Merit Badges
Students create earnable badges for their classmates as the year goes on to reward one another for their accomplishments in the classroom.
Student Projects
Topic: (any)
Critical Hits & Epic Fails
In role-playing games, players often simulate chance – by rolling a dice in many cases – to determine the effect of an action, or an
Missing Verse
Students analyze song lyrics to understand the tone, message, themes, and style, then write a missing third or fourth verse.
Pun-chlines
Here’s a great way to practice idioms and other sayings by changing a detail or two to fit a new context. Students get to deliver jokes by substituting one of the words from that expression with another word similar in either sound or meaning.
Memes
A popular way of expression on the internet is through memes. Depending on their age and access to the internet, your students probably see memes quite frequently. Why not take the opportunity to use them to practice English?
Story Cards
Design elements of stories on cards. You can use them as prompts later, but for now, your class can put the ideas on paper.
Poetry Prompt: Pentina
A pentina is a poem in which the same five words are repeated (each stanza) at the end of the line. Crafting such a poem means using the same words in different ways, so this is a good way to practice using words with multiple meanings or words that can be different parts of speech.
Essay Prompts: This vs. That
Make your students form an argument as to why something is better than the alternative. As essay-writing practice, here are twenty topics. Students should choose which of a pair to support, and their arguments could be subjective, objective, or both.
Make Your Own Zodiac
Zodiacs incorporate a lot of different elements and group the specifics together in interesting ways. Getting your students to design their own zodiac allows you to review multiple topics. It also requires reasoning and encourages creativity.
A Month of Writing
November is National Novel Writing Month, but your students don’t have to write a whole novel to challenge themselves and practice creative English. Encourage them to write 5,000 words instead. A short story in a month is still something to celebrate!
Student Blogging
A great way to engage students is to create projects within contexts and formats that they are already using in their personal lives. One of my favorite ways of doing this is through blogs.