10 Fun Activities To Help Improve Reading Skills You Can Try Today

English Language Learners need a lot of opportunities to practice their vocabulary in all four language domains. Students need to work on Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. As an ESL teacher, I was always looking for new and exciting ways to practice those language skills. Reading skills can be hard for English Language Learners to acquire. There are many components - decoding, fluency, comprehension. These activities practice a mix of all three and can be used with any vocabulary list. These activities are simple to prepare, and require no fancy materials.

Scrambled Sentences

This activity is a simple one with many variations. The idea is that students will need to reassemble a sentence or passage after it has been all mixed up. Start by writing or typing out sentences that use your target vocabulary. Then cut each word apart and mix it up. For students who need more support, you can provide a sample sentence that they then match the mixed up pieces too. If you want to add movement to the activity, give students an envelope with the mixed up sentence in it, and tape a matching sample sentence to the board. Students go up to the board, read the sentence then return to their desk to put the sentence together. If you want to make that more challenging, add a few extra words to the envelope. If your students enjoy some healthy competition, split them into two groups and make it a race! You can also do this with a short passage, cutting apart sentences instead. I used an activity like this to practice opinion writing. You can read about that and grab a free activity here.

Fill-in-the-blanks

This is another activity that is very simple to set up. Simply write out sentences using your target vocabulary, and then delete the target word and place a blank. Students will need to read the sentence and decide which word best fits. You can provide a word bank if that helps your students. You can make it more challenging by changing the word grammatically. For example, write the sentence so that students need to add an ‘s’ or ‘ing’ to the word. 

Odd One Out

“One of these things is not like the other…” Admit it, you sang that. Well that is the idea behind this game. Provide students with three or four words or sentences and ask which one doesn’t belong. For example you could say, “sloth, toucan, cow, anteater”. Students would identify the cow as the odd one out, since it is a farm animal, not a rainforest animal. You could also do singular vs plural words, common vs proper nouns… the ideas are endless. If you want to bump it up a notch, do the same with sentences. Maybe writing two facts and an opinion, or two sentences in the present tense and one in past tense.

Ball Toss

You’ve probably seen or played this game yourself. It is a fun one, especially for kids who like to get up and move. Simply write some words or sentences on a ball and toss it around. Whoever catches the ball reads the word or phrase facing them. You can do this with a beach ball - simply write the words on the ball before inflating it. If you use a sharpie on a beach ball, you may even be able to erase it afterwards with a magic eraser or hand sanitizer. This may work differently on different beach balls though, so test it first! Another option is to write the words or phrases on address labels and then stick them to a playground ball. This way you can simply remove the labels, and use the ball for a different game later on. 

Kaboom!

This fun reading game is great for vocabulary or high frequency words. Write out your target words on large popsicle sticks. On a few popsicle sticks write the word Kaboom! Place all of the sticks into a cup. Students pull a stick from the cup one at a time and read the word. If they pull a stick which says Kaboom! they put back all of their sticks. You can keep going around the group until time runs out, or all of the sticks have been claimed. If you don’t have popsicle sticks, you can write the words on folded paper and put them in a bucket to pull from.

Wacky Punctuation

This activity is great for practicing reading fluency, and is best for older students who are working on understanding punctuation. Write out sentences or a passage and change the punctuation at the end of a sentence, or add in an extra comma. Students will read the sentence out loud using the tone, volume, and pauses associated with the punctuation you’ve inserted. 

Follow the Directions

This activity is one I talked about in my Listening Activities blog post, but it can also be used as a reading activity by simply giving the students the directions written out, rather than reading them out loud. First, find a coloring page that uses some of your target vocabulary. Then write out directions for how you want your students to color the page. Give your students those directions on paper so that they can read and color. 

Reading Tower

There are two pays to play Reading Tower. In the first version you write words or sentences with your target vocabulary onto blocks. Then students take turns choosing a block and reading it out loud. If they read it correctly, they can place the block on their tower. If they do not read it correctly they need to return the block. Play continues until all of the blocks are gone. You can use any type of block for this, wooden blocks or toddler building blocks work well. In the second variation, you can play Jenga. This is great for a review game when you have a lot of vocabulary to write on the blocks. Put one word on each block. When a student pulls out that block, they must read the word before placing it on the top of the tower. You can add some complexity to this by asking them to read the word and then use it in a sentence or define it. 

Word Hunt

Word hunt is exactly what it sounds like, and one of the activities I mentioned in my Vocabulary Activities Blog Post. For this activity you give students a book or passage with the target vocabulary and ask them to find the words. You can give them sticky notes to flag the words, or highlighter tape. Picture books are great for this activity.

Read

Ok, so maybe this one is obvious, but in order to sharpen their reading skills, students need to be given time to read. No fancy game, no activity, or questions, just simple, for-pleasure reading. With all that we want to accomplish in the little bit of time we have with our students it can feel like there is no time. I usually used free reading as an early finisher task. You can make free reading part of your class routine, maybe the first five minutes of the group time is dedicated to reading quietly. It can also be a reward they are working toward - a teddy bears and books day. No matter how you do it, giving students time to simply read will help them become better readers.

Are there any reading activities your students love that I missed? Did you try one of these activities? Share them with me by commenting or connecting with me by email, michelle@teachingeternity.com, or find me on instagram, @TeachingEternity.

10 Fun Activities To Help Improve Reading Skills You Can Try Today

Thursday, April 14, 2022

10 Activities to Practice Speaking Skills

English Language Learners need a lot of opportunities to practice their vocabulary in all four language domains. Students need to work on Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. As an ESL teacher, I was always looking for new and exciting ways to practice those language skills. These are 10 activities you can use to practice speaking skills. These activities can be used with any vocabulary list, and do not require a lot of preparation or fancy materials.

Debate

A debate is a great way to practice speaking skills. As opposed to a presentation of a set of facts, a debate encourages students to speak convincingly. You may need to do some modeling of how to use tone and volume to help students with this skill. To set up a debate in your classroom split the group into two teams. Provide a statement that is open for debate such as “Zoos are a good place for animals,” or “Schools should be open all year”. Assign each team a position - either they argue for or against the statement. Then give each team time to discuss their position and come up with talking points. After a set amount of time, have students from each group share their talking points. When you are done with the debate you can poll students on which side of the statement they fall, and which argument they felt was most convincing.

Interviews and Surveys

Asking and answering questions is an important speaking skill for English Language Learners. Conducting interviews and answering surveys is a great way to practice these skills. You can have students do a simple getting to know you survey at the beginning of the year where they ask and answer questions of each other. Or you can do interest surveys with students one-on-one. These activities will not only help practice speaking but they will help build relationships in the classroom. You can also have students write questions and then survey community members. With modern video call technology students might actually be able to interview a zookeeper during your zoo unit, or a local meteorologist during a weather unit. 

Poetry

Poetry reading is a great way for English Language Learners to practice speaking. So great in fact, that I have an entire blog post about it - HERE. To practice speaking with poems, search online for a poem that matches your current theme. If you can’t find one you can write one yourself. I find it best to choose a recognizable rhythm from a nursery rhyme and then write lines to match that rhythm. Then present the poem to your class. Our routine was for the students to first listen to me read the poem all the way through, then we would do a call and repeat of each line, then gradually increase the text read until they were able to recite the entire poem. I would do this as a whole-group activity. 

See, Think, Wonder

See, Think, Wonder is a great way to get students to notice and talk about details. For this activity, you will need to find a photograph that will interest your students and give them a chance to practice target vocabulary. I recommend checking out a free photo website like Deposit Photos or Unsplash to find quality photos. Once you have a photo ask your students what they see in the photo. Ask them to talk about the big picture as well as small details. “I see a lion roaring” and “I see dirt in the lion’s mane”. Then move on to what students think about the picture. This requires more higher-level thinking, and probably more language production. “I think the lion is angry because he is roaring.” The final step, and the most difficult question, is to ask students what they wonder about the photo - “I wonder how loud the lion’s roar is?”

Show and Tell

Raise your hand if show and tell was always your favorite day in school. *raises hand* Students love show and tell! This is pretty straightforward - students bring an item to class and tell their classmates all about it. If you have a student who isn’t able to bring in an item they’d like to discuss, you can ask them to draw a picture of it, or ask their parents to send in a photo. If you want to keep the show and tell thematic you can present the students with realia related to your theme and ask each student to present one item to the group. 

Skits

What kid doesn’t love playing pretend. Come up with a few different scenarios relating to your current unit. Make note of how many ‘actors’ each scenario will need - try to stick to 2 or 3. Break your group up and give each pair or triplet a scenario. Give them time to practice what they would do and say if they were in that situation. As groups practice, you can walk around the room to offer suggestions and observe their speaking skills. If it is appropriate for your students, each group can present their skit to the class. You can really bump this activity up a notch by providing props!

Taboo

The popular game Taboo is all about speaking! To set up play, choose target words and taboo words, and create game cards with those words. Then split the class into groups of three- one person to give the clues, one person to guess, and one person to make sure no taboo words are used. Give each group a set of cards. The students will take turns in each role. The first student will pull a card and try to get the second student to say the target word. If they use a taboo word they lose their turn. You can also play this whole group in a format similar to pictionary or charades. 

Telephone

The classic speaking game of telephone is great for English Language Learners, and is actually a great two for one activity since it practices both listening and speaking. In telephone, one student whispers a sentence or phrase to the next student, and that student whispers to the next. It continues until the final student says the sentence out loud to see how much of the original message was preserved. You can either provide the first student in the chain with a sentence, or let them come up with their own. However, I suggest the original sentence is written down somewhere, so that you can compare it to the final sentence in the end.

Two Truths and a Lie

Two truths and a lie is another fun activity for building relationships in your classroom. In this activity each student will come up with three statements about themselves. Two of those statements will be true, and one will be a lie. Then they present those statements to the group without revealing which one is false. The group has a chance to ask questions about each statement, and once everyone has a chance to ask a question, students can make note of which statement they think is the lie. They can write it on a post-it or small whiteboard. Finally, the presenter can reveal which statement was the lie! Students may have additional questions about the truths if they are especially fascinating, so be prepared to give extra time for extra questions.

Would You Rather

This game asks students, not only to state a preference, but to back it up with an explanation. The explanation is the key part in expanding the language production. In a Would You Rather game students are asked a simple would you rather question. You can make these questions whatever you want, or even ask the students to come up with them on their own. Simple questions like “would you rather be a lion or a penguin” can bring up great discussions. You can make them more complex too - “would you rather be a lion living in the arctic, or a penguin living in the desert?” Either way, a Would You Rather game will have students thinking and speaking.

Are there any speaking activities your students love that I missed? Did you try one of these activities? Share them with me by commenting or connecting with me by email, michelle@teachingeternity.com, or find me on Instagram, @TeachingEternity.

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10 Activities to Practice Speaking Skills

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

10 Activities to Practice Listening Skills

English Language Learners need a lot of opportunities to practice their vocabulary in all four language domains. Students need to work on Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. As an ESL teacher, I was always looking for new and exciting ways to practice those language skills. These are 10 activities you can use to practice listening skills. These activities can be used with any vocabulary list, and do not require a lot of preparation or fancy materials. 

Dictation

Dictation is an oldie but a goodie. To do a dictation activity you need sentences or a short passage to read aloud. As you read students will listen and write down what you are saying. The length of your passage will depend on your students. You can find a passage that corresponds to your current vocabulary unit. A very simple and straightforward activity - dictation actually practices many skills in addition to listening. They are also practicing writing skills and conventions. Students need to include correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

Flyswatter Game

This is a fun game to get students up and moving. In this game teams of students race to swat a vocabulary word after you have called it out. You can change this game up in lots of ways depending on the level of your learners. First, put your vocabulary words or images on the board or wall. Then, break your students into two teams and have them stand away from the wall. You can call out the word, definition, or another clue. Students will race to find and slap the word with their flyswatter. If you don’t have flyswatters, students can give the word a high five.

Vocabulary Cards from Farm Vocabulary Unit

Color By Instructions

Do your students love to color as much as mine did? This fun listening activity is a creative way to practice listening. Search online for a coloring page that matches your current topic. Then write some instructions for how you would like students to color the page. For your beginner level students, you can use simple one-step instructions such as “color the sun yellow”. For more advanced students you can give two-step instructions such as “color the center of the sun yellow, and the rays of the sun oranges”. To extend this activity past listening, you can ask students to write a description of the coloring page. 

Coloring Page and Instructions from Farm Vocabulary Unit

Listen and Draw

Listen and draw is an activity very similar to Color by Instructions. However, this time students start with a blank page, and teachers give directions for what to draw on the page. This can be a great activity especially during a unit on shapes, directionality, or positional words. For example, you might ask students to draw a circle in the bottom right corner, draw a large square in the center of the page, draw a triangle inside of the square. You can spice this activity up a bit by giving students stickers. Then you can give directions for where to put those stickers.

Movie or Book Vocabulary Search

In this engaging activity, students listen to a book or watch a short movie and listen for target vocabulary. You can differentiate this activity by how much you scaffold this activity. For more advanced students they can start with a blank piece of paper. To provide more support you can give students a bank of words and ask them to cross out the words as they hear them. If you do not have time for a full movie, you can search for short films, or watch movie trailers. This also works really well during a read-aloud. 

Mystery Box

This fun activity does take a little bit of preparation, and some materials gathering. To do this activity, find a box large enough for some manipulatives related to your theme. Cut a hole on the side of the box. The hole will need to be large enough for a student’s hand and any item to fit through. Once you are set up, describe an item to the student. They will need to listen to your description, then find the item by feel in the box. This is a great way to practice descriptive words such as soft, hard, long, fuzzy.

Not Quite the Same

In this activity, students listen to two almost identical sentences and identify the differences. First, you need to write two sentences with a few differences - the number of differences will be dependent on your students. For example, the sentences could be: ‘The horse was eating a bale of hay’ and ‘The horses were eating a bushel of apples’. In this example, students would identify that the number of horses changed and so did what they were eating. If the grammar of the sentence is changing you can use it as a teachable moment. In the example above I would point out that an ‘s’ was added to make horse plural, and that the verb needed to change as well.

Short Stories

This activity is a combination of a dictation activity or a vocabulary hunt. Write a short story using your target vocabulary. Give students a copy of the short story with the vocabulary words removed. Then students will fill in the vocabulary words as you read the story out loud. If your students need additional support you can provide them with a word bank to identify the words that they hear. You could also allow students to visualize the story. Simply, allow them to draw a picture to go along with the story as you read. 

Short Story from Farm Vocabulary Unit

Simon Says

This classic kid’s game is great for listening! Plus, it gives students a chance to move around a bit. It was always a favorite during our units on body parts. However, you can use it with any vocabulary theme, especially by incorporating Total Physical Response. You can ask students to ‘run like a horse,’ ‘drive a tractor like a farmer,’ or ‘snort like a pig’.

Telephone

Another classic game is a listening activity in disguise. In telephone, one student whispers a sentence or phrase to the next student, and that student whispers to the next. It continues until the final student says the sentence out loud to see how much of the original message was preserved. This activity also practices speaking. You can either provide students with sentences, or allow them to create their own.

Telephone Sentences from Farm Vocabulary Unit

Are there any vocabulary activities your students love that I missed? Did you try one of these activities? Share them with me by commenting or connecting with me by email, michelle@teachingeternity.com, or find me on Instagram, @TeachingEternity.

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10 Activities to Practice Listening Skills

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

10 Vocabulary Activities for Any List

If you teach English Language Learners you know how important vocabulary development is. It can be hard however, to come up with new ways to practice vocabulary. You want to keep your students interested in practicing their vocabulary, and the same old activities just aren't cutting it. So here are 10 different activities you can do with any vocabulary list! 

BINGO

The first one is simple, and maybe one of the activities you already use. BINGO is a great game for all sorts of skills, and when it comes to vocabulary there are all sorts of ways to differentiate the game to fit your learners.  Even starting with just varying the size of your BINGO board can help fit the game to your students. If you put images on your BINGO boards you can use words, definitions, synonyms, or antonyms for the clues. On a BINGO board of ocean words as shown below, rather than calling out simply 'octopus' you can give a clue such as 'this animal has eight arms'. BINGO is a game that all kids love to play!

Memory

Memory is one of my favorite ways to practice vocabulary. And, just like BINGO, it can be differentiated to fit your students. In the game of memory children flip over 2 cards, and see if they can find a match. You can make matches of picture and word, or word and definition, or word and synonym... or any combination that gets kids engaged and thinking. I like to glue my memory pieces to pieces of scrapbook paper so they aren't see-through, then I will laminate and cut them out.

Memory Game from my Ocean Vocabulary Units

Go Fish!

Everyone knows the classic game of Go Fish!, and it can be used to practice vocabulary as well. You can use index cards, or even playing cards to create a deck of vocabulary cards. You can even use the cards from your memory games! Depending on your students you can make the cards with matching pictures, or a picture and word, or a picture and definition. Then hand out the cards and start playing! You'll need to make sure you have enough vocabulary words in your deck to give each student 5 cards, and still have a pond of cards left over. To keep everyone engaged with the game, smaller groups are better - think 2 to 4 players. 

Charades

Charades is a great game to review a lot of vocabulary, maybe at the end of the quarter or semester. Simply place the vocabulary words in a container, then ask students to pull out a word and act it out without speaking. If you've used Total Physical Response to teach any of these vocabulary words, don't be surprised if those motions come up again. You can make this game into a competition by splitting your group into teams and adding a timer. If a team can't guess in the allotted time, the other team can steal the point!

Pictionary

Pictionary works just like charades, but instead of acting it out, students draw it out. Again, Pictionary works better with a large group of review vocabulary, as opposed to a small list. Add all the words into a container, then ask a student to pull one out, draw it, and the rest of the group guesses what they are drawing. To save on paper, have students draw on an erasable surface, like a white board or smartboard. This can be played in teams as well. 

Password

Another game you can play with vocabulary is based on the old gameshow Password - where one student knows the word and tries to get another student to say the word by giving one word clues. This is a great way to practice synonyms. For the word 'waves' a student may give the clues 'water', 'crashing', or 'surf'. This can also be played in teams. The first team to guess the word based on the clues gets the point.

Flashcards

This is a simple way to practice vocabulary. Have students create vocabulary flashcards that they can use to practice their words. You can decide how the cards should be set up. Maybe students will put a word on one side, and a picture on the other. Maybe a word and definition. Maybe a cloze sentence on one side and word on the other. For example: "The _________ dove deep under water with the oxygen tank," "Scuba Diver". Then the flashcards can be used individually or in groups to review the words. At the end of the unit you can put them in a box or folder of vocabulary words to refer back to.

Wordsearch

Do your students love doing wordsearches? Mine always did, and word searches are a great way to practice spelling vocabulary words. You can use an online wordsearch generator to help you create one. This one from Education.com lets you title your wordsearch, and gives you an answer key. They also have some fun thematic borders you can put on your words if that suits you! Then give students a highlighter and let them work on finding the words!

Word Search from my Ocean Vocabulary Units

Crossword Puzzle

Crossword puzzles are another great independent activity for practicing vocabulary. And it can be differentiated for your students. You can use an online crossword puzzle creator like this one, again from Education.com to find a set up for your puzzle. You can choose to give the definition, synonyms, or antonyms as your clue. If you want to use picture clues, you can simply put the vocabulary word into the generator twice (octopus, octopus) then cut off the word clues and add in picture clues before giving it to your students.

Crossword Puzzle from my Ocean Vocabulary Units

Vocabulary Hunt

This game is a chance for students to find their vocabulary words in books, newspapers, or other media. If you are teaching a thematic unit find picture books related to that topic, and then ask students to look through the books for their vocabulary words. Ask them to keep a tally of how many times they find each word. This can be a great way to expose students to higher level texts, without the pressure of being able to read every word. You can do this during a read-aloud too! During one of your readings of a text ask students to put their fingers on their noses, or hands on their heads, etc, whenever they hear a vocabulary word. This will help keep them engaged with the read-aloud, and let you know if they are paying attention.

Want some help getting these activities going in your classroom? Enter your e-mail below and I will send you an editable PowerPoint you can use to create many of these activities for your own classes.

Are there any vocabulary activities your students love that I missed? Did you try one of these activites?Share them with my by commenting or connecting with me by email, michelle@teachingeternity.com, or find me on instagram, @TeachingEternity.

10 Vocabulary Activities for Any List

Saturday, January 15, 2022