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

 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.   

 My bilingual 5th-graders were reading about wild animals and how their habitats are affected by humans. To wrap up the unit, I had them write a message to animals 100 years in the future. In their messages, they asked questions about what the world was like for the animals and if they were doing okay. Some students apologized for what humans had done to the planet while others drew the animals they were imagining. It was interesting to see how creative they got with their messages to the future. When they were done. they tied up their messages and glued them to paper bottles they had drawn and cut out as if we were going to throw these "bottles" in the ocean for animals to find in the future, find and read 😏  I then took these messages to another older group of students I had. I asked this group of older teens to imagine they were the animals receiving the messages 100 years in the future and for them to answer the messages. My 5th-graders were so excited to receive their b...

I did this actvity with my advanced teens group. In one class they had to choose some colors and squirt paint onto a white piece of paper 3 times and fold the paper in the middle so the paint would create different patterns like in a mirror. I didn't tell them what it would be for. I also told them not to write their names on the paper. The mystery made the actvity even more engaging.  The following class I handed the papers out randomly, asking them to hand back the paper if it was their own. Next, they had to use vocabulary words we were studying to write sentences about the person who had made the images. I asked them to imagine they were studying the student's personality through the "painting" they had created.  They had to really use their creativity and also make sure they understood the meanings of each new word they used. They all had fun trying to come up with their sentences and then trying to find out who the paper belonged to. Last, when students got thei...

  I made these characters to play an adaptation of the Among Us game with my teenage students on our first day. They all have to put their heads down on the table and I'll call each one individually. If I show them the green player, they are part of the crew. If I show them the red player, they are the impostor. When they all put their heads up, each student will say a sentence about themselves but the impostor has to say a false sentence. Then, the class has to all vote on who they think the impostor is and why. The sentences can be about things they like or don't like, favorite colors or sports teams, pets they have, anything about their lives. Again, I used a cereal box to make the characters and taped them onto chopsticks, really simple. Let's see how it goes. 🤞🤞