Being an ESL teacher is hard work, and coming up with new and interesting ways for your students to learn can be tiring. Sometimes, it’s great to just take out something you can trust to keep them busy and practicing – that will hopefully also give you time to just breathe a little. These worksheets are a great way to do just that. They’re challenging, but not overly so. Which makes them a perfect addition to your teacher arsenal.
Sentence Snake
This is based on the puzzle game Word Snake. In the original game, you are presented with a grid of letters and a hint as to the theme of the words you are looking for. One letter is highlighted as the starting point, and you can continue the path by following the cardinal directions – diagonal lines are not permitted. Continue until you have found all the words in the theme. In the end, your screen should look like this:
The way to turn this into an easy ESL worksheet is by first printing our a grid like this one I made. Then, you can write any vocabulary words in an easy line as shown above. Circle the starting letter and write a theme. Finally, make copies of your word snake puzzle and have the kids try and figure it out. It helps if you keep a version for yourself that’s already solved.
My way of doing this activity varies slightly. Instead of writing vocabulary words for them to follow, I like to take a whole sentence for them to find. Then I write it out and give that to them. Here’s a quick video for further explanation:
I really enjoy making these worksheets because it’s quick and easy to make – and if you know your students and their abilities well enough, you can make this a quick activity that’ll take them less than a minute or a more complicated puzzle that’ll take them at least five.
Word Maze
This is another one that uses a grid or you can print out a honeycomb vector like this one. Then, it’s very similar to sentence snake, but instead of writing a letter in each part, write a word. Make sure all the words fit a common theme and let the students figure out the maze from there. You can give them a hint, or you can just let them figure it out themselves what the words have in common. For more beginner classes, I may even just have them follow the maze according to the alphabet as seen in this video:
Mazes like this can be made to be as easy or difficult as you want. When making more difficult mazes, sometimes I like to put the class into teams. The team that finishes their maze first wins. Typically, more difficult mazes will only take about 4-5 minutes.
Dots
For this worksheet/game you will need to print out a bunch of dots, like this. The normal, non-ESL way to play this game is to give the players pens(usually 2-4, anymore is a bit too many people). Players will take turns making lines between dots until one is able to form a square. They then write their initial in the square to show it’s their point and they may add another line. This continues until all squares have been drawn or time is up. The points are counted and the person with more is the winner. Here’s an image to show what I mean:
To make this an ESL activity you can simply make it a requirement that an English question must be answered before drawing your line. Perhaps, instead of taking turns, you can even make it so that the first person to answer and/or the person with the best answer gets to draw a line. An easier/quicker version would be having them just read out/repeat words or phrases in order to go.
If you want to do a phonics activity, write words between each dot. Then make each student say the word before drawing their lines. Failure to pronounce the word properly leads to them losing a turn. This is more time consuming to make but the actual gameplay will go by quicker than asking/answering questions. Having said that, this activity definitely takes more time than the other two worksheets. Depending on various factors, this game can easily last more than 10 minutes. I recommend setting a timer and then splitting the class into groups to play.