Learning Activities

Some ideas for activities you could run with students. Not necessarily lesson plans, but activities that could sit within a lesson.

Use music for learning

• Find a YouTube or other video clip of a favourite song that your learner knows the words to and put on subtitles, find a transcript or karaoke version.
• Lyrics Training is a great site for students to practice listening and reading at the same time. Here are some example songs: It’s Now or Never – Elvis Presley, You’ve got a Friend – Celine Dion and friends, Money, Money, Money – ABBA, Better be Home Soon – Crowded House, Diamonds – Rihanna.

Video

There are a few activities you could try with video:

• Find a video relating to a news story, and watch together, then have your student create a summary of the story – either spoken or written.
• Find a video of someone cooking their favourite recipe and then with your student re-create the shopping list and list of instructions.

For a more in-depth perspective on using video for language learning, you could view this ISL Collective primer on how they use video in teaching EAL students. (This is part of the ISL Collective Video Lessons collection.)

Create a book together

Get your students to take photos with their phone of a typical week, event or activity and then make a book together.

• You could go old-school, with paper-scissors-glue, or
• you could use some kind of software for editing layout, for example
  • Microsoft Office (Word, Publisher, PowerPoint),
  • Canva,
  • an ebook creator app on iPad
  • Book Creator, which is not free, but you can try it for free in the Chrome version

Use text to speech software

For students who need help reading, you could find a way to get the computer – or their own device – to read aloud. This is something you may need to research before bringing it to the session, as there are many options depending on your system.

• iPhones and iPads have text to speech functions built-in. For example, on an iPad turn on “speak selection” in the General Accessibility Section and set the rate of speech. Then in Safari and other compatible apps when you highlight text the words will be read aloud.
• Android has a range of apps for this purpose, for example the apps in this list.
• Windows has “Narrator” built in, but that can be very confusing as it reads everything on-screen rather than your selection.
• You may find extensions for your web browser, for example “Read Aloud” for Google chrome web browser.

Create Personalised Worksheets

If you’re using the “Language Experience Approach” with your learners, there are all kinds of ways you can recycle their own language to reinforce their awareness. You could also make worksheets that are screen-based rather than printable, if that suits their needs.

• For example
  • Unjumble words
  • Cloze activities (fill the gap – word, sentence or paragraph)
  • Sequence the text
  • Match image and vocabulary
  • Match vocabulary and definition
  • On-screen: put the spaces back between words
• Or develop a picture and word bank taken from students writing and interests.