Adaptable ESL Lesson Plan Activities

ESL lessons that include activities for students to work together are more successful than lesson plans that mainly revolve around reading a text and repeating the pronunciation of the lesson's vocabulary words. Liven up your lessons with these activities that can be adapted to several different levels and lessons.

1.) Bingo - This tried and true game can be varied up by creating your own Bingo cards at the ESLActivities website. You can add pictures from your hard drive to the card and even add clues to help lower level students. One example of how to make Bingo more interesting is to make cards with pictures of people doing action verbs (run, walk, talk, write, etc.). Write the action verbs on individual pieces of paper. Fold the papers in half, and put them in a container, such as a bowl or hat. Have one person from the class draw a piece of paper with one of the action verbs on it. Pass out the cards to each of the other people in the class. The person that drew the piece of paper acts out the verb on the paper. No one in the class speaks. If the person has the same verb on his card as is being acted out, he covers it on his Bingo card with Bingo markers or small pieces of paper. The first person to cover an entire row, diagonal, or the whole board ("black out") calls out "Bingo!" and wins. Decide which type of "Bingo" will win the game before the game begins.

For another variation, try splitting the class into small groups or partners. Each team has one Bingo card to play from, and members of each team must decide the right word that is being acted out together.

2.) Songs - Listen to a song that uses a particular sentence structure or grammar concept you are learning. Make sure it includes vocabulary you are going over. Ask students to work in pairs to write down the lyrics of the song as best as they can. They should listen for the vocabulary, structures, and any grammar from the lesson. Play the song again, and ask the students to revise any of the lyrics they wrote down that they were incorrect. Finally, put up a copy of the correct lyrics on the board or overhead so that all the students can see them. Play the song one more time, and have the students listen again for the target language from the lesson. Students can write down the correct lyrics in their notebooks, and compare their lyrics with the correct ones. Have each set of partners turn in their lyrics to you. Go over each one, and in the next class announce which pair got closest to the correct lyrics.

3.) Tell the Truth - This activity is good for practice in using different verb tenses. ("I used to. . .," "I will. . .," "I would like to. . .," etc.) Break your class up into pairs or small group teams. One student in each pair or group tells a short story about himself that can be either true or untrue. Instruct the students to keep the story as believable as possible if they are telling untrue stories. The other teams must guess if the story is true or false. If a team guesses correctly, that team gets a point. Continue until all of the teams have had a chance for a member to tell a story. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.