Check out the best ESL writing activities, games, worksheets, lesson plans and more. Level up your English writing classes!
Looking for esl task cards to use with your english language learners? Try these picture cards that are perfect for quick and effective language practice!
How do you teach writing to ESL students? Start with the basics! This blog post goes over the most important writing skills and writing activities to teach.
Check out the top 20 Sentences Structure games and activities for your ESL classes if you want to help your students with building sentences.
Photographs offer excellent support for English Language Learners to write about. They can help students generate ideas, and visual vocabulary support is built into a high-quality photograph. You can easily differentiate a writing assignment based on photographs. All students use the same picture, but the amount of writing, level of support offered, and complexity of
Check out these 5 ESL Speaking Activities that can be adapted for different grade and proficiency levels to get your English learners talking
My two favorite projects for my ESL students are their Personal Narratives and their Autobiographies. Not only is it great practice using verb tenses, but it also an excellent way to get to know your students. I am always blown away by the amazing stories they share! I have just completed uploading a FREE Autobiography project for you to use with your ESL students. This autobiography has 3 parts: the past, the present and the future. You can use all three parts or just one or two parts depending on the grade level of your students. You may want to start with Part II "My Life Now" since it covers the present tense. Then continue with "My Past" and "Coming to a New Country" followed by "My Future". I always review each tense and then give my students the related part. This could be a project that you use throughout the year, culminating in a final Autobiography after learning all three verb tenses. Or, you can use it all at once for more advanced students. If you would like to download this FREE autobiography, click here! Thanks for looking!
ESL speaking and writing activities for beginners and intermediate level students. The free worksheets include picture prompts, questions, sentence starters and a space to write. Sign up for my Free ESL Resource Library to get access to these worksheets and more!
Check out our top 11 ESL whiteboard games and activities to try out with your students today. Have some fun with these chalkboard games.
Discover fresh, fun, new writing games and use them to help students improve their writing skills while also enjoying themselves!
The start to the school year for newcomer ELLs can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking. It is our job to set them up with tools to help them feel comfortable exploring a new language in a
Follow this step-by-step lesson plan to teach your students how
Check out the best ESL writing activities, games, worksheets, lesson plans and more. Level up your English writing classes!
Using sentence frames to get ell students writing. Click here for more:
As an ESL teacher, I often hear from classroom teachers that they don't always know where to start when it comes to working with beginning English language learners (ELLs), or newcomers, in small group instruction. In this post I'll share a typical "guided reading" lesson that I would give to my beginning ELLs, as well as a glance of at what a typical week would look like. Let me start by saying, the very first thing I do before I start instructing my newcomers is, I assess what they already know. First, I see if they have literacy skills in their native language...can they read and write? Then, I see if they know alphabet letter names and sounds. Next, I assess their reading level. Since they don't have English literacy skills yet, their reading level typically starts at level "A" (emergent). I can say that most students do have some literacy skills in their home language, and often times, many know some letter names and sounds. So now I've got my starting point! When I first begin working with my newcomers, the main components of reading that I typically focus on are building vocabulary, phonological awareness/phonics and sight words. So a typical week would encompass all three of these skills. Down the road I add comprehension skills, but they are not ready for that yet. Step 1 - Choose an appropriate book. I carefully select books that have relevant vocabulary. For the most part, my main focus is to build their vocabulary. The literacy skills in their native language will transfer to their new language, however, they have an extremely limited vocabulary, so... vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary! I chose this book because I wanted to teach my students the word "big." It's also about animals, and I know that most kids are interested in reading about animals! I used gestures to SHOW them what "big" means. It's important to be mindful of your students' age when picking out books. You don't want to give 4th-6th graders books about bunnies or teddy bears. Try picking age appropriate books; which I know can be a challenge if the selection is limited, but you don't want your students feeling embarrassed. Step 2 - Preview the book. Point to and say each animal's name and have the students repeat the names back to you, keeping in mind to speak clearly and to enunciate the sounds in each word. It's important for them to hear how to pronounce the names. A side thought...Think about "A" level books... they are not created with English language learners in mind. "A" level books have repeated sentences, which are GREAT, but they also have very specific vocabulary that students are expected to decode using picture cues. In the book my students read last week, the repeated sentence was, "We go to the _____." The pictures show the family in different locations like the pool, park, library, soccer game, etc. In one picture the family is standing in front of a large fish tank. If I asked English only students where the family is, some might say a fish store or they might even guess aquarium, depending on their background knowledge. Then they'd cross check their thinking with the word and see that it begins with the letter "a" and hopefully they'd say, "It's an aquarium!" But our newcomers don't know what a big fish tank place is called in English, so it's important for us to support our students by saying the names of each vocabulary word. Step 3 - Choral reading! Newcomers feel more comfortable in a choral reading setting. They need help pronouncing the words. They need to hear YOU pronounce the words. Choral reading helps to keep anxiety levels low. (In a few weeks, the choral reading decreases and I will start focusing on decoding.) Step 4 - After reading, review the animal names. Point to an animal and see if they can remember the name. Perhaps make a matching activity with animal pictures and names. Support as needed. Encourage a LOT! Step 5 - I always provide a guided writing activity based off of the book we just read. I use sentence frames to support their thinking and writing. Sometimes I create my own, like the picture below, and other times I'll use a graphic organizer as a follow up activity. On this day I wanted them to understand the meaning of "big," so their writing supported this goal. As they finish their writing activity, I'll ask each student to read some of their writing to me. Then they'll draw a quick picture, which I always ask them to label. I know that my newcomers don't understand every word in the book, and that's OK! They are being exposed to new words and ideas in a repeating format. I want them to get used to the structure of our lessons so that they know what's expected. So, here is what a typical week of small group work entails for my newcomers. Knowing what the focus is each day helps me to zone in on their learning goals. The variety keeps it fun and interesting, yet it's consistent so they know what's expected. As you can see, on Tuesdays I include direct vocabulary instruction, either using the vocabulary from the book, like the animals, monthly themed vocabulary, or content area vocabulary. October Themed Vocabulary (along with sight words and phonics review) One vocabulary activity I have my students do is called the K.I.M. Strategy. In their notebook they write the key word (K), important information (I), sketch a memory clue (M) and write a sentence (S). For my newcomers, I leave out the (I) portion. They are not ready for adding "information." Right now the goal is for them to learn the names of things and simple sentence structure. My higher ELLS definitely include all components of the K.I.M. Strategy in their notebooks. This is what the K.I.M. Strategy looks like. And this is how it looks modified for my newcomers... On Thursdays, I focus on building sight words. When teaching sight words, it's important to teach them in context. Your beginning ELs need context in order to make meaning of the words. I pull a sight word from our books and I include an extension activity with that word. (A link to this resource is provided at the bottom of this post.) I do teach sight words throughout the week, but on Thursdays we always have an extension activity for one of them. As an "exit ticket" I have them orally use the sight word. Today, I asked each student, "What can you do?" And they responded with "I can _____." Then they get a high five, a sticker (big kids like stickers too!), or some encouraging praise. I also include Word Study activities in my small group work. I like using the sorts from Words Their Way. Each Monday they receive a new spelling pattern. Remember, I assessed my students to see what they already knew. Most already knew initial sounds, so I started them with word families. If they did not know initial sounds, I would've started there. I do have one student in this group who does not know many initials sounds, so I spend a little extra focus with him on initial sounds. This resource is from "Words Their Way." My newcomers use this activity to learn spelling patterns AND vocabulary. They are introduced to their new word list on Mondays, then they have independent activities to do with their word list throughout the week in their gen ed classrooms. (It's so important to set newcomers up with meaningful activities that they can work on independently during Reader's Workshop.) Below is their Word Study Activities list. It gets glued into their Reading Notebook. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays they work on their independent activities. Friday is Word Study Quiz day! FREEBIE - Click Here And that's what small group instruction looks like with my newcomers. To recap, assess what students can do to evaluate your starting point. Focus on building vocabulary, sight words in context, word spelling patterns and choral reading to start. My guided reading lessons usually looks like... preview the book, front load main vocabulary, choral read, and end with a guided writing activity with sentence frames. Here's a TIP: Many times I make my own guided writing activity based on what I want the students to learn from the book. I'll write the activity in my notebook, make copies, cut them to size, then have students glue it into their notebook. Keep this notebook! You may get a newcomer next year, and when you do, many of your guided writing activities will already be made. You'll just need to find the book that goes with the activity. My notebook where I write out the guided writing activities. I know that many school districts lack ESL resources and often times the classroom teacher is the only one providing instruction. Knowing where to start with beginning English learners is probably the biggest challenge. I hope that this post gives you some ideas about where to start and what to focus on with your new students. To read more about the K.I.M. Strategy, click here. Affiliate links below for Sight Words and Word Study.
ESL speaking and writing activities for beginners and intermediate level students. The free worksheets include picture prompts, questions, sentence starters and a space to write. Sign up for my Free ESL Resource Library to get access to these worksheets and more!
Fun and engaging ESL activities, games and worksheets in printable PDF format with full teacher's notes and answers for English teachers to use in class.
Photographs offer excellent support for English Language Learners to write about. They can help students generate ideas, and visual vocabulary support is built into a high-quality photograph. You can easily differentiate a writing assignment based on photographs. All students use the same picture, but the amount of writing, level of support offered, and complexity of
By Presto Plans A few years ago I became a part-time student and enrolled in a master's course called Writing Instruction. The professor took a unique approach by having us, a group of English teachers, write our own poetry and fiction. It was an eye-opener. I realized that somewhere between high school and my first teaching job, I forgot the lonely and uneasy feeling of staring at a blank page, not knowing where to begin. When the professor allowed us to work with another teacher on the next writing piece, there was a sense of comfort in that I had someone to discuss, collaborate, and share ideas with. Collaborative writing not only broke down my reserve and hesitation, but also allowed me to foster a relationship of trust and partnership with my co-author. I wanted to bring this experience into my own classroom, so I made a point to allow more opportunities for students to write creatively with a partner or a group. Try 5 of my favorite engaging, low-prep collaborative writing activities that you can use in your class tomorrow. Snowball writing is an activity that your middle and high school students will always remember. It can be used with almost any writing genre and is highly-engaging for even your most reluctant writers. I use this method for narrative, poetry, descriptive, and essay writing. I even use it as an introductory icebreaker activity during back-to-school or a semester change! How It Works: - One student starts the writing process for a timed period decided by the teacher. - When time is up, the teacher tells students to crumple up their work into a “snowball” and throw it somewhere else in the room. Get ready to see lots of confused faces J. - Students retrieve one of the snowballs, smooth out the paper, and continue the writing process! (Tip: have students use a pen to make the writing easier to read for the next student) This process is repeated as needed. When all parts are completed, the paper goes back to the original writer who creates a final copy. If you want to know more about how I use this for narrative writing, read this detailed blog post that gives the step-by-step process in more detail. Have your students write a descriptive paragraph using vivid imagery with an activity called Shared Sensory Writing. How it works: - Put students into groups of three and give them an object to describe. - As a group, they decide which of the 3 senses they will focus on (sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing). Each person is assigned a sense, and they write a short paragraph describing the object based only on the sense they receive. - The group combines elements from each of the paragraphs to create a final descriptive piece. Download this activity for FREE by clicking here: Shared Sensory Writing One of the challenging parts of creative fictional writing is developing the story elements that will form the plot. Use the graffiti fiction brainstorming technique as a way for students to work together to spark fictional writing. How It Works: - Set up 4 chart-paper stations around the room with the following titles: Conflicts, Character Traits, Settings, and Themes. Break the class up into 4 groups and have each group go to one of the stations. - The group members work together to “graffiti” the page with potential conflicts, character traits, settings, and themes that could emerge in a fictional story. I fill in a couple of my own examples to get them started. - Have each group spend 3-4 minutes filling the chart paper up with their ideas. Then, have them all circulate to the next station to repeat the process. - When they are done, have each student select one character trait, conflict, setting, and theme from the graffitied pages to develop a unique narrative. You can choose to have them write independently or with a partner. Tapestry poetry was developed by Avril Meallem (of Israel) and Shernaz Wadia (of India). The two women started writing tapestry poetry collaboratively via email. The form consists of two authors writing a 9-line poem based on the same title, and then working together to meld it into one seamless finished product. How It Works: - Put your students into pairs (or let them choose a partner). - Have one of the students select a title for the poem. This student who selects the title is the only one who has the option of using it in the poem (to avoid repetition). - Both students write a 9-line poem. - When they are done, the pair works together to interlace the poem into one. All 18 lines must be included. Students are permitted to make grammatical changes (singular to plural, verb tenses etc.), and adjustments to adjectives and adverbs, but the majority of the poems should remain the same. Download this activity for FREE by clicking here: Tapestry Poetry Sketch and scribble writing is meant to be used with descriptive/narrative writing and will particularly appeal to those artistic students in your classroom. How It Works: - Have students form a group of three. Give each of the students a picture as a writing prompt. The picture prompts below are the ones I use. The images should allow them to use a narrative voice to describe a scene. They should keep the prompt hidden from the other members of the group. - Once the time is up, each student passes the writing to another student in the group who will read it and draw the scene based on the description (no words allowed). - When the drawings are done, they are given to the final student who must write a paragraph based on the drawing. In the end, have students compare and contrast the drawings to the original picture writing prompt as well as the two pieces of writing. Want even more ideas for collaborative writing? Check out these activities from some of the other Secondary English Coffee Shop bloggers! Tandem Writing from The SuperHERO Teacher Group Writing Challenges from Room 213 Two Truths and a Lie from Secondary Sara Round Robin Writing from Nouvelle ELA Have other ideas for collaborative writing? Click the comment button at the top of the post to join the conversation! SaveSave SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave
Devoting part of the day to holding books, looking at books and reading books is important. Carve out time each day, or several times per week, where students
Check out the best ESL reading comprehension activities and games, along with worksheets & lesson plans. Teaching reading can be fun!
I needed a way to keep my ELL students writing in English during this quarantine, so I created these 10 Google slides. My students can write on the slides and return them to me. Some students write the answers on a piece of paper and then send me a picture. Find them here. https://aclassroomforallseasons.blogspot.com/2020/04/journal-prompts-for-ell-students-using.html Thanks ... Read More about ESL Journal Prompts for Google Drive
FUN ESL Lesson plans on many topics. All the lesson plans on this page come complete with all the games, activities, and materials you need. All for FREE.
In honor of the Q&A section of my TPT store , I am sharing a little more about my paragraph puzzles today in VIDEO form! Questions answered in this video: What exactly will I get when I purchase a month of paragraph puzzles? Can these be differentiated to meet the needs of my strug
ESL instruction is often vague because, in most cases, there's no curriculum to follow or even to guide. We are left to our own devices to plan and provide
**These worksheets are included in my complete Persuasive Writing Worksheet Pack** Persuasive Writing Handouts - No Prep Printables This persuasive writing pack includes a range of worksheets and activities to support the teaching of persuasive writing. Worksheets include: Persuasive writing template. Persuasive writing sentence starters. Persuasive writing topics. Persuasive writing checklist. This resource includes a digital (Google Slides) version. See the end page of the resource for the details and the link to access the digital version. ________________________________________ For more persuasive writing resources, click the links below: Persuasive Writing - Marking Assessment Rubrics Persuasive Writing Worksheets - Persuasive Tools Persuasive Writing Worksheets - Include Expert Opinions Persuasive Writing Posters - Earth Tones Classroom Décor Persuasive Text Posters - Classroom Decor Persuasive Writing PowerPoint - Guided Teaching Persuasive Writing Prompts - Lightning Writing Persuasive Writing Posters - Classroom Decor Persuasive Texts - Writing Samples with Comprehension Questions ________________________________________ For more writing resources, click the links below: Compound Words - Worksheet Pack Understanding Nouns Worksheets - No Prep Printables Add The Adjective To The Sentences - Worksheet Pack Nouns, Pronouns & Capital Letters - Grammar Worksheets with Answers Add Punctuation to the Sentences - 10 Worksheets Reading and Grammar Pack, Google Slides - Distance Learning Parts of Speech Grammar Workbook Homographs PowerPoint - Interactive, full lesson Parts of Speech - Fill The Blanks Worksheets Verbs PowerPoint - Interactive ________________________________________ Follow Me Click the green star at the top of my page to be the first to receive updates about new products and discounts. ________________________________________ Feedback Please help me to improve my products by leaving valuable feedback. Simply click the 'Provide Feedback' button on your purchases page and leave a rating and a comment. You will also gain credits to use for further purchases. ________________________________________ Copyright Information This product is not for commercial use, individual use only. If you plan to share this product with others, please purchase extra licenses at the 50% discounted rate. The fonts used in my resources are from: Babbling Abby and Kimberly Geswein Fonts The clip art used in my resources is from: Krista Wallden Creative Clips and Whimsy Clips ________________________________________ writing | persuasive | expository | convince | persuasive tools | classroom | bundle | English | literacy | literature | warm up | reflection | text | reading | extension | alliteration | emotive language | groups of three | inclusive language | draft | rubric | no prep | printable | homework | teacher | booklet | learning tool | elementary school | primary school | homeschooling | homeschool
Assessment of ESL students does not have to be complicated. Here is a short overview of Bloom's taxonomy, what assessment is and ideas for ESL assessment.
Three quick and fun writing activities to help energize student writers. Get those creative juices flowing with these easy lessons!
My faboulous summer holidaySketchnotes / doodle - ArbeitsblattIn meinem Unterricht benutze ich gern schön gestaltete Vorlagen für Kurzvorstellungen, Erlebnisber
Cultivating a postive classroom community is such an important part of teaching, and I've learned that little things go a long way. The Best Part of Me writing activity is a great community builder!
Check out our top ESL Listening and Speaking Activities. Lots of great ideas to get your students listening and speaking in class today!
Photographs offer excellent support for English Language Learners to write about. They can help students generate ideas, and visual vocabulary support is built into a high-quality photograph. You can easily differentiate a writing assignment based on photographs. All students use the same picture, but the amount of writing, level of support offered, and complexity of
Lesson plans can be a tedious job, but it all can be simplified if you know what to focus on and have some resources at hand to make the writing of the lesson plans a smooth sailing.
Check out our these ESL comparative and superlative games and activities, along with worksheets, online practice, example questions and more.
17 fun impromptu speech activities: an instantly available bundle of proven activities, with guidelines and printables for middle school up
Scrambled paragraphs are a fun literacy activity your kids will love. This activity contains 5 interesting passages to scramble and re-arrange correctly. Students will use logic and transition words like "for example", "however", and "finally" to determine the correct order. Great activity to reinforce text structures!Each passage contains six sentences. The passages increase in difficulty, making this activity easy to differentiate. This works great as a station activity for helping teach students organization in writing. It can be useful scaffolding for students who are struggling with constructing paragraphs of their own.Answer key is included.No prep, ready to print and use! Teachers are saying: "We loved this resource. I set these up as stations. The kids went around in their groups and tried to put the paragraphs together in the correct order. It was interesting to see how the sequential one was the easiest one for him to complete. This was the perfect activity for our class needs." Format: PDF
Using sentence frames to get ell students writing. Click here for more:
This is a great writing exercise to practice writing a narrative. Keywords and drawings are given.
Do you struggle with finding interesting ways to teach ESL listening skills? Maybe you have an activity or two already but you want to be able to mix it up and keep things interesting. By the end of…
Vocabulary folders are a convenient way to organize vocabulary pages. I used illustrated vocabulary sheets to help my English Language Learners speak and write about new vocabulary. They are also helpful for younger students with spelling. Some primary classroom teachers I supported had a set of these folders on student tables or in a writing