Back to School | EFL & ESL English Activities and Classroom Posters

Getting students back into speaking and thinking in English after the summer doesn’t need to mean hours of lesson preparation. This collection brings together practical, ready-to-use activities and classroom posters designed to help English teachers get the new school year off to a positive start.

The activities focus on getting students talking, reactivating the English they already know, reconnecting with classmates and thinking about useful learning habits for the year ahead. Alongside the activities are five colourful classroom posters encouraging students to use English, communicate confidently, keep trying when they get stuck and develop practical language-learning strategies.

Use the activities for your first English lessons of the year, dip into them for quick warmers and fillers, or display the posters throughout the year as useful classroom reminders.

What’s Included:

• Switch Their English Brains Back On! – Six quick, low-preparation speaking and vocabulary activities including Collaborative Board Race, Hot Seat: Extreme Q&A, My Summer in One Minute, Class Brainstorm, Ten-Second Categories and Know It All. 
• My Summer Break – Two interactive summer speaking activities. Students create a visual snapshot of their best day of the summer and use a Find Someone Who activity to move around the classroom, ask follow-up questions and learn more about their classmates.
• What Would You Do? – A pair and class discussion activity based around nine common classroom challenges. Students consider practical responses to situations such as making mistakes, getting stuck, working in groups and not understanding a task, helping to establish positive learning habits for the year ahead.
• Five Classroom English Posters – A colourful set of printable posters covering useful classroom English, communication strategies, using English in class, learning from mistakes and ways to keep communicating when students don’t know a word.

Perfect For:

• TEFL, EAL, ESL and EFL classrooms
• Back to school and first week English lessons
• Speaking, communication and vocabulary activities
• Secondary and teenage English learners
• Warmers, fillers and low-preparation activities

Looking for More Back to School Resources?

If you’re planning your first few weeks back in the classroom, take a look at our Back to School Essentials Collection for more ready-to-use EFL and ESL activities, worksheets, classroom resources and teaching ideas to help you start the new school year.

Please Note: Once you have completed your purchase, you will receive a PDF to download and print. This is a digital download. No physical product will be shipped.