I’ve been putting together a list of favorite resources for using with ELLs.
If you have a little money to purchase teaching resources for your English learners, here are some of the things I and other teachers in our community have highly recommended!
Let’s get started.
Wonderful Board Games for ELLs
- Headbanz – Fun but be careful that you’ve taught the words students are putting on their heads or they will never be able to get it.
- Consensus – Great for Vocabulary.
- Go Fish – Present simple questions. Do you have…? Animal Names
- Dixit – Awesome for story telling/writing ideas.
- Tapple – Great for letter and word associations.
- Uno – More of a reward game but so easy to learn that it’s great for breaking the ice with students too.
- Bananagrams / Letter Tiles – So many activities that can be done with letter tiles. Read more and get some free cut out tiles here ->
- Guess In 10 – There are many versions of this game. This is the animal version but they are all great.
- Guess Who – Great for practicing describing people.
- Boggle Jr.
- Superfight – This is a card game where people argue over whose powers are more powerful. The vocabulary and speaking required are a little higher level but great for speaking practice.
- Worst Case Scenario – You may want to pull out any cards that your students might find triggering but otherwise good fun with ridiculous situations and great discussion.
- Incan Gold – A lot of fun and also creates great discussion as students debate whether to continue deeper into the ruins or keep what they’ve already found.
- Spot It – Great for vocabulary. Great for newcomers since they only need to point. Many different versions. (Thanks Rosie C.!)
- Apples to Apples – Gets students thinking about comparing different words.
- Blah Blah Blah – Phonics and word decoding practice. I haven’t actually played this game but have seen it recommended by multiple teachers!
- Pictionary & Pictionary Man – We played Pictionary Man in classes to practice describing people, clothes, etc but I couldn’t find it on Amazon. Leave a comment below if you know where to buy it now.
- Taboo – Great fun but a probably a little better for older students that have a bit more English fluency since you have to describe things without using particular words on a list that are “taboo.”
- Slapzi – This is a great game for fun, fast vocabulary practice. You have to quickly match picture cards with clue cards.
- Zingo – Great for phonics and reading fluency. The little device that drops two tiles each time you push down on it is so cute and kids love it.
- Bubble Talk – I couldn’t find this one on Amazon but it looks really cute. You have to match captions with images. Great for reading, vocabulary, and fun discussion practice.
- Catch Phrase – This is another game that requires much higher English proficiency. A little like Taboo, you’re trying to get others to guess a phrase without telling what the phrase is.
- Guesstures – This is a fun game of charades with a fun twist where the cards start falling down inside the device after a short period of time so you have to get your team to guess the word and grab the cards before they fall.
- Story Cubes – We tried these but didn’t have a lot of success unless the students were particularly talkative. I feel like they have so much potential for writing though. Getting students in groups of 2 or 3 and then having them write a story together based on a Story Cube dice roll.
- My Word – This is another game that requires a bit of English fluency to play. You try to make a word by putting letters together from the cards in your hand with those being dealt on the table.
Teacher-Recommended Books for ELLs
- Gaijin: American Prisoner of War
- Number the Stars
- A Long Walk to Water
- Chunky
- Granny Torrelli Makes Soup
- Absolutely Normal Chaos
- Esperanza Rising
- Because of Winn-Dixie
- Love That Dog
- Seedfolks
- Ghosts: A Graphic Novel
- Tiny Traveler Series
Helpful Amazon Products for ELLs
- Whiteboards, whiteboard markers and erasers
- Headsets
- Construction paper
- Picture Dictionaries (Oxford)
- Pocket Talks (Translation Devices)
- Fake Money
- Barrel of Plastic Animals – This link is to a few tubes of animals which can make for a fun sorting activity.
- Mesh Zipper Pouches
- Whiteboard Sticky Balls – There are about a million and one games that you can play with these.
At-Home Practice Resources for ELLs
- Duolingo
- Starfall
- Unite for Literacy
- Rock n Learn
- Games to Learn English
- Jack Hartman Videos
- Learning Chocolate
- Little Fox – Kids Stories
- Storyline Online
- ESL Cyber Listening Lab
- News in Levels
- Kid-Inspired Student Portal (Free Seats Included with Pro Membership)
You can download the PDF with the links on it in case you want to share it with someone.
What have I missed? Let me know in the comments below!
This is a good list with a number of things I hadn’t heard of. I’m wondering if you can share some of the ways you use whiteboard sticky balls?
We used to use it for all kinds of activities. Here are a few ideas:
The simplest is drawing a target on the board similar to a dartboard with each smaller inner circle being worth more points. Students would get to throw the sticky ball for completing tasks in class and accumulate points for their team.
You can put a tic tac toe grid on the board with numbers and the students throw the sticky ball to see which task they have to complete or which question they have to answer. If they complete it, they get to mark that square for their team with the goal of getting three in a row or 4 in a row.
For a slightly more controversial game, I used to draw a bad guy (usually some form of an evil monster, bear, lion, etc) on the board and the students would complete tasks for a chance to throw the sticky ball at the bad guy. Whenever the ball hit the bad guy, I would erase and redraw that area with a big lump and a bruise or he would lose teeth, etc.
You can put vocabulary words on the board, students throw the ball to hit a word then go back to their team to make a sentence for that word. If the sentence was good, that word would be erased and they would get a point.