Below you will find a growing list of ESL activities to help you make the most your time in class.
ESL Activities for Vocabulary
The vocabulary 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.
How to Use Sentence-Pattern Charts to Improve Your English Learners’ Vocabulary
LDI – Listen Discuss Identify – ESL Vocabulary Activity
A Surprisingly Effective Way to Solidify English Learners ESL Vocabulary
PWIM – The Most Highly Recommended ESL Teaching Activity
Bananagrams – Wonderful Spelling & Phonics Practice for ELLs
Exciting ESL Vocab Activity That Engages All Your ELLs – Charades Race
How to Turn Any Set of Vocab Words into a Board Game for Your ELLs
My #1 Ridiculously-Effective Vocab Flash Card Game for ELLs
ESL Activities for Speaking & Grammar
Getting ESL students speaking can be a challenge. Students are afraid to look silly or make mistakes. Use these speaking activities to get your 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 some of these activities to get some direction.
R.A.C.E.S. – An Excellent Academic Writing Framework for ELLs
ESL Writing Activity: Color-Coded Writing
ESL Writing Activity – Roving Paragraphs
ESL Writing Activity – Quick Writes
An Exciting Group Writing Activity for Your MLLs – Curation
MLL Writing Activity for Excellent Results – Practice Say Write Change
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.
Kahoot App ESL Conversation Activity
QSSSA – Better Conversation Practice for Your ELLs
Two Truths and a Lie Activity
10 Interesting Debate Ideas to Improve Your ELLs Discussion
3-2-1 Conversation Activity
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.
Online ESL Teaching Activity: Scavenger Hunt
Online ESL Teaching Activity: Google Maps Trip Planning
Online ESL Teaching Activity: Amazing Race
Engaging and Productive ESL/ELL Activities
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 of the biggest issues I see when I observe teachers is that their activities involve one or two students at a time while everyone else waits around.
Finding ways to involve all students during activities makes a huge difference in the effectiveness of our activities.
That is why you will see that most of the activities I suggest here put the responsibility to moderate the activities with the students.
When students moderate the activities, the teacher is freed up to go around and help individuals who need help and build relationships with students who might feel alienated.
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.
