Three Beginning of the Year Activities for Kindergarten and 1st Grade Multilingual Learners

The beginning of a new school year can sometimes feel overwhelming and even a little hectic. As elementary ESL/ESOL teachers, we juggle so many responsibilities—testing Kindergarten students with the WIDA Screener to determine their eligibility for services, checking files to make sure no students who need testing are missed, introducing ourselves to the teachers and students we’ll support in other grades, creating our ELD group schedules, completing trainings…the list goes on. 

It’s a lot to handle, but we do it because we love the reward it brings—getting ready for the very best part of our jobs: TEACHING! 

To help ease the stress of planning during those first busy days, I want to share one of my favorite activities you can use with your younger multilingual learners right away. It’s engaging, interactive, and simple to prepare—so you can spend less time worrying about plans and more time connecting with your students. Below you will find three activities you could do at the beginning of the year. 

1. All About Me Activity! 

Language Domains - Speaking and listening. If your students know how to read or write, these could apply as well. 

This activity is perfect for Kindergarten and first-grade multilingual learners. It’s fun, low-pressure, and gives you a chance to start building relationships while learning about your students. Depending on the time you have with your groups, it can take one or two sessions. 

Steps:

1. Create sentence stems for each topic on your organizer. For example:
   
   

“My name is _______.”

“I am from _______.”

“My favorite food is _______.”

“I like _______.”

2. Model how to answer each section out loud using the sentence stems, then fill in the box or circle on the organizer. Show students your example before inviting them to complete their own.
   
   

3. Support students as needed:
   
   

   • Bring extra sentence strips so you can write the words they need or want to write, and they can copy them.
     
     

   • Allow students to draw a picture and label it with a single word if writing is too challenging.
     
     

4. After completing each section (or the entire page), have students take turns sharing. This is where listening and speaking practice happen. Since it’s the first activity, you may not want to formally assess—but you can use this Speaking Checklist to make quick, informal observations. Just keep a clipboard handy and note what each student can do as they share.
   
   

This simple activity lets students express themselves through speaking, listening, drawing, and writing—while you begin building a welcoming and supportive learning community. 

Are you looking for an All About Me for older MLs? Find it here.

Download this activity now! 

• My Family -    

Language Domains -Speaking and listening. If your students know how to read or write, these could apply as well. 

Get to know your K-1st-grade multilingual learners better with this fun activity about things they enjoy doing with their families. Have your students work on speaking and listening with this activity. 

Steps: 

1. Look up the country where your students are from beforehand. Bring a map or globe and show them where their family's country is.

2. Start the activity by sharing orally. Use the following sentence stems: 

• "My family is from __________"

• "My family likes to ___________"

• "My family likes to eat ____________" 

You could print out visuals that represent families, food, activities families do together, and model using these visuals with the sentence stems. 

3. Use sentence strips to write their answers so that they can copy them on their organizer. If writing is too challenging, they can draw and label. 

Get access to this resource here!

1. My favorites - 

Language Domains - All language domains. 

Steps: 

1. Start by providing visuals for each category on the organizer. For example, show pictures of food, popular movie characters, animals, or people your students might feel connected to (such as family members or teachers). Have students repeat the vocabulary as you introduce it.

2. Next, model by sharing your own answer for the first category using a sentence stem. Then invite students to take turns sharing aloud. Repeat this process for each category.

3. Finally, give students time to draw, label, and/or write their responses in each category on the organizer.

Download now!