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Those who have ever taught an ESL course would agree that one cannot have a completely homogenous group of ESL students in one classroom. Typically ESL classes include students of different ages, genders, personalities, cognitive styles, motivations, socioeconomic status, cultural backgrounds, L1 educational experiences, and different levels of L2 proficiency.

Students look throuhg a text or a list of words on the topic that they have recently studied and fill in the "Alphabet Soup" chart with words. The student who can fill in the most lines on the chart, wins a prize or gets extra credit. You can make the assignment more challenging by asking students to find the words that have only 4 or 5 letters in them.

You can download the "Alphabet Soup" chart here .

This is a very interesting activity that you can do with your ESL (language learning) students on the first day of class.

Level: Early Intermediate - Advanced

Materials: sheets of paper, pencils

Procedures:

1. The teacher asks students to write on a full sheet of a paper a question that they would want to ask people in class in order to know them better. Depending on the level of the students, the teacher can encourage them to write interesting and unusual questions. So, students with limited skills can ask questions about age, favorite color, hobby, friends or family. As for students with more proficient language skills, they can ask questions on favorite school subjects, things that the person values in other people, their native country's interesting holidays, etc.

2. The teacher divides the class into two growps (by counting out 1 and 2, picking a card/stick with a certain color, etc.). The two groups stand in the opposite ends of the class.

3. The teacher asks students to fold the paper with their questions into a ball and invites them to throw their paper at the other group. Students should be advised to avoid throwing the paper balls as high as the face. Thus students start the "snowball fight".

4. At a certain signal the teacher stops the games and asks students to pick up one of the balls and go to their seats.

5. When all students are back in their seats, the teacher invites the students to open the balls (one at a time), read the question on that paper and answer it.