Category Grammar
Picture-bound Travel Adventure
Intermediate- level EFL students work in groups to write and tell a creative, cohesive travel adventure based on the people and places they select from pictures.
Visual Verb Variations
Building vocabulary is fundamental to literacy and creative writing. This lesson gives teachers a visual model to help their students build verb alternatives and, thereby, refine their choice of alternative words so that the verb effectively describes their thoughts.
Anecdotes: Tell Your Story
Sharing anecdotes gives students a chance to speak and write confidently about topics of their choice.
Live English
At Unidad Educativa Riobamba, Ecuador TEFL PCV Erin Fischer is bringing English to the classroom through cooking and recipes. The project goal is to have students interact with the language in a practical, hands-on way that mimics real life situations.
Creating a New Civilization
This activity can focus on speaking and/or writing. It is a great opportunity for group work; students make decisions about the fate of 10 survivor candidates as the world reels from war, and humanity faces extinction!
WH-Questions and Simple Present Tense Practice
The communicative approach to language learning is prioritized in Ecuador, and, therefore, we try to promote classroom speaking practice with our counterpart local teachers and their students. Our students don’t have many opportunities to interact with English visitors, even in the largest cities of Cuenca and Quito, so it’s important for PC TEFL volunteers to provide practice at school. In […]
How Often Do You…?
This post has instructions for a game that gives students practice asking questions using “How often do you…?” do a particular activity and answering the questions using adverbs of frequency.
Love on a Leash
While dogs, “man’s best friends,” have long occupied a special place in US homes, keeping a dog as a pet in Ecuador is a relatively new custom. Certainly dogs have worked in the fields for centuries, but many Ecuadorians and other peoples are unaware that dogs have a remarkable ability to bond with humans. This makes […]
Chance Encounters
This activity uses pictures of a wide range of people for whom students will write dialogues that might occur if the individuals had a chance meeting somewhere in the world. The lesson plan is adapted from one created by Allegra K. Troiano, Senior English Language Fellow (ELF), US Embassy.
Chicago Food Tour Cultural Exchange
We love food, especially food that stimulates and surprises! EFL students and teachers are usually surprised to learn that the US population comprises every nationality on Earth. Realizing how diverse our country is–waves of immigration have been our history–many EFL learners understand that our language varies across the nation, not to mention internationally. This lesson […]
Sharing the News(letter)
Asking your students to share news, culture, traditions, and life stories with students in the US by writing a newsletter (or creating a video) with a partner Peace Corps World Wise School is a rewarding experience for both sides.
Role Play Scenarios
Peace Corps Ecuador TEFL staff provided volunteers with this list of role plays for duos to use in planning classroom activites with our counterparts, high school teachers and their students. These scenes, in most cases, could be expanded to include roles for more students, which is helpful when teaching shy students or beginners.
Pastimes Mingle
In this activity and lesson plan, adapted from an article from the US Department of State’s English Teaching Forum 2014, No 2, students mingle and interact, in pairs and then with the rest of the class, as they discuss pastimes.
What Did She Do?
This activity allows students to review formation of and especially irregular verbs in the the past tense. It’s a quick warm-up exercise as well.
Who Knows, Knows Competition
Ecuador promotes school festival weeks, where students have the opportunity to present artwork, theater, dance, sporting events, and English competitions! The game the English department devised this year for the spring festival is called “Who Know, Knows.” Middle school students formed classroom groups and competed with other classrooms to answer the questions on the PowerPoint, […]
Creating a Mini-book
In this presentation, Peace Corps Volunteer Jazzy Osh shows teachers how to plan and design mini-books for a classroom unit project.
Implement Projects in the Classroom
In this presentation, Peace Corps Volunteer Jazzy Osh tells teachers how to implement projects, specifically a mobile, in the classroom that help students meet specific objectives and learning goals. She also discusses the valuable skills student learn as they take on project responsibilities and, in doing so, help teachers manage the classroom more effectively.
Use Dialogues and Role Plays Effectively
Improving students’ speaking skills is one of the greatest challenges TEFL teachers face. We know that communication is a primary goal, yet our students have few opportunities to practice English outside the classroom, making dialogues and role plays essential to our toolbox. This presentation talks about the benefits of using these tools and how to […]
Simple Past and Present Perfect Activity
This activity helps students review the difference between simple past and present perfect by asking and answering questions using both tenses.
Phrasal Verb “Break”
English sometimes seems silly to ESL and EFL learners. We have a lot of rules, but we also like to break those rules. We have those confounding phrasal verbs (verb + preposition or particle) that form a single phrase that may have more than one meaning. The meaning of the phrasal verb often cannot be […]
Using Songs in the Classroom
Students love songs, and songs can be used to teach the four skills–listening, speaking, reading, and writing–at different learning levels. In this presentation by Peace Corps Ecuador volunteer Emily Aiken, teachers will learn how and when to use songs effectively in their classrooms.
Getting to Know You
Doing interviews in class or at teacher-training workshops gives participants the chance to learn about each other and is an appropriate activity for low to advanced language levels. Moreover, teachers, moderators, and trainers can use this activity to evaluate the participants’ proficiency level during their presentations and make adjustments to the class or workshop agenda […]
Cooking to Learn Unit Project
This is a final project for a Backward Design unit lesson plan focused on food vocabulary and giving instructions. Groups of three to four students record videos in which they prepare culinary treats they will bring to class.
Can and Can’t Unit Project
This out-of-class activity, which encourages students to become autonomous learners, would be the final unit project for a Backward Design lesson plan for “can” and “can’t” usage. The activity requires students to work in groups as they prepare and present a poem or conversation that uses “can” and “can’t” grammar.
“There is…There are” Review
This activity helps teachers review affirmative and negative “there is/there are” statements and questions, as well as the use of “some” and “any” and countable nouns.
“Going to” for Future Plans and Intentions
This lesson plan for low-intermediate students and incorporates activities such as human sentences and mixed-up sentence group work to teach students about using “going to” to express future plans and intentions.
My Special Person
This project, created by PCV Nikki Rowley, reinforces grammar covered in basic level English classes in Ecuador. The rubric is offered in English and Spanish, and the grammar requirements can be modified to fit specific class or teacher needs. The topic can also be changed (My Country, My Vacation), and the time frame for completing […]
Confusing Verb Pairs 2
This worksheet explains the proper use of other confusing verb pairs like “see-look-watch,” “hear-listen,” and “name-call” and provides practice sentences for students.
Confusing Verb Pairs 1
This worksheet give explanations of proper use of the verb pairs “say-tell,” “speak-talk,” and “make-do,” which often confuse English learners. The sheet also includes practice sentences and other classroom activities.
Teach Like A PCV 