Wanna know how to teach a great ESL summer lesson? Because summer is almost upon us, and it’s a great topic to talk about with students. Summer is a wonderful time, with fun activities and possibly holidays, and students will always have something to say about it. I love hearing stories about beach outings, camping trips and water sports. Here’s what I do with my stories to celebrate summer time.
Wanna know what else are great topics to talk or write about with students? My free Topic Picker Cheat Sheet will give you lots of ideas to create lessons around. Grab it here!
Some ideas for an ESL summer time lesson
A great ESL lesson on summer starts with talking about the season. I use a set of discussion cards with questions on them that students have to discuss in small groups. They contain questions like: ‘Why is summer the best season?’, ‘What clothes do people wear in summer and why?’, and ‘What is your favorite activity to do in summer?’. It really gets them thinking about summer, it activates their knowledge of summer and its vocabulary, and it helps with fluency.
Another part of my ESL summer lesson plans is writing. I love getting my students to write about summer, so I provide them with prompts for this. These prompts are actually the same as on the discussion cards I use, but now I give them a lined sheet to complete their writing on. Writing practice helps them become more fluent in the language as well, and it’s great for them to put their thoughts onto paper in a more structured way.
An ESL summer holidays lesson plan: vocabulary practice
An ESL summer vacation lesson isn’t complete without some vocabulary practice. It’s great for students to learn vocabulary of summer items, activities and places in the target language. If they learn it before summer, they can actually use these newly acquired words when they talk to other people during their summer break. It’s great practice! I use a worksheet to help them practice, and then I have them review what they’ve learned with games, such as memory, dominoes, and Match the Pictures.
Another fun practice moment is when I use my summer vocabulary BOOM cards. BOOM cards are digital, self-checking task cards, and they are super fun to use to reinforce vocabulary.
ESL first lesson after summer break
You can do these summer activities before summer, so that students go into summer break with the new things they’ve learned. However, you can also discuss the topic first thing back! Talking about summer, writing about it, and reviewing vocabulary are all great ESL first class activities for after summer break. The season is still fresh in their mind, and they’ll have so many things to say about it.
So these are my ESL summer lesson ideas. I hope they will inspire you to do something similar with your language learners.
Want some ready made stuff?
If you don’t want to come up with all of it from scratch, you can grab my Summer Lesson Bundle right here. It contains all the activities I’ve been talking about, and you can also purchase them separately.
If you’re looking for Back to School resources, check out this blog post:
Top 5 back to school activity ideas to start the year off amazingly
