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

I had my third graders make these frogs to share their favorite part of a story called Frog Brings Rain. They first made the paper frogs and then drew their favorite part on a white sheet of paper to glue inside. Then, they had to write a sentence about what they drew. Finally, each student came to the front of the class to share their drawing and their sentence. They really enjoy sharing their work with their friends. Plus, I believe it's essential for their work to have a purpose besides just me collecting and checking what they do. I made videos of their presentations and posted the videos for their parents to be able to see on an online platform I use called  Seesaw  .  

So, we are studying multiple-meaning words and at the same time we are working on the story Frog Brings rain. In the story, a snail lives in a spring, so I decided to have the students make snails. It's the same snail I made for the Shelby snail story (video below). I brought the circles which would be the snail shells already cut out, just to save time. The students folded a paper in the middle, drew a semicircle, and cut the folded paper. After they decorated the shell, they glued it onto the snail, then added the eyes and mouth. They wrote a short text inside the snail to practice using the 2 meanings of the word spring we are studying. I had each student read their text. I love snails and how creative we can be when we color or draw them. The kids were excited to take them home to show their parents.  

 Here's an activity I did with my adult group. These are basic learners, and we're studying parts of a house. I found some pictures of rooms on the internet and placed them on my class slides. I didn't let them see the slides and told them I would describe a specific room in a house, and they would have to draw it. After they finished drawing the room, they compared their rooms to see if they were alike. In pairs, they talked about their rooms: there's a bed and next to the bed there's a side table, etc. Last, I showed them the picture of the room on the slide, and we all made sentences together. We forget that adults can and like to draw and have fun too. 

 Father's Day in Brazil is on the second Sunday in August. This was our Father's Day activity for this year. You can use as many hearts as you like, but I thought 3 hearts would be easier for my third-grade class to use. They first made the shirt by cutting the top of the yellow paper around the size of your pinkie finger on each side and folding the strips down for the collar. Then, they cut out the hearts. We used the same technique that we used to make the clouds, so the hearts are all the same size.  Before gluing the hearts together, they wrote a big YOU in the middle of each heart. Last, they wrote: you are in my heart on the yellow paper. I thought the black paper was nice to make all the colors pop out. I didn't write anything related to fathers so that each kid could decide to who they would give the card. Some kids don't have a father present in their lives. My students got creative and added their own ideas to the final project, which is always great.

As you can see, in this activity, we didn't use paper. Our driving question here is: how do we use water? I had students walk around their school and take pictures of how we use water at school. They used an app that allowed them to write on the photos. In the following classes, I used their photos to review the topic. They asked and answered questions about their own photos. Going out of the classroom is always a great way to get them engaged and create memorable moments. This activity was pretty easy and very student-centered, which is what we aim for in our classes.  

My third-grade class is studying the water cycle. We made 3D clouds by folding a sheet of paper twice in the middle, drawing a cloud, and cutting it out so we had 4 exact-shaped clouds. Then, we folded each one in the middle and glued only half of each cloud to the other to form this cool-looking rain cloud. We used blue paper to give everything a rainy day effect. Last, we drew raindrops falling from the cloud and wrote the sentence: rain comes from clouds. It was pretty easy for students to make and they could practice reading, writing, and speaking.  

Remember these? I guess we can use them at any age because my basic adult group used them successfully to practice colors, spelling, and asking and answering questions. After the whole class watched a step-by-step video to learn how to make the fortune-tellers, they colored 4 of the outside squares using different colors. They then wrote 8 different topics on the inside and a question under each topic. In pairs, one student chose a color and the other student had to spell the color as they opened and closed the fortune-teller. Finally, they picked a topic and asked and answered the question on that topic. These are something that can be used in the following classes as a wrap-up and review activity. Adults should also be able to make things and bring out the child that exists in all of us.