ESL Valentine's Day Games and Activities | Fun Valentine's Ideas for the Classroom

Valentine's Day is a great, fun-filled day you can bring into the ESL or EFL classroom! It is a great opportunity to help your students learn new vocabulary through games and activities. Watch along for my favourite picks for ESL Valentine's Day games and activities in the classroom! --------------------------- More fun ideas for the TEFL classrom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfK-D2ItUHQ -------------------------- Want to find out more about Valentine's Day ESL? Check out: https://www.eslactivity.org/esl-valentines-day-activities/ 63 ESL Holiday Games & Activities: https://amzn.to/2QbjWEn https://www.facebook.com/eslspeaking https://www.pinterest.ca/eslspeaking/ #teachingenglishwithjackie #valentinesday #eslactivities #eslgames #teachingenglishabroad -------------------- Even more Ideas for the TEFL Classroom: https://eslspeaking.org/ -------------------- More ideas for Valentine's Day ESL games from @ESL Kids Games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s0NpoWxRKs -------------------- Timestamp 0:00 Intro 0:12 Make some cards 0:34 Charades 1:00 Picture prompt 1:27 Write a love poem 1:52 Dictogloss 2:26 Conclusion Transcript for ESL Valentine's Day Games and Activities: It's Jackie from eslspeaking.org. So if you want to celebrate Valentine's day with your students, here are some of my best ESL Valentine's day activities and games to consider trying out in your classes. Number one: make some cards. This is super fun and most students love getting out their coloured pencils and drawing some pictures, that kind of thing. They can make cards for other students in the class or their teacher, their friends, their parents, whoever they want. I leave it kind of open and don't make it mandatory for them to do anything like that so they can make cards, however many they want and they can give them to whomever they want as well. All right, the next one is charades. This is kind of better for more advanced-level students. Make up a bunch of sentences like getting chocolates, or sentences or phrases (going on a date or awkward first date, things like that). And then the students have to act it out and then the other students in their group have to guess what it is. I'm sure you played charades before but it's great for any holiday-themed ESL lesson. The next one is picture prompt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dPDFKzCVj8&t=3s). This is a really nice way if students already know a good amount of vocabulary to help them activate their prior knowledge. So I put up Valentine's day scene and then I just elicit some information. What do you see in the picture? There are people on a date, or he gave her some chocolates. or there are flowers, there are valentine's day cards, etc., that kind of thing. And you can point out the things that you plan to cover in your lesson actually and that's a really nice warm-up activity you can do. The next one is a love poem. A haiku works really well. I explain what a haiku is, show students some examples and then get them to make a love poem. Of course, not everyone's in love with somebody and it's even for kids so I could say, okay make a love poem for your cat or your teacher or your mom or a friend or just whoever. It's just kind of for fun. It doesn't have to be serious and students can make it for whoever they want. The last one is dictogloss (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F-IkZZqvFM&t=1s). So this is a nice activity for higher-level students. I make up a passage talking about one of my experiences with Valentine's day or someone else's experience too you can use. I put students into pairs and then they each have a pen and paper. I read out the passage at a much faster than normal pace students have to take notes and then they can pair with their partners to try to recreate what they just heard. I repeat the process again: readings, taking notes, and students comparing. And then finally they can compare what they have with the original version. That's it for my ESL Valentine's day activities to try out in your classes. If you like these ideas please hit like, subscribe, leave a comment and then also be sure to check out the full blog post. I'll put the link below. There are a ton more ideas for Valentine's day.