5 Engaging ESL Activities for the Beginning of the Year!

1. All About Me Collage

How? Have students create a collage about themselves using pictures, words, and drawings. Provide magazines, colored paper, markers, and other craft supplies. If students have access to pictures of themselves they can bring them from home or a parent can send them to your email and you could print them at school. 

Why? This activity is a fun way to have your students share about themselves and learn about their classmates. If you teach newcomers, this activity will help them lower their affective filter while building vocabulary related to personal information (e.g., family, hobbies, favorite things). Make sure to provide your example so students also learn about you, sentence stems or sentence frames, using different colors to highlight key vocabulary, and if needed provide a word bank with visuals for students to refer to while they are working on what to share about themselves. This activity involves all language domains. At the end of the activity, you can display student work around the hallways or classroom or you can send their work home. 

2. Classroom Scavenger Hunt

How? Create a scavenger hunt where students need to find various objects or locations in the classroom or the school. Use simple English phrases and provide picture clues. 

Why? This will help students feel more comfortable around their new school or classroom, especially if they are new to the country or school. It also teaches basic vocabulary related to school/classroom objects and places.

3. Interactive Name Game

How? The group sits or stands in a circle and students pass a ball around the circle or throw it across the circle to take turns to introduce themselves and share something unique about them (e.g., “My name is Jonas, and I love dancing”). Make sure to provide sentence frames and word banks with visuals if you are playing this game with newcomers. 

Why? This game encourages students to practice speaking in English and helps them remember each other’s names. 

4. Alphabet Bingo

How? Create bingo cards with letters of the alphabet or simple words. Call out letters or words, and have students mark their cards or use counters to cover the cards that were called. Use pictures for younger students or those with lower proficiency levels. Below are the links to the ones I have in case you don't feel like creating your own bingo games. 

Why?  Bingo could seem like a simple game, but it reinforces letter recognition, vocabulary, and listening skills in a fun and interactive way. I would recommend playing bingo with newcomers and students with interrupted education. Bingo is engaging and interactive, it helps students build confidence in their English skills. As students get more confident, they can take turns calling the cards. 

Here are the links to the Bingo games I have: Letter names and sounds bingo, alphabet and phonics bingo, sight word bingo

5. Summer THIS OR THAT 

How? Students share their preferences about Summer activities in the U.S. Create slides with typical Summer activities with visuals, sentence stems and word banks for students to share their preferences. Go over each slide and have students share or point to their preferred activity. 

Why? This game builds confidence while allowing students to learn about others and build connections and new friendships. This activity can embed all language domains if you choose to have students write a sentences about their favorite summer activity. This activity also builds on culture and can be used to compare summer in different countries. 

Download the materials your this activity here. 

Here are links to other fun already made activities for the beginning of the year. 

• Summer Would You Rather Card Game

• Letters and Words Workbook

What are some activities you do with your multilingual learners at the beginning of the year? Or which of these would you like to try this year? Share in the comments.