All You Need is Paper (and a little love) ESL/EFL activities

This paper activity can be used in so many different ways! My first grade class is studying cities and the helpers who work in a community. We made this craft today to practice asking and answering about each helper. They showed their helper and I would ask them: where does the (firefighter) work? We drew 4 workers but more can be drawn. I let them choose which ones they wanted to draw. After folding each paper in the middle, they are glued back to back to each other. I made the same craft with my second grade class but instead of helpers we drew different kinds of transportation. I added a popsicle stick in the middle to be able to hold onto it and spin it around. Use your imagination with this and let me know how it goes.  

  Here's a really creative activity plus craft to practice places in the city and the use of there is/are. Students have to create 3 layers of their city by adding 3 different paper levels. The first buildings are drawn and colored on a sheet of paper, cut out and glued onto the blue creative paper which should be cut in half. The other 2 levels with the smaller buildings and the cars on the street have to be longer strips of paper than the blue one so they can be glued by their tips onto the first paper. After the city is ready, students should write about their city and glue it onto the back of the blue paper. Each student can show and describe their city to the class. The cities can also be placed around the classroom (we hope next year) for everybody to be able to check out and read about their friends' cities. Encourage students to be creative with their cities and only use yours for inspiration.                                    

I had seen this art project on Pinterest and recently a friend sent me the idea on Instagram. My first grade bilingual class is studying communities and one of the places was a park with slides and swings. I didn't want them to just draw a playground and I thought making a model of a playground on an online class would be too challenging, so I decided to make this paper project into a crazy wild playground. All the students needed were strips of paper which they could decorate if they wanted to and a cardboard or some other paper to glue the strips onto. They loved the idea and it was really easy for them. When they were done, they all got to show their swings and slides to the class. And here is my wild playground.