Beach Unit for Elementary ESL Learners

As I have researched not all the book series that you work with have this unit, but I think it can be done at the end of the school year for those last days when the book is finished or it can be added when you are doing the Sea Animals.

Here’s the link to all the resources:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Beach-Unit-for-Elementary-ESL-Learners-4075972

Watch the video with the resource:

The resource is also available here:   https://www.bilingualmarketplace.com/products/beach-unit-for-elementary-esl?variant=37224677245092

Beach Unit Flashcards. Vocabulary enriches the students’ language. Flashcards are a good strategy to start with. Display all the flashcards on the board. Point to each beach item and have the students name them.

Teacher: What is this?

Students: It's a beach ball.

Have the students sort the beach items and the nature items.

Do Spelling with students. Start spelling a word and the students name it and point to that specific flashcard.

Teacher: s-h-o-v-e-l

Students: shovel !

Then there are Beach Verbs Flashcards. 

Use them to make sentences.

Teacher: He can eat a popsicle.

Student: He can play with a beach ball. 

Beach prepositions. Draw a beach scene on the board. Place the cutouts in the scene.

Teacher: Where is the chair?

Students: It is under the umbrella.

On the same beach scene, place the children on the beach and review Verbs.

Teacher: Where are the children?

Students: They are at the beach.

Teacher: What is he doing?

Students: He is playing with a beach ball.

Teacher: What are they doing?

Students: They are swimming.

Students will create their own scene and write a text to describe it. Children can use the objects and /or the children. The sentences will be on actions or on prepositions. Then have them show their work.

Have children work in pairs with their beach scene and ask questions without seeing each other paper.

Student 1: Is there a beach ball?

Student 2: No, there isn’t.

The student who can guess the most items wins.

Students can also do more writing on these templates and then create a classroom garland for all the students to read.

Beach and Numbers. Use the number cards to review numbers and plurals.

Teacher: What is behind Number 2?

Students: The sun!

Place several Number cards on the board and have the students draw the items.

Teacher: How many shells are there?

Students: There are 5 blue shells.

Beach and the alphabet. Same cards as the numbers to review the alphabet.

Teacher: What is behind letter A?

Students: a beach ball?

Teacher: Where is the crab?

Students: It is on letter B and W.

Book: The penguins are going on vacation. I happened to run into this book from when my kids were in Kindergarten. I thought it be a start for my blog post. If you want the book on pdf  request it : (ei98srl@gmail.com)

Here are all the cutouts to use on a flannel board. I made mine out of a floor cleaning cloth. Use it for retelling the story. I placed Velcro to all the pieces and it sticks perfectly.

I always wanted a flannel board but making one was a where do I start. I researched and saw this idea of using a mopping cloth. I went to the supermarket and bought this pink one. Yes, pink, the other one was gray. I have bought a yellow one and I am trying to catch a blue one. They are cheap where I live and they are good quality. I went to the tailor and had a border sewn on it and a little hanging hoop.  If you make one either for your classroom or home, it is easy to hang and easy to put ways since it is not very big. You don’t have to add the border.

Pick a cute book. I used this book that my kids had at home. I have the pdf for free by request (ei98srl@gmail.com)

I also made a similar book to review the grammar and vocabulary from the original book, instead of penguins going on vacation I used frogs. The black and white version has traceable sentences.

And koalas can also go on vacation. I made puppets to retell the story.

Teacher and students: The koalas are going on vacation. The koala is going to surf. The koala is going to play with a beach ball. The koala is going to make a sandcastle. The koala is going to scuba dive. The koala is going to drive. The kola is going to drink lemonade.

The mouse is going on vacation but on a worksheet.  Students complete the scene of all the things that the mouse is going to do on vacation.

Some Monsters are going on vacation but I made spinners. One spinner has numbers and the other one has the monsters. The number spinner stands for the amount of sentences to say or write and the monster is central character of the sentences.

A simple game: word and picture association.

                           And a free file! Go to the link and download it.    https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Beach-Numbers-for-Elementary-EFL-4079286

Print the beach numbers cards and use them for speaking opportunities in the classroom.

And print the Sentence association game for the Beach unit Numbers review.

or use as a notebook activity.

                       There is a bundle with this resource included.                                                     Here is the link to check it out.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Beach-Unit-BUNDLE-for-ESL-6889239

Transportation Theme for Elementary ESL

Link to all the resources for the Transportation Unit:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Transportation-Unit-for-Elementary-ESL-4049752

Sort the  55 flashcards by land, sea, sky.

Transportation and adjectives: big, small, long, short, old, new, cheap, expensive. Review the adjective words using your arms and hands. Stretch your arms for long and hold your hands closer for short.

Write the opposite words on the board. Hand in all the flashcards and have them place the vehicle where it belongs. Students must identify the vehicle, the size, length, old or new and price.

Student: This is a school bus. It is big and long.

There is a worksheet to review the describing words for car. Have the students listen to the instructions and color the cars.

Teacher: Point to the small car. Color it blue. Continue in the same manner. When the students have finished, have them place the adjectives that identify each vehicle.(LABELING)

Or have the students paste a vehicle on a sheet of paper and write adjectives to describe it.

Explain that you use the preposition by to express ways to travel.

Teacher: I am going to the library.

Students: How are you going?

Teacher: By subway.

Continue asking and answering questions. Have the students write sentences.

I am going to the island by ship.

Place the number flashcards around the room. Tell the students that each number is a garage or parking place for some vehicles.

Hand in the flashcards and give instructions.

Teacher: bus, go to garage number seven.

Transportation and verbs.

Tell the students that we use these three main verbs for the vehicles. Place them on the board and create a mind map.

Teacher: I can ride an elephant.

Students: I can ride a bike.

I can ride a motorcycle.

Give more examples using drive and fly using all the flashcards.

A worksheet to wrap this up.

Have the students sort the pictures into ride, drive and fly. Then using the bubbles provided, the students write sentences. ( I can drive a blue car.)

There are more flashcards to review “ How do you get to work ?” “ How do you get to school ?”

Community Helpers drive vehicles.

Have the students sort the flashcards in drive, ride or fly.

Model a sentence.  Teacher: The fire fighter drives a fire truck.

Students make more sentences.

And worksheets for writing. Students write in the bubbles sentences such as: I am driving a school bus.

 I made several worksheets for different skills. 

Listening. Students color as indicated by the teacher.

 Teacher: It is a pink blimp.

Speaking. Students point and say a sentence.

Student: It is a yellow submarine.

Have the students cut the cards and grab their favorite. At your signal have them get together in groups of the same favorite vehicle.

Teacher: These are trucks. (pointing close to you)

                Those are cars. (pointing far from you)

Students give more examples.

Write the words on your notebook. Providing multiple exposure to the vocabulary words help with learning and meaning.

Road game. I was looking for a game and found an interesting one on Pinterest, I adapted it for ESL. Simply print out as many roads you need and write the vocabulary words on each side of each road piece as in dominos, there must be 2 or more of the same word. Print the people in their vehicles and the signs. Have the students play as in Domino but the pieces will be the road items.

Prepositions cards. Use them for writing purpose or to play sentence association game.

More ideas,activities and printables at my other blog post.

http://eflpreschoolteachers.blogspot.com/2016/03/transportation-review-unit-for-ell.html

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Sea, ocean or Underwater Animals Unit for Elementary ESL

Get all the resources here for The Sea Animals Unit :   https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sea-Ocean-or-Underwater-Animals-for-Elementary-ESL-4005250

71  Sea Life Flashcards. Place several flashcards on the board. Ask questions.

Teacher: What color is the shell ?

Students: It´s yellow.

Teacher: brown!

Students: sea lion and walrus!

Teacher: Is the sea turtle green ?

Students: Yes, it is.

Playing a game in class is an authentic taks that involve peer interaction. It is as easy as ordering alphabetically. I made craft stick puppets  with the sea animals pictures and then ordered them alpahabetically.

Place all the flashcards face down on the desk. Have a leader come to the front and grab a card and read it to the class. Students have to write the animal they hear. After the students have written the word the leader shows the flashcards and the class corrects any spelling mistake.

Use the Point finger to review this and that.

Teacher: This is an orca and that is a prawn.

Do the same by placing several flashcards of the same animal and practice These and Those.

Place more flashcards around the room and have the students say sentences using their own finger.

Numbers. Write the Numbers 10 to 100 in random order under each flashcard. Play!

Teacher: 50!

Students: shark!

Teacher: sea lion!

Students: one hundred!

                            Adjectives: long-short, big-little

Game: Guess the animal.

Play the game with the whole class as an example:

Students: What color is it ?

Teacher: black and white.

Students: Is it big or small ?

Teacher: It´s big!

Students: Orca!

Teacher: YES!!!

Students can play with the small cards. Separate the printable into cards and select the ones that you are working on. Divide the class into pairs. Hand in at least 8 cards to each group. Have Student A write on piece of paper the name of a Sea Animal. Student B has to guess which is that animal.

Student B: What color is it ?

Student A: brown!

Student B: Is it big or small ?

Student A: big!

Student B: walrus!

Student A: YES!! 

Feelings Sea animals Flashcards. I wanted to add some flashcards regarding feelings to recycle the vocabulary words.

Place all the flashcards on the board. Have students come up with a fly swatter and swat the correct flashcard. Practice listening skills as you say the sentence.

Teacher: It is an angry starfish.

Prepositions of place. Draw a beach scene on the board and place the Sea Animals in random order.

Teacher: The crab is at the beach. The crab is next to the starfish.

Have students come up with similar sentences.

You can also hand in all the Sea animals and have the students place them as you say.

Teacher: Lenny, the shark is in the Ocean. The shark  is behind the blue fish.

Or introduce more positional words such as left and right.

Teacher: The crab is on the right.

Practice more positional words with this worksheet. Have the students glue their Sea Animals in any way that they want and then have them write sentences to show to the rest of the class.

As a listening activity, dictate how to  glue the Sea Animals.

Teacher: The octopus is between the crab and the seahorse. 

Practice prepositions using puppets made out of toilet paper tubes.

Build words using bottle caps. I made this template. It´s free at the link.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Number-Bottle-Caps-2155938

Parts of the body. Place a flashcard on the board and ask questions about that specific animal body parts. Have them name the body parts they already know the word and help them with the new vocabulary.(LABELING)

And extra practice is always necessary. Hand in all the worksheets and have them work in groups completing the Sea Animals body parts. Have them research the unknown words.

Sea animals habitat.  Sea or Ocean animals live in the same place or in some other. Place a flashcard of the habitat and ask the students which animals they think live in that particular habitat to create a mind map. I have ocean, sea, beach, river and lake. Ask the students to draw the habitat and the animals that live there. They can investigate and make their own diorama or picture. Have them do a show and tell to the class.

Sea Animals also eat.Create another mind map with the flashcards on the board.

 Make a Sea Life Table. Have the students make a similar table as the one you are making on the board. Ask them questions. Students usually know details of Sea Animals, if not have them investigate before completing the table.

File folder game. I made them the size of a circle puncher.

Snapshots templates where children can draw the animals and write a sentence for each one.

Sea animals writing or reading. Have the children write sentences using the template or have them write their own sentences to complete a book. 

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