Category: ESL Toolbox

Teaching Tips for English as a Second Language teachers will find ideas and lesson plans for helping students learn English.  Includes lesson plans and general ideas.

Word Games

Playing games may not sound like it is learning, but word games are great educational tools, especially for your English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Word games give meaningful context to English and your students practice language in a more relaxed atmosphere. There are a variety of word games to help your students learn English.

Tongue Twisters
Many people are familiar with the saying “She sells seashells by the sea shore.” Tongue twisters like these are fun to use in ESL classrooms to teach pronunciation. Write several tongue twisters on the board and have the class practice them a few times. Then, get out the stopwatch. Have your class separate into teams. Each member of team takes a tongue twister and is timed for how quickly they can say it. Continue to time each team member until the last person speaks. Write the time for each team. The winning team gets to pick the next set of tongue twisters.

Bingo
Give each student a bingo card with their vocabulary words on them. The instructor pulls the vocabulary word meaning from the bingo bag and reads the definition. The student calls out the name of the vocabulary word if it is on their card and gets to cover the card with a sticker if they have it correct. Play continues until all the students have Bingo.

Conversation Games
Talking is one way students get to practice their speech. There are many games structured to get your students talking to one another like the “Getting to Know You” game. Each student pairs with another student. They each have a list of five or six questions to ask the other student like “what is your name,” “what do you want to do when you grow up,” “what is the strangest thing you have eaten?” Make sure your questions cannot be simply answered yes or no. The student can also write down the answers to their questions. When they are done, they introduce their partner to the class and explain what they have learned about the other student.

Singing
Karaoke is very popular in many foreign countries, but you can also use singing word games to help your students learn English. Find several songs like the Beatle’s “Yellow Submarine” or “What a Beautiful Morning” by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein. Pick songs which are easy to understand and to sing. Have your students find all the words to the song and to practice singing the song with their group. For the next class period, put on a show with the music and the students singing.

Reading Sight Words

From the time my kids were born, we read to them each night.  During the preschool years, I began teaching them to read by teaching them to read sight words.  These are words you see often in sentences such as “and,” “but” and “one.”  In the whole language approach to teaching a child to read, you start out with a set of sight words.  Learning sight words helps your child read since they do not have to decode each word in a sentence, but know the word automatically.  Look for your younger children to bring these types of words home from school or you can also find these words in several resources online like Sightword’s Dolch Word List.  To help your child learn his/her sight words, try one of the following:

  • Search for sight words in the book you are reading together. Read the word together and then ask your child to see if they can find the same word on another page.
  • Make a set of flash cards for your child with the sight words. Play a game with the sight words like “Find It” where your child has to find the word you call out or have your child play a matching game to match the sight words.
  • Use flash cards to make sentences out of the sight words. Have your child read the sentences.
  • Get a sight word app for your tablet or phone such as Innovative Mobile Apps Sight Words List or CFC s.r.o.’s Sight Words Learning Games & Reading Flash Cards.
  • Use printable booklets and have your child read to you. Some good web resources are Hubbard’ Cupboard  or DLTK’s Educational Printables for Kids.
  • You can also make your own printable books by using a word processor and pictures of your family and places you frequently go together.
  • Use tactical tools and have your child spell out their sight word. You can use like modeling clay and a toothpick to have them spell out their sight word in the clay.
  • Play some online games at resources such as Education.com or SightWords