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

Back to school for our second semester. Of course, we talked about what the kids did on their vacation. We brainstormed everything people do while on vacation and put all their ideas on the board. Next, I asked them to think of one of their best moments and imagine they had taken a photo of it. Then, we folded half of a white sheet in half, they drew their cameras and on the inside they had to draw their "photo" and write a sentence about it using the past. The sentence had to start with, on my vacation I_____. Last, we added string to their cameras so they could hang it around their neck like a real photographer and each student got to present their work to the class.  

My fourth grade bilingual class read a story about the life of Ida Lewis, a famous heroic lighthouse keeper who lived in Rhode Island. After we read and discussed the story, I had them choose four important parts of the story. They had to draw these important moments on a paper circle divided into four parts. We then cut out another circle the same size as the first with an opening so we could see each drawing separately. The students put the circles together with a brad. When they were done, they shared their circles with their classmates and had to retell each part of the story to their friends. It was a great way for me to check they had understood the story and knew how to use the new words.

In this activity, students "receive" actions from other students and later have to produce passive voice sentences to describe what happened during the activity. This will show them why the passive voice is sometimes given preference over the active voice to explain events. You'll need paper slips and tape .  There are suggestions for the commands for each slip at the bottom; however, please remember to use two or more copies of the same commands but also not all of them. Keep only one copy of a few commands to make sure the group will practice singular and plural passive voice.  Here are the steps: 1) Teacher checks the vocabulary from the slips, then has students stand up and make a circle. 2) T uses pieces of tape to stick a slip of paper to the back of each student ( printable picture ). In order to keep interest in this activity high, T shouldn't allow them to see what the slips contain before the activity. Ss must be told to "do whatever they re...