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

On the first day back to school, I had my new 5th-grade bilingual group talk abou their lives. They then wrote their names, decorated the letters, cut them out, folded them and then glued them on yellow craft paper. I asked them to write a positive word for each letter of their name that would describe a liitle who they are. I emphasized that they had to write positive words. When they were done, each student came to the front of the class to share their work. One of the most creatives characteristics was "not dumb" for the letter N. 😊 They were excited to take their 3D names home to show their families.   

 These explosion books are amazing! There are lots of tutorials on YouTube teaching us how to make them and they can be used for several different activities. I used one of these tutorials with my 5th-grade students and after they had made the shape for the book, we used it to do an activity about the story Treasure Island. They first had to answer some questions about the story and then create their own character to add to the story. They had to draw their character, describe it, and draw objects their characters would own or use in the story. Also, because they weren't really able to get into the story, this was a way to get them to get more excited about it. In the end, the trickiest part was folding the book but they got the hang of it faster than I did.