Create a Visitors Guide: An English-as-a-Second-Language Project

In as much as I like to play games in the English-as-a-Second-Language classroom a lot, it's important to add other fun and educational lessons for your ESL students. This lesson on how to create a visitors guide is a creative and informative classroom activity. For teachers, if you are new in town or to the country, this ESL lesson is a great way to find the interesting things that locals do in your new town or country of residence, that might not necessarily be listed in your Lonely Planet and tourist information guidebooks and pamphlets.

You can make this ESL lesson as simple or complex as you would like. This ESL lesson can be completed in one class or you can expand it to span many classes. As always, I encourage you to be creative and tailor this lesson to best suit the needs of your ESL students.

You and your ESL students must decide whether you would like to Create a Visitors Guide to their hometown (or country) or for a foreign city or country. If you are teaching this ESL lesson overseas to children whose level is not advanced or to intermediate level adult ESL students / immigrants, I would suggest that the ESL students focus on their hometown. When teaching ESL students whose level is advanced, such as high school and university students I would suggest you do both. First, Create a Visitors Guide using their hometown. Second, the students can Create a Visitors Guide for a foreign country they have visited on vacation or would like to visit in the future.

1 Day Lesson Plan - Create a Visitors Guide: To do this lesson in one day simply divide your ESL students into small groups of 4-6 and create a scenario such as you have a pen pal who is finally coming to visit you. This pen pal will only be in town for 2 days. Where would you take them? (For added clarification you can create handouts for your ESL students with the scenario in writing as sometimes it is easier for your ESL students to read directions for assignments in English than to understand your English speaking.) Give the students 10 - 20 minutes to work together and have them present their information to the entire class.

Expanded Version of Lesson Plan to Create a Visitors Guide: This can be done as a group or individual project. As well to expand this lesson into 2 separate projects, you have your ESL students first create a visitors guide to their home town or country. Your ESL students use cameras outside of classtime to take their own pictures or your ESL students can cut and paste them from the Internet. They can create a poster or a booklet using English to describe the places they have chosen and present it to the class.

After your ESL students Create a Visitors Guide for their hometown or native country, they can Create a Visitors Guide for a foreign city or country such as Paris or foreign country, such as France. Encourage your ESL students to choose a city or country that they would most like to visit or will be visiting soon as this is will help create and sustain their motivation for the project.

If your ESL students are immigrants, I would suggest that 1^st they present their hometowns or countries and 2^nd they present the city, state, province or country which they currently live. Giving them the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the new and interesting sites around them.

This Create a Visitors Guide Lesson could then go one step further as you and your ESL students can go on a field trip to explore some of the sites closest to you.

For more fun things to do with your ESL students please see my other articles on ESL games and lesson plans.