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

My first-graders have been talking about what they can and can't do. I had them decorate these paper wings I cut out.  I added a paper loop on the back of each wing so they could fit their hands in. In one class they glued sequins and fingerpainted the wings with different colors. The following class, they "flew" around the classroom as they repeated I can fly. They couldn't wait to take the wings home to fly around the house. 😀  

 My five-year-olds have been practicing playground vocabulary. And here's how we made our paper I-can-climb craft. They first folded a white sheet in the middle and drew their playgrounds. Then, we cut a strip of paper in any color, drew the monkey bar steps, and glued it onto the folded white paper. While the glue was drying, the kids drew themselves with their arms raised as if they were climbing something. They cut their drawings out and glued them onto the monkey bars. They were then able to share while practicing the sentence, I can climb. Pretty easy and simple.

I want to do this when we finally go back to our classroom. Students in groups would make their take one posters with activities people can or can’t do and place them around the classroom. Everybody would go around the room and take slips of things they can do.  They then would sit in their groups and compare what they can do. After, they would write  sentences using their slips.  Last, students can also be divided into teams to mime the sentences.  

Inspired by our caterpillars, I made this fruit toss game out of a box I got at the supermarket. I used a tea box to make the fruit and glued bottle caps onto them to make them easier to throw. I decorated the box with my caterpillar and more fruit and added a question I wanted students to be able to answer. The students have to be able to toss the fruit into the hole at the top of the box which is supposed to be the caterpillar's mouth. They have to count how many fruit they were able to get into the hole and tell the class. I showed the game to my goup and invited  them to make one themselves with their families. I'm saving mine to take to school and play with my class when we all finally go back.

This dog was really simple to make. My first grade bilingual group was learning about how they could help around the house. One of the chores was give the dog a bath. We made the dog in one class and the bathtub the following class. When both are ready, all you have to do to give the dog a bath is place him on the paper with the drawing of the tub. They are going to show their complete project and I’ll ask them, how can we help around the house? I expect them to answer I can wash the dog or I can give the dog a bath. There is a lot of vocabulary to practice with this simple project. After 3 months of online classes, this group still gets excited about making these paper activities. Can’t wait to get back to our classroom to see them in person ❤️

Today I worked with a group of adults who were lower intermediate or maybe high beginners. Well, feel free to name them whatever you want. The topic of the class was places in a city, there is/there are and can. The tricky part was that I had 4 hours with them. So, after the usual homework correction, I explored some pictures with them of some common places in a city. After they showed me they had understood all the vocabulary, I asked them to draw their own cities in groups of 4. They had to draw some but not all of the places mentioned in the book. One of the good things was that they asked a lot of questions and came up with a lot of words on their own. When they were done, each group had to present their city to the class using there is, there are and the negatives: there’s no or there aren’t any . Everybody in the group was supposed to say at least 2 sentences about their city, most said more. They also had to make up a name for their town. After their presentation, I gave t...