Audience: ELLs of all proficiency levels and grades

ELLs are often reluctant to speak English in the classroom because they are not confident in their oral language and fear ridicule by peers. Teachers can create a safe environment where ELLs are willing to take risks and speak in the classroom by lowering the affective filter, which can be achieved by utilizing games and fun group activities. The following activities have been used by the authors with ELLs at various proficiency levels.

1. Telephone

Students form lines of numbers. Leaders of each line are given a word, phrase, or sentence (depending on English proficiency) to whisper to the next student, and so on down the line. The last person in line announces what he or she heard. This usually results in laughter because the message is rarely the original one. For more advanced students, try using tongue twisters or silly sentences for even more humor.

2. Mix Pair Share

The teacher plays music in the background while students silently walk around the room. Once the music stops, students find a partner nearby and share information on a topic. This information can be answers to questions from a story, math problems, or the weekend’s activities. Teachers repeat the process as many times as desired.

3. Information Gap

In this activity, students play detective and work with others to find the missing clues. Student A will have information that student B does not have, and vice versa. Students need to communicate with each other by asking questions to complete the missing parts. The information can be from academic content from any subject, story plots, magazine articles, or even just simple sentences.

4. “Who Am I?”

The teacher writes vocabulary for living and nonliving objects using index cards. Words may include “television,” “flower,” cartoon characters, and so on. The teacher tapes an index card on each student’s back, and students need to figure out “who” or “what” they are by asking questions such as, “Am I living?” or “Am I a food?” Only yes/no questions are permitted, and students cannot ask the same person a second question until they’ve asked every other student in class a question.

5. Scavenger Hunt

The teacher prepares a list of items students need to find. The list can be based on letters of the alphabet or a content-area topic. ELLs work together to hunt for the items on the list while discussing the items they need to find. Depending on the students’ English proficiency level, teachers may provide sentence stems for ELLs to begin sharing with classmates of what they found.

6. Reader’s Theater

ELLs of all levels can participate in Reader’s Theater. Beginning ELLs should be given short, repetitive phrases in a script while more advanced ELLs can read complex lines. ¡Colorín Colorado!, Drama in the ESL Classroom, and Readers Theater: A Superfood for Oral Skills are great resources to further assist with Reader’s Theater specifically for ELLs.

7. Gallery Walk

One way to do a gallery walk is to have several pieces of chart paper with various headings placed around the room. For example, the headings can be title of books students will be reading during the semester. In pairs or small groups, students share predictions based on the titles of the books. Once all pairs or groups have had a chance to share and write their predictions with each other, they discuss their predictions with the whole class.

Alma L. Contreras-Vanegas, PhD, is an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University teaching in the department of Language, Literacy, and Special Populations. Her research interests include bilingual/dual language education and ELL writing development.

Burcu Ates, PhD, is an assistant professor of ESL/Bilingual Education at Sam Houston State University. Her research interests include pre- and in-service teacher preparation and ESL/EFL methodologies and strategies.