Primary students retain more information when engaged with meaningful activities. ESL students need focused yet enjoyable classroom activities to help them become more confident in their English abilities. When using ESL activities with your primary students, emphasize proper sentence structures and useful vocabulary words in practical situations.

Shopping Activity
Allow students to participate in shopping for goods in your classroom to integrate language skills with match concepts. Assemble goods for pretend purchase such as empty, clean food containers or common school supplies. Provide play money or tickets for students to purchase the items. Students can take turns being the clerk selling the items and being customers buying the items. Review proper sentence structure for buying goods and vocabulary words to match the object they will buy. Insist everyone use the proper name for items and not pronouns. Students who run out of money can sell their items back to the bank---the teacher---to get more money to keep participating.

Chain Words
To help students listen carefully and review beginning and ending sounds in words, use chain words as an ESL activity with your primary students. Start the activity by saying a word. You can use any vocabulary word or common word your ESL students know. Choose a student to say a word that begins with the ending sound of the word you just said. For instance, if you say "apple," the student could say "lettuce." Let the student then choose another student to make a word beginning with the end sound of the word just said. Write the words on the board so students can see the spelling, if necessary. See how long your class can do this until they break the chain by saying a wrong word.

Class Survey
Have each primary student prepare one question to ask his class. Use these questions to prepare a class survey. Review how to make a proper sentence and encourage creativity. Some sample questions are, "Who has a favorite stuffed animal?" or "Who plays video games every day?" Let the students come up to the front of the class and call out their question. Your ESL students should speak clearly and loudly. Help your student count the responses and chart them on the board or on some poster board. A variation of the ESL activity is to allow your primary students to go around the classroom asking four classmates for their answer and have them chart the four answers they received for their question.