33+ Stellar ESL Activities and Games for Your Classes – Here You Go!

By / ELL Classroom Activity Ideas

At Kid-Inspired Classroom, you’ll find a wide variety of engaging resources to help your ELLs learn English. Below is a list of engaging ESL activities sorted by type. You can use the dropdown to filter for just the activities you're looking for. 

Choose an Activity Type...
  • Conversation Activities
  • Grammar Activities
  • Online-Activities
  • Phonics Activities
  • Reading Activities
  • Vocab Activities
  • Writing Activities
esl activities and games Ideas box Icon

Below you can browse our growing list of ESL activities organized by category to help you make the most your time in class.

ESL Activities for Vocabulary

The vocabulary words our students learn are an important part of the foundation for speaking, listening, reading & writing. Be sure your students are fluent with their words with these engaging vocabulary activities.

ESL Activities for Speaking & Grammar

Getting ESL students speaking can be a challenge. Students are afraid to look silly or make mistakes. Use these activities to get your students working on their speaking skills. Our goal is to get students speaking a lot during class using target vocabulary and grammar.

ESL Activities for Reading

Reading is an incredibly important skill for our ESL students. They need to read texts that are often quite a bit above their English level. Help your students improve their decoding and comprehension with these reading activities.

ESL Activities for Writing

Writing is one of the more difficult skills to teach our ESL students. They need to write a lot and learn from their mistakes and be challenged to use academic language that they may find very challenging. Check out these activities to get your students working on their writing skills in engaging & effective ways.

ESL Activities for Conversation

Speaking is a lot more than just vocabulary and grammar. Students need to learn how to communicate ideas, understand others and be understood. These conversation activities focus on the more natural side of speaking English.

ESL Activities for Distance Learning Online

Teaching online is a challenge. Distance learning is a growing trend to be sure, but, there are times when it becomes a necessity. Give the activities below a try to help engage your students and help them improve their English skills online.

How to Make Our ESL Activities Both Engaging AND Productive

The English language is hard to learn.

Activities and games can make a huge difference in your ESL classes, keeping your students engaged and energetic.

But having a good time isn't enough.

We need to make sure that our activities and games really help students improve in their English skills. 

One big issue I notice when I watch teachers is that their activities involve only one or two students at a time. The rest of the class often waits around.

Finding ways to involve all students during activities makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of our activities.

That is why most of the activities I suggest here ask students to take responsibility for moderating them. 

When students lead the activities, the teacher can help those who need it. This also helps build relationships with students who may feel alone.

Be sure to bookmark this page so that you can find it when you need it as well as see when new activities are added.

You can also read more about how to set up your ESL activities so that they are fun and effective here.

Related Posts

Scroll to Top