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

Made this very simple snow scene with reindeer and snowmen with my third-graders. I had seen a video on Instagram explaining how to make the characters and decided to add the background, so the kids could take them home to decorate their house for Christmas. All you have to do is draw the Christmas characters you like, cut them out, and glue them onto a plastic bottle top, add some Play-Doh to the bottom of the bottle top, so the characters stand up, and you're done. The pictures are pretty self-explanatory. They wobble to the sides when you push them The background is black paper folded to stand. I've shown this here in other posts, but instead of a triangle, I made a square. For the snow, I just cut up white paper into little pieces, placed small drops of glue onto the paper, and threw the paper on it. I also added little Christmas lights at the top. Students were able to look at my model and work on their own, which is always a plus.  

  For my third-graders to illustrate a story, we made finger-painted sheep. They first used white paint to make the sheep, and while the paint was drying, they wrote what happened first, next, then, and finally in the story. We came up with the sequence together as a group. I wrote their ideas on the board for them to copy on notebook paper. When they were done, they drew the head and legs of the sheep on black paper, cut them out, and glued them to the bodies. They also glued googly eyes onto the head. One other thing some students did was to add a small slip of folded paper on the back of the head, so it would stick out a little. I always love the fact that each one comes out different, even though the idea is the same. In the following class, they each used their work to practice reading.

  We've been studying what happens first, next, then, and finally in a story. We're also still talking about what our responsibilities to each other are, so I thought the story of The Selfish Crocodile would be perfect. The story can be found on YouTube here . First, they watched the video, and we discussed the story and the moral they got from it. They then made a paper crocodile, and I elicited the sequence of the story from them. After they had written their ideas on the board, everyone copied the sequence on a white sheet of paper and glued it onto the back of the crocodile. I had them practice reading what they wrote in pairs. The green crocodile was my sample for them. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough green paper for the whole class, so the crocodiles came out very colorful. Luckily, the students ended up loving the different colors. I used a paper cutter for the paper circles, but you can also fold a paper sheet twice and cut out different-sized circles. I han

My third-graders are working on answering the big question: what are our responsibilities to each other? One of their answers was to put trash in the trash , so we made these posters using old magazine pages and some leftover colorful paper to remind everyone to be good citizens. Now, every time there is any paper on the floor, they remind each other to put it in the trash.

I had my third graders make these frogs to share their favorite part of a story called Frog Brings Rain. They first made the paper frogs and then drew their favorite part on a white sheet of paper to glue inside. Then, they had to write a sentence about what they drew. Finally, each student came to the front of the class to share their drawing and their sentence. They really enjoy sharing their work with their friends. Plus, I believe it's essential for their work to have a purpose besides just me collecting and checking what they do. I made videos of their presentations and posted the videos for their parents to be able to see on an online platform I use called  Seesaw  .  

So, we are studying multiple-meaning words and at the same time we are working on the story Frog Brings rain. In the story, a snail lives in a spring, so I decided to have the students make snails. It's the same snail I made for the Shelby snail story (video below). I brought the circles which would be the snail shells already cut out, just to save time. The students folded a paper in the middle, drew a semicircle, and cut the folded paper. After they decorated the shell, they glued it onto the snail, then added the eyes and mouth. They wrote a short text inside the snail to practice using the 2 meanings of the word spring we are studying. I had each student read their text. I love snails and how creative we can be when we color or draw them. The kids were excited to take them home to show their parents.  

 Here's an activity I did with my adult group. These are basic learners, and we're studying parts of a house. I found some pictures of rooms on the internet and placed them on my class slides. I didn't let them see the slides and told them I would describe a specific room in a house, and they would have to draw it. After they finished drawing the room, they compared their rooms to see if they were alike. In pairs, they talked about their rooms: there's a bed and next to the bed there's a side table, etc. Last, I showed them the picture of the room on the slide, and we all made sentences together. We forget that adults can and like to draw and have fun too. 

 Father's Day in Brazil is on the second Sunday in August. This was our Father's Day activity for this year. You can use as many hearts as you like, but I thought 3 hearts would be easier for my third-grade class to use. They first made the shirt by cutting the top of the yellow paper around the size of your pinkie finger on each side and folding the strips down for the collar. Then, they cut out the hearts. We used the same technique that we used to make the clouds, so the hearts are all the same size.  Before gluing the hearts together, they wrote a big YOU in the middle of each heart. Last, they wrote: you are in my heart on the yellow paper. I thought the black paper was nice to make all the colors pop out. I didn't write anything related to fathers so that each kid could decide to who they would give the card. Some kids don't have a father present in their lives. My students got creative and added their own ideas to the final project, which is always great.

As you can see, in this activity, we didn't use paper. Our driving question here is: how do we use water? I had students walk around their school and take pictures of how we use water at school. They used an app that allowed them to write on the photos. In the following classes, I used their photos to review the topic. They asked and answered questions about their own photos. Going out of the classroom is always a great way to get them engaged and create memorable moments. This activity was pretty easy and very student-centered, which is what we aim for in our classes.  

My third-grade class is studying the water cycle. We made 3D clouds by folding a sheet of paper twice in the middle, drawing a cloud, and cutting it out so we had 4 exact-shaped clouds. Then, we folded each one in the middle and glued only half of each cloud to the other to form this cool-looking rain cloud. We used blue paper to give everything a rainy day effect. Last, we drew raindrops falling from the cloud and wrote the sentence: rain comes from clouds. It was pretty easy for students to make and they could practice reading, writing, and speaking.  

Remember these? I guess we can use them at any age because my basic adult group used them successfully to practice colors, spelling, and asking and answering questions. After the whole class watched a step-by-step video to learn how to make the fortune-tellers, they colored 4 of the outside squares using different colors. They then wrote 8 different topics on the inside and a question under each topic. In pairs, one student chose a color and the other student had to spell the color as they opened and closed the fortune-teller. Finally, they picked a topic and asked and answered the question on that topic. These are something that can be used in the following classes as a wrap-up and review activity. Adults should also be able to make things and bring out the child that exists in all of us.  

We've come to the end of our unit on animals and what they need to survive. One of the last texts was about how porcupines and sea urchins use spikes to protect themselves. I didn't want to use the usual toothpicks to make an animal so, of course, I decided to use paper.  I first explored the images of the animals with the students and discussed why spikes can be important to some animals. They then wrote a sentence about it and glued their sentence onto a black piece of paper. Next, we rolled up different-sized paper squares and rectangles to make the spikes and cut 2 or 3 slits on the sides to glue them to the black paper. Last, we glued the black paper to a yellow sheet and cut the sides to look like spikes. I loved how the final product looks like some modern art project. 😍  

   My third-grade class just finished studying about living things that produce their own light. I love using black paper to highlight other colors and thought black would be the perfect color for this activity. To start, students used gold and silver pens to draw the living things we have been studing. They added sequins to make the drawings pop out even more on the black background and some students added googly eyes to their fireflies. We glued their drawing onto another paper so they could not just write the names of their drawings but also add why each living thing uses light. They were all very engaged and amazed at how beautiful these creatures and fungi are.