English-as-a-Second-Language Classroom Story Game

Ages: Teens to adults (or those English superstar youngins)
Proficiency Level: Advanced Beginner to Advanced Students
Class size: Large or small
Purposes: Improve listening skills and expand the lesson plan on an article or short story.
Materials: An article or short story, black pen, a piece of blank copy paper and a copy machine.
Pedagogical Considerations: For lower level students you will want to use an article or story that your ESL students are familiar with. For your advanced ESL students, you could use an article or story that they are unfamiliar with.
Desk Arrangement: In pairs or students can work singularly.
Preparation: 20 minutes plus time for copies. The teacher will need to create 1 master sheet (or more if your ESL students are chronic cheaters), and make copies.

I was pleasantly surprised how much my ESL students enjoyed this easy to prepare game. I use a lot of articles and short stories in my ESL classroom (I teach in South Korea in the public schools). Here is an ESL game to practice listening skills..

Take out your article or short story, a black pen and a piece of blank copy paper. I like to create the master sheet with the long edges of the paper on the top and bottom and the short edges on the side, especially if you plan to have your ESL students work in pairs. Simply hand write each word of the article or short story randomly on the piece of paper; random pattern random order. Then make as many copies as you will need.

Procedure: This is so easy. Hand out the copies to your ESL students. Then read the story word by word and have your ESL students circle each word as you say it.

Variations: 1) You could ask your ESL students to spell the word they just heard and then circle it. 2) You can read one word at a time or keep repeating the story from the beginning adding a new word for your ESL students to circle each time. 3) You could have your ESL students repeat the sentence. 4) You can use this lesson with a vocabulary or spelling list instead of an article or short story.

As always, I encourage you to create your own variations to tailor this lesson to your particular ESL class. If you come up with new variations or ideas about this lesson plan, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page so that you can share it with other ESL teachers.

*If you enjoy this lesson please see my other fun and easy no prep lesson plans here on Associated Content. Just look at the top of this page and click on my name "Tesl Goddess"."