knowledge, make a game
of this new science by showing
your students portions of x-rays.
Then challenge your class to name
the body part in the x-ray. Since you
reviewed the major parts of the body
and specific bone vocabulary earlier,
this exercise will give your students a
chance to use the worlds they recently learned. You may also want to extend this activity by showing pictures
of organs in the body (illustrations are
preferable to actual photos for younger children) and have your students
guess what the body part is. This may
provide an opportunity to introduce
even more vocabulary to your class.
For a more fun alternative, give your
students a laugh by playing the
classic game Operation. In this
game, students use tweezers to carefully lift out “bones” from the body of a
patient. If they hit the edge of the body,
a buzzer goes off. The game does not
use real names of bones, but uses
puns that include body parts. Some
of the bones in Operation include the
funny bone, the adams apple, the
spare rib, and the Charlie horse.
You can use this game as a jumping
off point to talk about puns that include body parts. See which ones
your class already knows and introduce them to a few more. You can
also ask for expressions in their native languages that use body parts. If
students know, have them share the
origins of those expressions.
If you are really looking for something entertaining for your students
to change up the normal class routine, provide a screening of Osmosis Jones. This animated movie
starts Bill Murray and tells the story
of a white blood cell trying to save
Murray from a virus. Please note, this
movie may not be good for all classes,
so your best bet is to preview the film
before showing it to your class.
4
FURTHER RESEARCH
You can take the idea of looking inside the body further with a research assignment for your students. Have
groups look up information on the different types of tests that allow doctors to see inside a patient’s body.
They should include x-rays, CAT scans, ultrasounds and MRI’s. Have a group of four investigate one of each of the
tests. Then take one person from each group and put them together to share the information their group learned. Your
students should make a chart that compares and contrasts the different medical tests.
For a final treat, bring someone in from the outside. This unit is a logical place to invite a guest speaker to class. If
you can, have a medical technician or doctor come and speak to your class about the advances in medicine and how
these tests help patients. You may want your students to take notes on the presentation and then ask prepared questions of your guest. If you really want to challenge your students, give them a true/false quiz on the information your
guest speaker presents to test their listening skills.
THE HUMAN BODY IS AN AMAZING AND MIRACULOUS CREATION THAT SCIENCE ENABLES US TO UNDERSTAND
MORE AND MORE EACH PASSING YEAR. YOUR STUDENTS ARE SURE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THEIR OWN BODIES
AND HOW MEDICAL SCIENCE IS WORKING TO KEEP THEM HEALTHY AND SAFE THROUGH THESE X-RAY THEMED
ACTIVITIES.
You may even inspire one of your students to explore the world of medicine in his or her future.
29
Y: Younger Years:
Talking About the Past
No matter how old your students
are, they have a past filled with
memories. Talking about past
events is a daily occurrence for
most people, and it is therefore very
important for your ESL students to
know how to talk about their pasts.
YOUNGER YEARS.
HOW TO REVIEW PAST
TENSES IN YOUR ESL
CLASSROOM
1
THE SIMPLE PAST
The simple past is used to communicate a past event that began and
ended in the past. This event is often
a onetime occurrence like a trip or an
activity. I drove to Niagara Falls.
She flew to Florida. They bought
a house. Remind your students to
form the simple past by using the past
participle form of the verb (-ed form).
Once everyone is clear on when to
use the simple past and how to form
it, it is time to practice. Ask your students to think of one thing they did
last year. This event might be a trip
that they took or a movie that they saw.
Have your students share these events
with a partner. You can show them how
to preface their statement with, “Last
year...” After each pair has shared two
or three events from the previous year,
show your students how to identify
even later times. Explain to them that
“The year before last...” refers to a time
two years ago, and help them understand that for more time than two years
they should say “Three years ago...
four years ago...” etc. Encourage your
students to share events that they remember from certain years by using
this time structure. Once the conversation begins to slow, it is time to move to
the past progressive tense.
2
THE PAST PROGRESSIVE
Your students have mastered the
simple past, and now it is time to move
on to the past progressive. The past
progressive is used to talk about an action that was in progress at one specific
point in the past and continued after a
second event occurred. The event in
30
progress may be something short term
like reading a book or studying, or it
might be something long term like living in a foreign country or studying a
particular subject. When using the past
progressive, your students will have to
relate the event in progress to a second event. To form the past progressive, students should use the past form
of “be” with the progressive or –ing
form of the verb. To practice this tense,
give your students a list of specific
points in time or have them brainstorm as a class to list some events.
Your list should include events like New
Year’s Eve last year and specific points
in time like ten o’clock last night. Have
your students practice forming sentences starting with the specific event
and using the past progressive tense of
the main verb. For example, “On new
year’s eve last year I was waiting in
Times Square.” You should also review with your students the appropriate
prepositions to use with past times: in
for a year, on for a day, at for a time.
Then let students share their past experiences with their partners using the
appropriate time preposition and the
past progressive tense.
3
THE PAST PERFECT
After your students are comfortable with the past progressive and
understand when to use that tense, it
is time to move on to the past perfect.
The past perfect is different from the
past progressive because in the past
perfect, one action was completed in
the past before a second event also in
the past. The past perfect is formed by
using the past of the verb “have” paired
with the perfect form (your students
may know this as the –ed form or the
third form) of the main verb. Give your
students some time to think about
the events that they listed in the last
activity and to identify some events
that they completed before those
listed events occurred. For example,
your students may share a statement
like the following with their partner:
at ten o’clock last night I had finished my homework. “In January,
I had already studied Thanksgiving traditions” is another possibility.
They will continue to use prepositions
of time, but additionally you may want
to encourage your students to use the
adverb “already” when using the past
perfect tense. Point out that “already”
should be placed between the auxiliary
verb (had) and the main verb in their
sentences such as, “On Tuesday I
had already seen that movie.”
4
THE PAST PERFECT
PROGRESSIVE
The final past tense in your comprehensive review will be the past perfect
progressive. This tense is used to communicate an event that was in progress
at one particular point in the past but
may not have continued past a second event in the past. It also stresses
the length of time the first event was in
progress. Students will form this tense
by using the past form of “have” with the
perfect form of “be” and the progressive
form of the main verb. For example, ”I
had been studying” is the past perfect
progressive form of study. You will want
to highlight to your students that they
can use “for” followed by a length of
time after the main verb to indicate how
long the event had been in progress.
They should follow this clause with a
dependent clause starting with “when”
to identify the second event. For example, I had been studying for two
hours when you called. The verb in
the dependent clause should take the
simple past. To practice this tense,
have your students list what they did
yesterday and the times they did them.
Have them compare the events of their
days with one another. They can then
talk about each of their days in reference to their partners. You should encourage statements like, “I had been
sitting in class for two hours when you
woke up,” or “I had been at the cafeteria for thirty minutes when you arrived.”
A PERSON’S PAST IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF WHO THEY ARE.
REVIEWING VERB TENSES WHILE
TALKING ABOUT THE PAST WILL
HELP YOUR STUDENTS STRENGTHEN
THEIR GRAMMAR SKILLS AS WELL AS
SHARE A PIECE OF THEIR LIVES WITH
THEIR FRIENDS.
Z: Creating a Paper Zoo
in Your Classroom
EVERY CHILD HAS EITHER BEEN
TO THE ZOO OR DREAMED ABOUT
GOING THERE. KIDS LOVE ANIMALS,
AND THOSE ANIMALS ARE A GREAT
LEARNING OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUNG
PEOPLE.
As teachers we love to take our classes
on learning field trips, but finances and
location do not always make it easy to
make those trips happen.
This year, bring your class on a stayin field trip by creating a paper zoo
in your classroom. Your students will
have the same opportunities to learn
about the animals and will get language
practice in the process.
HOW TO CREATE A
PAPER ZOO IN YOUR ESL
CLASSROOM
1
GETTING IN THE MINDSET
Many of your students have probably had an opportunity to go to the zoo
in once city or another. Ask for a raise
of hands to see how many children
remember a trip to the zoo. Ask any or
all of them to share what they remember
about the experience.
Then give your class some common
ground by reading one or two books
about the zoo. You may want to use My
Visit to the Zoo by Aliki or The Tiger
Has a Toothache by Patricia Lauber or
any others that your students are familiar with and enjoy.
After reading, start a list of all the animals a person might see at the zoo.
You can ask groups of three or four to
make their own lists and then compile
the lists to make one large classroom list
of possible zoo animals.
To the students who shared a zoo memory, ask what information they learned
about the animals there. Also, ask how
they learned that information. Starting
with the information your class gave,
brainstorm a list of what information a
visitor to the zoo might like to have.
Your class may decide a visitor might
like to know what an animal’s natural
habitat is like, what an animal eats
and how it gets its food, how many
babies an animal has and how it
cares for them as well as if the animal has any natural predators. As
you think about what information a person might want to know about a zoo animal, start a list of unfamiliar vocabulary
words on the board and encourage your
students to copy them into their notebooks. You may want to include words
such as habitat, prey and predator,
zookeeper, visitor or any other words
that may come up during your discussion. Your students will use these words
later when they make their own zoo.
2
CREATE THE ATMOSPHERE
Once your class has talked about
the kind of information a zoo visitor might
want to know, have them think about
how the visitors might learn that information. How have they learned
about different places they have visited?
Whether it is a zoo or some other point
of interest, visitors get information in
many ways. These ways include signs,
drawings, maps and workers at the location. Tell your students that they are
going to create a paper zoo in the classroom, and they will need to include all
these types of information for the visitors
who will be coming.
For the zoo, each person in the class
will have two responsibilities. First,
each person will be part of an information group. The information groups will
be responsible for creating signs for the
zoo and maps that visitors will receive.
Divide your class into two groups and
assign one information responsibility to
each group. It may be helpful to provide
your class with brochures and maps
from real zoos for them to use as models. You can find these online or grab a
few extras the next time you are visiting
your local zoo.
Each person will also be responsible
for creating one exhibit. Each exhibit
will focus on one animal, and you can
allow students to choose from the list
you made earlier or you can assign one
animal to each student. Make sure no
two students are presenting the same
animal. The exhibit will include a picture
of the animal, the animal’s habitat and a
sign with information about the animal.
Each person should either draw or print
a picture of the animal and create some
type of habitat to display that picture in.
He should also research information
about the animal and write up an informational sign. When visitors come to the
paper zoo, he will be the “zoo keeper”
for that animal and will have to answer
questions the visitors may ask. Give
your students several days to prepare
and set up the zoo. If your students are
beginning level language learners, you
may want to make a pair responsible for
each exhibit rather than assigning one
animal to each student.
3
WELCOME VISITORS
Once the paper zoo is complete,
welcome visitors to see and learn about
the animals. You can ask other classes
to come and tour the zoo or open it up
to parents and other adults. Whomever
you invite, give them a copy of the zoo
map and suggest some questions they
might want to ask the zookeepers. They
can ask information about an animal’s
diet, natural habitat or normal activities.
Your students should be able to answer
the questions based on their research.
Leave the zoo open for a week or two
and then take some time to talk about
the experience with your students. If
they have been to a zoo, ask them to
compare the class experience to the
real thing. If they have not, ask them
what they would like to get out of a visit
to a live zoo. If possible, invite a real
animal handler to visit the class and
share what it means to take care of animals on a daily basis. You may want to
consider a fieldtrip to a local zoo if time
and budget permit.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LEAVE YOUR
CLASSROOM TO HAVE A ZOO EXPERIENCE. YOUR STUDENTS WILL
ENJOY CREATING THEIR VERY OWN
ZOO RIGHT IN YOUR CLASSROOM,
AND THEY WILL BE THE AUTHORITIES
WHEN OTHERS COME TO VISIT.
Everyone will have fun creating and visiting your paper zoo, and your students
will never forget the experience.
31