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. Writing skills can be hard for English Language Learners to acquire. These activities practice writing in a variety of engaging and simple ways can be used with any vocabulary list. These activities are simple to prepare, and require no fancy materials.
Acrostic poem
This writing activity is perfect for any vocabulary topic. Simply provide students with a piece of paper and a bank of words to choose from. Once they have chosen a word they write the word vertically down the piece of paper. Then they write a word or phrase related to the vocabulary word for each letter. You can also offer students the option of writing the word down the middle of the paper, and writing words and phrases that simply have the letters, rather than starting with the letters of the vocabulary word. Acrostic poems are very manageable for English Language Learners because there is no pressure to make sure the lines have a rhyming pattern. You can extend this activity into a speaking practice by having students share their poems with the class.
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| Poems from my Zoo Vocabulary Unit |
Advertisement or Commercial
Writing an advertisement is a great way for students to be creative and practice persuasive writing. Students simply choose an object (toy, stuffed animal, etc.) and create a writing piece that can be used to ‘sell’ that item. This is especially effective if you are using realia in your classroom - students can use those items for their advertisements. After they are done writing, display the item with their writing and set up a store. Then invite others to view their ads and comment on which items they’d most like to buy. If you want to have students present their advertisements they can write it out as a commercial and then act it out.
How To or Sequencing Writing
Students love showing off what they are an expert at! How to writing is the perfect way to let them do that. It is also a great way to have students practice using transitions. Depending on your students you can ask for three to five steps for their directions. It may take a bit of forward thinking, but you can probably tie a ‘how to’ into just about any vocabulary theme. Studying animals - write about how to take care of them. Learning about food groups - write a how to for their favorite recipe. Looking at the seasons - write about how to rake leaves, put on snow gear, plant flowers, or build a sand castle. If you want to scaffold this activity for students, give them images that show how to complete a task. Ask the students to put the images in order (sequence) then describe the steps.
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| Sequence Writing from my Winter Vocabulary Unit |
Letter or Email Writing
I don’t know about your students, but my students always loved to get mail! Writing a letter or an email is a great activity that can help connect your students with the community. It is also very important for students to learn how to compose a friendly letter or email, since chances are good they’ll need the skill later in life. Depending on your current theme, students can write to a local expert. If you are studying animals, that might be a zookeeper or veterinarian. However, you might keep it a little closer to home and have students write to their parent to share what they are learning in class. A back and forth with a pen pal will encourage more writing, so you might even try to find a group of students you can correspond with throughout the year.
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| Letter Writing Activity from my Farm Vocabulary Unit |
Picture Description
This writing activity is very easy to set up and very easy to differentiate. Do a quick search online for a picture that goes with your theme. Then ask students to describe that picture. You can also look for photos or illustrations in a book. For students who need more support they can simply label the various things they see in the picture. More advanced students can be asked to expand their writing using adjectives or even create a fictional story based on the picture.
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| Picture Activity from my Polar Vocabulary Unit |
Sentence Writing
This very simple writing activity asks students to write a sentence using the target vocabulary. If you have other skills you are working on you can include them. For example - if you are working on fact and opinion, ask students to write one fact and one opinion for the vocabulary word. If you are working on asking and answering questions, have one student write a question using the vocabulary word, and have another student answer the question. You can also use this activity for a fill-in-the-blanks reading practice. Once students have written sentences using the vocabulary, type those sentences out leaving a blank where their vocabulary word goes. Then give those sentences back to the group and ask them to fill in the blanks. You can see this activity here.
Sticker Story
Kids and stickers go together like peanut butter and jelly. For this activity simply give students some stickers and something to draw with. They can create a scene using the materials, and then write about it. If you want to make this thematic you can search online for images of your target vocabulary. Copy the images into a program like google docs or slides to resize them as stickers. Then when you print the pictures students can cut them out and glue them to a new paper to create a scene.
Story Chain
This fun, group writing project will delight your students. Split your students into groups of three to five students, and give them some strips of paper (you’ll want enough strips for each student to have at least 2). Then have students take turns writing 3 words in a story on their strip. For example - student A: One day I, student B: went to the, student C: North Pole and, student A: saw polar bears. The writing continues until the story reaches a conclusion, they run out of strips, or class time is up. To spice up this activity you can have the students create a chain out of their strips by looping them through each other in a paper chain. Or you can have the story taped to a larger piece of paper to be read.
Wordless Picture Books
Have your students ever looked at a wordless picture book and wondered what the pages would say if the author had added text? Well, give them some sticky notes and tell them they’re the author! You can find a lot of amazing wordless picture books with a simple internet search. Provide the students with a copy of the book, and ask them to write what they think the words on the page should be. You can assign certain pages to certain students to make sure no one is overwhelmed by the entire book. This could also be a great group activity if you are able to project the book onto an interactive white board. Then you can work together as a class to decide what words belong on the page.
Top: Flora and the Penguin by Molly Idle
Bottom: Where's Walrus? by Stephen Savage
Word Cloud
For a word cloud activity you will ask students to write all of the words they can think of for a certain topic. Basically, they will make a list. Encourage students to stick to single words rather than phrases or sentences. Once all of the students have created their list you can use a website such as www.freewordcloudgenerator.com to create a word cloud. It is important when you insert the word lists into one of these sites that you put in the repeat words. This way the words that your students listed most often will be larger than the less common words. For this activity - the more words you have the better!
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| Vocabulary Cards from my Polar Vocabulary Unit |
Are there any writing 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.
