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

This city took us several classes to make but my six-year-olds never got tired of it. They would beg me to play with it every class. We used it to practice transportation related vocabulary and sentences like: Let’s go by car! or I go to school by bus . There’s no better way to get kids engaged than by having them use their own work and creations to learn. It was also a great way to review every class. There were trains, planes, cars and lots of buses driving kids to school.

Here’s a great theme for young learners! There’s so much you can explore and create. My kids started with boats and then today we made cars. Of course, paper was our material of choice. Our sea needed fish and our boats needed sails and some decorations. Our cars will drive through the streets of the big floor map we’re going to make and play with next class.

Carrot Feet! Here’s to Easter! Got this idea off Pinterest , one of my favorite places to browse. The idea worked and students were tickled. Literally. I painted their feet and they laughed through the whole process. A lot of paper towels involved in the cleaning up but so very worth it. They then cut different shades of green creative paper to glue to taste. 😊 They were able to practice saying feet, foot and of course Happy Easter ! 

What do you have in your backpack? Well, my 5 year olds have a pencil, an eraser, a ruler, glue, crayons, and scissors. I made these paper backpacks and drew the school material for them but depending on how much time you have, the students can draw the objects themselves, which of course would be much better. After a class and a song about these classroom objects, they colored and cut out the school material. Next class, they’re going to use I have to tell me about what they have in their backpacks. We are also going to have a race with the backpacks lined up in front of the classroom. I’ll have one student say: I have (a pencil) in my backpack. The first student to run to their backpack and get the correct object, wins! There are lots of ways we can use their work to practice vocabulary and structures. What would you do?

I loved this paper shape so much that I decided to use it with several different groups. Students were given a square sheet of paper which they folded connecting the tips to make 4 triangles. They then cut on one of the creases just to the middle of the square. The two bottom triangles can be overlapped and glued together so that the paper stands up, like in the pictures. This 3D shape can be used for so many different activities and with so many different ages. All it takes it some imagination and creativity. In the first two pictures, we were studying the Present Continuous. Each student had to write two sentences and draw the pictures for their sentences. One sentence had to be in the singular and the other one in the plural, for example: She is playing ball/They are playing ball. I then covered their sentences with a triangular piece of paper and placed their work around the class. The students had to walk around the classroom, look at the pictures and write down in their n...

Here's an activity I did with a fourth grade bilingual group. They were studying the plurals ending in -ies and -ves. I pre-made the trunks and the leaves just to save time but you can have them create everything. They were each given black paper, two trunks and 10 leaves. They were then instructed to look in their books for words which made their plural using one of these forms. We had studied these plurals the previous class. They were supposed to write the words on the leaves and then glue them to the branches. They worked together and compared their words to make sure they were right.

Everybody knows how to play tic-tac-toe. I used this game to review superlative with my teen students but it can be used for just about anything. All you have to do is adapt it to what you're teaching. A friend from work gave me the idea to use popsicle sticks (thanks Candice). You can use small paper squares for the exes and circles. It would be best to have students write the words on the paper themselves. The more they do the better. In this picture I used bottle tops, which I am forever saving. After they played the game a few times, they had to come up with sentences in the superlative of the words they used to play. I placed each tic-tac-toe set in plastic bags and handed them out to pairs. If you have time, the class can rotate around the room and play all the sets; each one had different words on them.