75 ESL Teaching Ideas

by abdo Wed Apr 06, 2011 12:49 pm

75 ESL Teaching Ideas

Introduction

These are the ideas included in Hall Houston's Random
ESL Idea Generator. If you have a JavaScript-enabled browser, you can use
the generator to get a randomly-selected idea from this list. Perhaps you will
find it useful to print out this list and refer to it from time to time.

The Ideas

1. Alter the pacing of your class. If
you rush through your class at full speed, slow things down and take time to
ask your students personal questions based on the materials you are using. If
you tend to proceed at a snail's pace, prepare some additional activities and
push yourself to accomplish more than you usually do.

2. Ask a student to demonstrate a dance,
and assist the student in explaining the movements in English.

3. Ask students to name as many objects
in the classroom as they can while you write them on the board.

4. Ask students to present to the class
a gesture that is unique to their own culture.

5. Ask students to write one question
they would feel comfortable answering (without writing their name) on an index
card. Collect all of the index cards, put them in a bag, have students draw
cards, and then ask another student the question on that card.

6. Ask your students if there are any
songs running through their heads today. If anyone says yes, encourage the
student to sing or hum a little bit, and ask the others if they can identify
it.

7. Assign students to take a
conversation from their coursebook that they are familiar with and reduce each
line to only one word.

8. At the end of class, erase the board
and challenge students to recall everything you wrote on the board during the
class period. Write the expressions on the board once again as your students
call them out.

9. Begin by telling your students about
an internal struggle between two sides of your personality (bold side vs. timid
side OR hardworking side vs. lazy side), providing a brief example of what each
side says to you. After a few minutes of preparation in pairs, have students
present their struggles to the class.

10.
Bring a cellular phone (real or toy) to class, and pretend to receive
calls throughout the class. As the students can only hear one side of the
conversation, they must guess who is calling you and why. Make the initial
conversation very brief, and gradually add clues with each conversation. The
student who guesses correctly wins a prize.

11.
Bring a fork, knife, spoon, bowl, plate and chopsticks (if you have
them) to class, and mime eating some different dishes, letting students guess
what they are. Then let your students take a turn.

12.
Bring an artifact from the student's culture to class, and ask them
questions about it.

13.
Bring in some snacks that you think your students haven't tried before,
and invite the students to sample them and give their comments.

14.
Call on a student to draw his or her country's flag on the board, then
teach him or her how to describe the flag to the class (It has three
stripes...).

15.
Choose one topic (food, sports) and elicit a list of examples (food -
chicken, pudding, rice). Then have your student come up with the most unusual
combinations of items from that list(chocolate-beef or wrestling-golf).

16.
Collaborate with your students on a list of famous people, including
movie stars, politicians, athletes, and artists. Have every student choose a
famous person, and put them in pairs to interview each other.

17.
Come to class dressed differently than usual and have students comment
on what's different.

18.
Copy a page from a comic book, white out the dialogue, make copies for
your class, and have them supply utterances for the characters.

19.
Copy pages from various ESL textbooks (at an appropriate level for your
students), put them on the walls, and have students wander around the classroom
and learn a new phrase. Then have them teach each other what they learned.

20.
Copy some interesting pictures of people from magazine ads. Give a picture
to each student, have the student fold up the bottom of the picture about half
an inch, and write something the person might be thinking or saying. Put all
the pictures up on the board, and let everyone come up and take a look.

21.
Describe something observable in the classroom (while looking down),
and tell students to look in the direction of what you described.

22.
Draw a map of your country or another country that your students know
well. By drawing lines, show students where you went on a trip, and tell them
about it. Then call on several students to do the same. The trips can be
truthful or fictional.

23.
Draw a pancake-shape on the board, and announce that the school will
soon be moving to a desert island. Invite students one by one to go to the
board and draw one thing they would like to have on the island.

24.
Draw a party scene on the board, and invite students to come up and
draw someone they would like to have at the party.

25.
Empty a bag of coupons onto a table, and have students find a coupon
for a product that they have no need for.

26.
Experiment with how you write on the board, altering your writing
style, the size of the letters, the direction you write, and the color of the
chalk/pens.

27.
Explain to your students what it means to call someone a certain animal
(dog, pig, fox) in English, and then ask them what these mean in their
languages.

28.
Fill the board with vocabulary your students have encountered in
previous classes (make sure to include all parts of speech), and get them to
make some sentences out of the words.

29.
Find out what famous people your students admire, and work together
with the class to write a letter to one of them.

30.
Find out what your students are interested in early on in the semester.
Go to the Internet from time to time to collect articles on these subjects for
students to read during the class period.

31.
First, instruct your students to write on a slip of paper the name of
one book, CD, or movie that changed them in some way. Collect the papers, call
out the titles, and ask the class if they can guess who wrote it. Finally, let
the writer identify him or herself, explaining his or her choice.

32.
Give each student a piece of chalk/pen and tell them to fill the board
with pop song lyrics. Then put them in pairs, and get them to use the words on
the board to create a new dialogue.

33.
Give students a reward (such as a candy or a sticker) each time they
take the artificial language in your textbook and turn it into an authentic
question or comment about someone in the class.

34.
Hand a student a ball of yellow yarn. Have him toss it to another
student, while saying something positive about that student and holding onto
the end of the yarn. Continue in this manner until there is a web between all
the students.

35.
Hand each student an index card, and tell them to write down a sentence
that includes an error they have made this week, along with the correct version
of the sentence. Next, tape all of the index cards on the board for students to
look over.

36.
Hang up four different posters (example - one of a world map, one of a
famous singer, one of a flower, and one of Einstein) in the four corners of
your room. Tell students to choose one corner to stand in, and talk about why
they chose that poster.

37.
Have each student make a list of the five most useful phrases for
tourists visiting an English speaking country.

38.
Have students come to the board one by one, draw a poster for an
English language movie (without the title) they think the other students have
seen, and let the other students guess which movie it is.

39.
Hire a musician (flute? harmonica? banjo?) to play for a few minutes of
your class period.

40.
In small groups, have your students design a billboard for something
other than a product (wisdom, humility, friendship, etc.).

41.
Inquire to see if your students have any unusual talents (can wiggle
their ears, can bark like a dog), and encourage them to demonstrate.

42.
Instead of saying "Very good!" all the time, vary the ways
you praise (and correct) students as much as possible.

43.
Instruct your students to find something in their wallets/purses/pencil
boxes, and tell the story behind it.

44.
Invite your students to stand up and explore the classroom from new
angles (look in drawers, under desks, behind posters, on top of cabinets). Then
have students report their findings.

45.
Just a few minutes before the bell rings, call on your students to
choose the ten most useful words they came in contact with during this class
period, then have them narrow it down to the three most useful words.

46.
Pass around some magazines, and have each student choose an ad that he
or she likes. Give students an opportunity to explain their choices.

47.
Play a listening activity from your book an additional time with the
lights turned off.

48.
Play a recording of instrumental music and have some students draw on
the board what the music makes them think of.

49.
Play five very different sounds from a sound effects tape or CD, and
assign students in pairs to create a story based on three of the sounds.

50.
Play music that enhances certain activities (quiet music for a reading
activity, dance music for an energetic TPR activity). Ask your students for
their reactions.

51.
Prepare colored letters of the alphabet on cardboard squares and put
them in a bag. Students must draw a letter from the bag, and work together to
create a sentence on the board. Each student must raise his or her hand to make
a contribution, but the word the student calls out must begin with the letter
he or she chose. Put the expanding sentence on the board, adding words only
when they the grammar is correct.

52.
Prepare several paper bags, each with a different scent inside
(perfume, cinnamon, cheese), pass the bags around the class, and let students
describe what they smell.

53.
Print phrases such as "in the library" "at an elegant
dinner with the Royal Family" "in a noisy bar" "in a
dangerous neigborhood" on separate strips of paper, put them in envelopes,
and tape them to the underside of a few students' desks/tables before they
arrive. Write on the board a useful expression like "Excuse me. Could I
borrow a dollar?" When students arrive, tell them to look for an envelope
under the desks/tables. The ones who find envelopes must say the sentence on
the board as if in the context written on the page. Other students must guess
the context from the student's tone of voice and body language.

54.
Produce a list of commonly used sentence-modifying adverbs on the
board, such as suddenly, actually, unfortunately, and happily. Then launch into
a story, which each student must contribute to, with the rule that everyone
must begin the first sentence of his or her contribution with a
sentence-modifying adverb.

55.
Provide each student with a list of the current top ten popular songs.
Play excerpts from some or all of the songs, and choose some questions to ask
your students, such as: Did you like the song? Have you heard this song before?
How did the song make you feel? What instruments did you hear?

56.
Purchase a postcard for each member of your class, writing his or her
name in the name and address space. Turn them picture side up on a table, have
each student choose one (without looking at the name), then he or she will
write a message to the person whose name is on the other side. If a student
chooses the postcard that has his or her own name on it, the student must
choose again.

57.
Put students in pairs and ask them to guess three items in their
partner's wallet/purse/pencil box.

58.
Put students in pairs. Tell them to converse, but to deliberately make
one grammatical error over and over, stopping only when one student can spot
the other's intentional error.

59.
Put students into small groups to create an application form for new
students to the school.

60.
Put the students in small groups, and ask each group to plan a vacation
for you. They must plan where you will go, what you will do, who you will go
with, and what you will buy. When they are finished, have each group present
their plans.

61.
Review a phrase or sentence that you want students to remember, by
holding a competition to see "Who can say it the loudest/the quietest/the
quickest/the slowest/in the deepest voice/in the highest pitched voice?".

62.
Set up a board in your classroom where students can buy and sell used
items from each other by writing notes in English.

63.
Supply each student with a copy of the entertainment section of the
local newspaper, and tell them to choose somewhere to go next weekend.

64.
Take a particularly uninteresting page from your coursebook, and put
students in groups to redesign it.

65.
Teach on a different side of the room than you usually do.

66.
Tell each student to report the latest news in their country or city to
the class.

67.
Tell your students to practice a conversation from their coursebook
that they are familiar with, but this time they can only use gestures, no
words.

68.
When they are practicing a dialogue, have students play around with the
volume, intonation, pitch, or speed of their voices.

69.
Write "Tell me something I don't know." on the board, then
ask students questions about things they know about and you don't, such as
their lives, cultural background, interests, and work.

70.
Write a common adjacency pair (Thank you./You're welcome OR I'm
sorry./That's alright) on the board. Ask students if they know of any
expressions that could replace one of the ones you just wrote. Write any
acceptable answers on the board.

71.
Write a number of adjectives, such as mysterious, happy, peaceful, sad,
angry, and frustrated on the board. Call out a color, and ask your students to
tell you which adjective they associate with that color.

72.
Write a word on a slip of paper and show it to a student. This student
must whisper it to the second student. Then the second student must draw a
picture of what he or she heard, and show it to the third student. The third
student, then, writes the word that represents the picture and shows it to the
fourth student. Then the fourth student whispers it to the fifth student....
and so on. This continues until you get to the last student, who must say the
word to the class.

73.
Write an idiomatic expression(such as "It beats me." or "I'm fed up.") in big
letters on the board. Call on a few students to guess what it means before you
tell them.

74.
Write down the names of about five very different people on the board
(a small baby, a rude waiter in a restaurant, a fashion model, a stranger in a
crowd, and a grandfather). Give students a common expression, such as "Good
morning!" or "Sorry!", and ask students how they might say it
differently when talking to a different person.

75.
Write your name on the board vertically, and add a suitable adjective
that begins with each letter of your name. The next step is to invite students
to do the same.