Engaging Online Teaching: ESL Activities and Games

Here are a couple of ideas for online teaching ESL activities and games that can be assigned to students so they can work independently as well as used during your video meeting.

1. Artist in your own home

Students have to take 10 photos of anything they consider beautiful. You can even assign a topic, e.g. envirnment, nature, fashion, architecture, food. They can edit it in any program if they want, create a collage, anything. Ideally they create a PDF booklet with the 10 photos and a description of each photo. You can share the best photos/booklets on school website/social media.

2. Scavenger hunt

It’s a shame I haven’t know Flippity until recently, but never mind, better late than never. Flippity is a site which allows you to change Goggle Spreadsheets in to funny little games, including Scavenger Hunt. It’s really easy, you download/make a copy of a chosen template, change the information into whatever you want, save, publish a share the link to your students.

3. Research&Survey

Assign the students a topic which they will have to research online using reliable sources.They will also have to create a survey and collect data on the topic (they could conduct online interviews with classmates, friends, share the survey on social media, etc). After that they will report their findings in the medium of their choice( an article, a report, a presentation, an infographic, a poster, a video, etc.)

4. Create a Kahoot quiz

Why should you do all the hard work? Have your students create their own Kahoot quizzes. Whatever grammar or vocabulary they are learning at the moment can be reviewed painlessly. The best thing is, they will learn twice. First time, when they create their quiz, and second time when they play their classmates’ quizzes. You can choose one or two quizzes to be played online for the whole group via Zoom or any other software you are using. Assign the rest of the quizzes to be played as a challenge.

5. Quizlet

Quizlet needs no introduction, but besides using it for independent student work, you could also use it for your Zoom classes. I use it to create discussion questions or speaking prompts so I can easily share it on my screen. Students always see only one question/prompt, so they focus more. It’s super easy to prepare and when you are pressed for time, you can use a couple of my discussion sets on different topics.