Daily ESL Thought Bubbles

Simple Phonics Sounds

3-4 Year Olds

This is an activity you can do in parts or all at once. It's up to you.

Tell the kids, using L1 (their first language), that they are going to a birthday party. Arrange the chairs so that the formation resembles a car and get everyone to sit down. Encourage them to mime putting on seat belts and holding steering wheels. Make a noise as if the car is going: /r/r/r/r/r/r/ You can also toot a horn, like on a train: /w/ woo-oo woo. I know that's not strictly realistic, but the students won't complain. It's a fun sound to make! Mime parking the car and getting out. Put the chairs back in their normal places.

On the whiteboard, draw a door with a big doorbell next to it. Tell the kids that this is where the party is! Encourage them to walk up to the door one-by-one and ring the bell: /d/ ding-dong.

Erase the picture and draw a happy face and a birthday cake. Say, 'This is Bob. It's his birthday today.' Ask the students to sing the Happy Birthday song: /l/ la la la.

Mime blowing out the candles: /p/ /p/ /p/ Demonstrate that the flames will not go out if they don't blow properly. Now, rub your belly and lean back as if you're conjuring a huge, powerful blow. Say /p/ loudly and erase one of the flames. Encourage the class to blow out the remaining candles.

Erase the picture and draw some bubbles. Shape your hands like they are guns. Mime shooting a bubble and say: /b/ /b/ /b/. Delete one bubble. Get the students to do the same to help pop the rest of them.

Mime holding a bottle. Unscrew the lid, saying: /f/ fff. The students should copy you. Once you have all opened their imaginary bottles, mime drinking: /g/ /g/ /g/.

This is one you can do easily on an interactive whiteboard: draw Bob's face again, only make him look up with a surprised expression. Above his head, draw a pouring bottle of water. One-by-one, ask the students to approach the board and roughly draw a splash over Bob's face. Say: /ɔ:/ ooops! The children love scribbling over poor Bob's face!

Finally, have everyone pretend to fall asleep: /z/ /z/ /z/.

Reading for Detail

Teenagers

For this exercise, you will need to prepare some descriptive text passages (enough for one per pair). They can describe anything, from landscapes to movies. They should be clearly titled. Stick the passages on the wall outside the classroom. You can do this before the start of class. You will also need a matching fact sheet for the students to fill in.

Divide the class into pairs. Give one member of each team a fact sheet. Instruct the other students to go outside the classroom and find the information they need to complete their handout on the wall, then report back to their partner. The students in charge of writing cannot leave their seats. 

To give all students an equal opportunity to practise, you can tell the pairs to switch half way through. 

When the game is over, the pairs can report back on their findings.

Spelling and Revision

7 - 12 Year Olds

This is an action packed way to review vocabulary and spelling. If you have a class that loves competition and physical activities, this will go down a treat.

First, you need two sets of picture flashcards, which you can place in separate piles face down by the whiteboard. You will also need to place two board pens in the same area.

Next, set up two small chairs on the other side of the room. You will be moving these chairs around, so you should mark their starting position with some objects, or a pen if you are allowed to draw on the floor like at my school.

After that, split the class into two groups. They can create their own team names.

To play the game, one student from each team should sit on the small chairs and shuffle forward towards the flashcards. The students cannot remove their bottoms from the seats or lift the chairs up. Once they reach the flashcards, they must turn the first one over, look at the picture and write the word on the white board. When they’re finished, they should put their pens down and carry the chairs back to the starting positions. Then, another student can take their place on the chair and continue the race.

Present Perfect

Teenagers

This is a great little warmer exercise to play with your teens. Everyone sits on chairs in a semi-circle, apart from one person who sits opposite, in the hot seat. The student in the hot seat has to say a sentence with, 'I have never...'. For example, 'I have never ridden a horse.' If any of the other learners have ridden a horse, they must stand up and switch chairs with another person, giving the student in the hot seat a chance to move onto a regular chair. The rule is that you MUST switch seats and you cannot move to a chair directly next to you. The game can continue for as long as you want it to.

Vocabulary Revision

7-12 Year Olds

Instead of holding flashcards up and eliciting the target words, try this.

Split the class into two or three teams and write their team names on the board. Spread the flashcards out face down on the floor.

Call students up one-by-one and encourage them to throw a coin onto the floor. If the coin lands on one of the flashcards, they can turn it over and attempt to name it. If they name it correctly, they earn a point for their team. If the coin doesn't land on a flashcard, or they are unable to name it, they must sit down and wait for their turn to come around again. Make sure that the students all throw from the same position. The nearest cards will be easy to target, but the furthest cards will prove a challenge.

Revision

7+ Year Olds

This is a great game that many teachers use to revise vocabulary and practise speaking around the target language.

Put a chair in front of the class, facing away from the board. Ask for a volunteer to sit on it (or nominate someone if they're reluctant). Write a vocab word on the board behind them so that everyone but the volunteer can see it. The other students must give clues to help the volunteer guess what the word is.

Controlled Speaking Practice

7 - 12 Year Olds

This is a classic game they play everywhere in the world, so it's very easy to set up.

It suddenly popped into my head in the middle of class today. We were practising 'going to,' so I instigated a simple game in which the person with the ball asks another learner something about what they are going to do/eat/say etc. Annoyingly, an impatient boy started jumping around, trying to intercept the path of the ball. It reminded me of the kids game, 'Piggy in the middle'.

With this in mind, I drew two lines on the floor, on either side of the room (we're allowed to do this in my school). I split the class into two groups: one group to stand behind one line and one group to stand opposite. I told the misbehaving boy to position himself between the two groups. 

The student with the ball had to ask a 'going to' question, such as, 'What are you going to eat for dinner tonight?' then throw the ball to someone on the other side of the room. That person had to then answer the question. I reminded them to use full sentences. If the piggy managed to catch the ball during flight, they could switch places with the player who threw it.

Make sure that the space is large enough to play in, but small enough to ensure the piggy will catch the ball after a few turns. If the space is too big, or someone is having a tough time, you can even the odds by having two or three people in the middle. The great thing about this is the students will want to keep a fast pace, which means they will be quick to think of new sentences. You will get a lot of practice done in this activity.

Questions and Answers

Teenagers

For this mingling activity, you'll have to make/find several sets of dialogue scripts. A set is two sheets of paper, where dialogue for Person A is on one and dialogue for Person B is on the other. They can be as long or as short as you want them to be.

Make enough scripts to give everyone in the class a unique handout (which, admittedly, is quite a bit of prep). Shuffle them and pass them on to your students. If there is an odd amount of students, you can take one handout for yourself. They must then go around the classroom, reading everyone's dialogue page to see if it matches their own. Once they have found their partner, they should sit down to signal that they have finished their task. Dialogues can be read aloud to the class and checked to see if they are correct.

Body Language

Teenagers

Body language is such an important part of communication. Without any knowledge of the spoken word, it is possible to interpret a situation if you understand body language. This game is a fun way to practice reading body language in the classroom. Teenagers love this game and could happily play it for an entire lesson.

The format is the same as British TV show, 'Would I Lie to You?'

Make two piles of cards. One pile should consist of a list of personal questions, such as:

When and where did you last go on holiday?

Which celebrity do you think is most attractive/beautiful? Why?

What job do you want to do when you're older?

The cards in the other pile should say, either, 'tell the truth,' or, 'tell a lie' (50/50 split).

Players sit in a circle.

Student A picks a card from the first pile and shows it to all participants. S/he then picks a card from the second pile, being careful not to show it to anyone. If the card says, 'tell the truth,' they must answer the question truthfully. If it says, 'tell a lie,' then vice versa. Finally, the other students must decide if Student A is telling the truth or lying. Once everybody has made their decision, the truth/lie card is revealed. If they have chosen correctly, they are awarded a point, and Student A gets a point for every wrong choice. 

The action then moves on to the next student in the circle.

Writing practice

Teenagers

Give each student a piece of paper. Tell them to write a sentence. It can be anything, but they should try to make it something interesting or funny. Give them a minute. When they have written the sentence, they should move it on to the student on their left. The next student should read it, then write a follow on sentence before passing it on once again to their left. This can continue for a few turns, until each student has a piece of five or more sentences.  Tell the last student to draw a picture of whatever has been written on a separate piece of paper.

Finally, put all of the pictures and pieces of writing on a table in the middle of the class and ask the students to find a piece of writing and a matching picture.

Revision

7 + Year Olds

Pronunciation

3-6 Year Olds

To get pronunciation right, you sometimes need to repeat the word/sentence over and over. It can get quite tedious for the most patient of us. This is a fun alternative to plain old drilling.

Hold a flashcard horizontally in front of you, at about waist height. Encourage between one and six students to come up and put the tips of their index fingers on the underside of the card. You need to put your palm flat on top of it. They must chant the word over and over until, suddenly, you take the flashcard away and attempt to grab one of their fingers. The aim for them is to remove their fingers so quickly that you are unable to catch them.

Classroom management

7-12 Year Olds

If you use a star-based reward system in your class, why not make it more fun with this game.

If you can, make use of Powerpoint to present the following. If you can't, you can do the same game with a large world map, some pins and the students names on small squares of paper.

Display a World Map. Tell the students they are going to have a race from their current location to another (of your choosing). As my school is in China, I made my race from there to the UK. It's more interesting if it's possible to drive on land from start to finish. Try to adjust your route so that you cover about 10 countries.

Next, take a look at the countries you would need to travel through in order to reach your target. In my example, its China, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Italy, France and England. Often, your kids will not know all of these countries, so you could spend a decent amount of time talking about them.

Then, go through the rules with the students. My rules are: 6 or more stars to move forward; 5 stars to stay where you are; 4 or less stars to move back. You get one star for: doing your homework, finishing your book work, good behavior and winning a game. You lose a star if: you speak Chinese without permission, you don't listen to the teacher, you are naughty, you go to the toilet or get a drink more than once (unless you are ill).

After that, introduce the vehicles the contestants will be using. Use google images prior to class to search for interesting road vehicles, such as classic cars, sports cars, motorbikes, penny farthings, elephants, skateboards, horse and carts, school buses and the bat mobile. Have them draw from a lucky dip to decide who gets which vehicle. Have a mini picture of each vehicle ready (small enough to fit them all on the same slide), with a space beneath to write the student names. 

Have a slide ready for each country. The picture should be of an interesting city or some countryside from the respective country. 

Classroom management

7-12 Year Olds