Counting Syllables - Zombie Theme

For my 2014 Summer English camp I followed a zombie theme and developed heaps of zombie ESL materials! 

I have found that many ESL students often have trouble using the correct number of syllables when pronouncing words, so I developed this simple game to help ram home the rules surrounding syllables and give my students plenty of practice without making it too boring. 

You can run the game however you like, but this is what I do.

1. I put students into groups of 2, 3 or 4 depending on the overall class size. I like to encourage group work as I have found when students put their heads together they can achieve a lot, but more importantly collaboratively teach each other too!
2. I assign each group a number and draw up a simple score board on the classroom whiteboard. 
3. In the game I give students 60 seconds to answer each question, but more advanced classes will answer many of them very quickly. A quick game is a good game. If you see the class has finished before the time is up, check answers and move onto the next question. Idle hands are the devil's workshop.
4. When students are working in a group, make sure they each take turns writing the answer. This helps to keep them all actively engaged and participating. 
5. When the time is up, have students hold up their answers so you can check them and award points to correct teams. 
6. I read the sentences out loud while clapping the syllables, and then get students to also read the sentence out loud WHILE ALSO CLAPPING THE SYLLABLES. This helps them build their English rhythm and accelerates the construction of neurological connections in their brain. 

I hope you have as much fun with this game as I did. 

DOWNLOAD ESL ZOMBIE THEME GAME

Draw What I Say - Prepositions

Here is a fun exercise for advanced students to practice their location prepositions. It is also a great ice breaker activity for native speakers too! It's dead simple.

1. Put students in pairs. 
2. Give each student a different version of the worksheet to their partner. Emphasize that they must keep the picture on their worksheet secret from their partner. 
3. Students then have to describe their picture to their partner so the partner can draw it. 

I did this activity with my English club students. You can see the results on my blog here. The activity generated a lot of laughs which is always good in the classroom. 

DOWNLOAD ESL DRAW WHAT I SAY PREPOSITION WORKSHEET

Christmas Tree Card

After exams are all said and done and the year is winding down, I thought it the perfect time to make Christmas Cards! Here is a lesson for making a simple pop-up Christmas tree card. There is a little preparation work, but the class is loads of fun. I used this in my ESL class, but it could be used in ANY children's class. As I said, it's heaps of fun.

You will need

1. Scissors
2. Glue sticks
3. Coloured crayons, pencils and/or pens. 
4. Blank A5 paper (check if your school has a guillotine. It will make the job much easier). 
5. Photocopies of the Christmas tree pop-up template. 

DOWNLOAD ESL CHRISTMAS TREE CARD TEMPLATE

DOWNLOAD ESL CHRISTMAS TREE CARD INSTRUCTIONS

Note that the power point has some Christmas songs embedded. I have not included the MP3 files, so if the songs don't work you will need to download the songs from another source. 

Compound Words

I developed this as a simple game to be played after final exams, but I think it does a good job reinforcing the idea of compound words and covers a some of the more common words they are likely to encounter. I also found it helped to boost the confidence of low level students. You can also use this game as an opportunity to encourage neat writing by not awarding points to groups who don't write neatly and clearly.

I played this game with mini-whiteboards which the students could write on and hold up their answers. You can find my mini-whiteboard for download here.

You can run the game however you like, but this is what I do.

1. I put students into groups of 2, 3 or 4 depending on the overall class size. I like to encourage group work as I have found when students put their heads together they can achieve a lot, but more importantly collaboratively teach each other too!
2. I assign each group a number and draw up a simple score board on the classroom whiteboard. 
3. In the game I give students 20 seconds to answer each question, but more advanced classes will answer many of them very quickly. A quick game is a good game. If you see the class has finished before the time is up, check answers and move onto the next question. Idle hands are the devil's workshop.
4. When students are working in a group, make sure they each take turns writing the answer. This helps to keep them all actively engaged and participating. 
5. When the time is up, have students hold up their answers so you can check them and award points to correct teams. 

I hope you have as much fun with this game as I did. 

DOWNLOAD ESL COMPOUND WORD GAME

Classroom Rules

I like to set clear expectations for my students because until I make my expectations known, I only have myself to blame when things go wrong. When I first started teaching I found students didn't always behave the way I thought they should have. I quickly realized it was my job as the leader of the classroom to communicate my expectations to them. This lead to the development of my 6 classroom rules. 

1. Don't be late. - This was a big problem for me at my public school in Korea. Setting the rule nipped this behavior in the bud after a couple of weeks. 
2. Listen to the teacher. - Again, at public schools in Korea it is normal for students to talk amongst themselves while the teacher is speaking. Many teachers resort to using a microphone and speaker to overcome the noise. Again, I found that setting the rule nipped this behavior in the bud after a couple of weeks. 
3. Don't draw on the desk. - A pet hate of mine. 
4. Don't laugh at your friends. - It's okay to laugh with your friends, but not AT your friends. Don't make people feel bad for doing their best. 
5. Bring your books and a pen to every class. - Can't do any much work without these two vital pieces of equipment. 
6. Never give up! - English is difficult, you have to keep trying. 

I made students write these in the back of their workbooks so whenever someone broke a rule I could ask the whole class to recite the rule. For example, if a student was late "What is rule number 1"? to which the whole class would reply "Don't be late".

Anyway, here is a powerpoint of my rules with Korean translations to make sure even low level students understand. Included in the slides are a simple punishment system I used. Each class would get three stars on the whiteboard. Each time a rule was broken, a star would get erased. When no stars remained, I started adding +1 to the board which was the amount of time the whole class had to stay back after the bell. Students quickly began policing the rules when I started taking their personal time away from them. 

DOWNLOAD ESL CLASSROOM RULES

Student Whiteboards

In my classroom I like to encourage students to practice the four core English skills.

1. Reading
2. Writing
3. Speaking
4. Listening

The student whiteboard is by far the most flexible tool in my arsenal and has has proven itself to be invaluable over the years. You can design a broad range of ESL activities and games that center around practicing the four core English skills with the aid of a whiteboard. 

If your English department has a decent budget, you probably have some mini whiteboards floating around that you can hand out to students. If not, it's dead easy to make your own. Just laminate a piece of A4 white paper. I like to print the outline of a smartphone on mine as I believe it helps reinforce to my students that my classroom is a fun environment for learning. 

As I said, this is a hugely flexible tool to have in your ESL arsenal. It's a fun way for students to write answers to quizzes, work in teams solving English problems, practice their writing, and easily correct each other. From the teachers point of view, it makes it easier to monitor students which leads to better classroom participation and identifying difficult areas for students. When students are put into groups to solve problems, it also takes some of the pressure off the teacher and allows students to engage in collaborative learning. 

You can download the smartphone whiteboard outline I use here, or make your own if you want. I cannot recommend this ESL teaching tool highly enough. Give it a try in your classroom. 

DOWNLOAD ESL STUDENT WHITEBOARD