Sight Word Activity

For emergent readers, type up a simple book and cut out the individual words. Have children fish the words out of a jar and try to read the word as fast as they can. You could easily turn this into a relay.

Arctic Animal Craft: Adorable Walrus Craft!

My co-teacher and I got a kick out of our students' walrus crafts. See how much fun they have when you give them room to be creative and silly!

Sochi Olympics Art: Ice Skating

Simple ice skating craft. My students are Korean so we discussed the Gold Medal figure skater Kim Yuna before beginning this project. Alternatively, you can use a hole punch and have the kids weave laces into the skate. Depends on how much time you have, and how adept your students' motor skills are. Since we are discussing the Olympics this month my students will draw their country's flag on their ice skate.

Arctic Animal Craft: Arctic Foxes

Teach children that some arctic animals, such as the arctic fox, change their color depending on the season. In winter an arctic fox is white so that it is more difficult for predators to see it against the snow. In summer, the fox's coat is brown and mottled like the ground as the snow melts.

Christmas Craft: Gingerbread House Collage

Good for fine motor skills. You can have the kids make gingerbread men, candy canes, candies, etc. for this craft.

Arctic Animals: Orca (Killer) Whales

This versatile project can be used during a few different themes, such as Thanksgiving (when teachers are looking to branch out from the traditional Native American lesson plans and into more creative territory), arctic animals, or learning about different cultures around the world. My class did this project when we were learning about the seasons, as orcas migrate along the Pacific coastline during the fall and spring. In this way, I taught my students that some animals migrate during fall and spring. 

The instructions to this great Pacific Northwest Native American orca whale craft for kids can be found here: http://www.thecraftyclassroom.com/CraftIndianTlingitPaperPiecing.html

Arctic Animals Craft: Penguins!

Getting tired of making paper crafts with kinders? Try making some mixed media art. Our class loved making these penguins.

Materials:

Plastic cup with attachable lid
Cotton or polyester batting
Construction paper for wings, feet, and beak.

Arctic Animal Crafts: Narhwal Art!

When teaching children about arctic animals it's fun for them to learn about some of the more unusual animals who live in the polar regions. Children love to learn about the unicorns of the sea!

Halloween ESL Activity: Witch's Potion

Level: Kinder, Elementary, Middle School

Materials: 1 cauldron, 1 wooden spoon with a magnet on the bottom, various objects or magnetic laminated pictures of icky things (slugs, toes, slime, eyeballs, lizards, etc.)

Activity:

One by one, students must pull icky ingredients out of a cauldron and pretend to be under a spell. The spell they are under is predetermined by what object they pull out. For instance, if a child pulls out a lizard, she must bark like a dog; if she pulls out an eyeball, she must wiggle like a worm; if she pulls out an eyeball, she must spin around.

This is a great activity for young learners, as it helps develop motor skills!

Halloween ESL Activity: Reassemble a Skeleton

Level: Kindergarten

Materials: Puzzle or large felt pieces for the wall. Teachers, all you need for this activity is a pair of scissors and black and white felt and your creativity!

Activity:

Have children reassemble felt pieces of a skeleton with your help. Ask questions such as, "Where is the leg? Where is the hand? What is this?" Children will enjoy helping solve the proper placement of the different bones.

This activity is great for Halloween, as you will have a new classroom decoration when it is complete. Or you can use it when teaching about parts of the body.

Pictionary Riddles

Level: Medium

Materials: White board, dry erase markers

Activity: Separate class into two teams. Choose one student to come up and draw a picture while you read out clues. The class must work within their teams to guess what the child at the front is drawing. They must also listen to your clues, because the child's drawing may be misleading!

Example:

Who am I?

• Most people don't like me.
• I am green.
• I have no arms. 
• I have no legs. 
• I can't swim. 
• I can't fly. 

Fly Swatter Memory Game with Flashcards

Level: Low-Medium

Materials: Plastic fly swatter and magnetic flash cards

Activity:

Align flash cards on magnetic white board. Ask two students to come up and have students hit one card and say the name, ie, "pencil." Second student must hit the first card and pick a second card, ie: "pencil, table." Students must remember the order of the pictures and add a new card for each turn until one student forgets the order of the cards.

This is a great memory game that will help your students learn vocabulary quickly and have a great time while they're doing it!

ESL Flashcard Game: What's Different?

Level: Medium-High English

Materials: Objects, or Picture Flashcards

Objective: Teach students to compare and contrast in English. 
Activity: Set two objects or flashcards side by side and ask children to name one thing that the items have in common and one thing that is different.

Example:

What's different? An Apple is red. A watermelon is green (outside). Inside, an apple is white and a watermelon is red. 

What's the same? The both have black seeds. They're both fruits. 

Students really enjoy this game because it often appears simple but students can come up with some complex responses which will make it interesting for teachers as well!  

ESL Vocabulary Game: Around the World

Level: Kinder / Elementary /Middle School / High School

Materials: Vocabulary Flashcards (pictures or words)

Activity:

Choose two students to come up to the front of the class. Show both a flashcard of a word or picture. The first student who says the word first is the winner. Call up a new second student to compete against the reigning champion. The object of the game is to find one student who can beat every student in the class (time permitting).

Simple ESL Grammar Game

Level: Kindergarten/Elementary/High School/ Adult

Materials: Board marker, white board

Activity:

Before class, write down several sentences that follow sentence patterns students are currently studying.  Write the words of one sentence out of order on the board, ex:

Jenna / plays /  tennis / with / her mom

Becomes-->

plays / her mom / Jenna / with / tennis

In pairs or teams, have students unscramble the sentences. Assign points to students who unscramble their sentences first.

Kindergarten Animal Actions Game

Level: Kindergarten/Elementary
Materials: Animal flashcards
Sentence patterns: "Can you...?"
Vocabulary: Animal names, animal actions (run, crawl, swim, fly, etc.)

Introduce:

Before beginning this activity make sure your students know the names of basic animal names and their associated actions, ie: Eagles/Fly, Zebras/Run, Snakes/Crawl, etc.

Activity: "Who Am I?"

One student chooses an animal flashcard and looks at it. Classmates must ask questions about the animal in the form: "Can you fly?"until a classmate guesses correctly what the animal is. Continue activity until ever student has had a chance to be the mystery animal.

Simple Sight Word Activity

Level: Emergent Readers 

For children just learning to read, reading simple texts over and over again can be repetitive and exhausting for children and teachers. Additional problems arise when students memorize sentences rather than actually recognizing individual words. 

Here's an easy way to make things more exciting and deconstruct memorized sentences: 

Type words from the story and cut out the individual words, place these in a container and have children fish out words. They need to be able to recognize the individual word immediately, or they lose their turn. Children who can read the word earn a point. The child with the most recognized sight words wins.

Additionally, it may be worthwhile to vary the font type used for this activity as children may have difficulty generalizing the sight words used in the activity.

Variation: Have children spell the word to it after they read it.