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These are some books about thanksgiving that the teachers or students could read.

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Using visual aids in an ESL classes is essential to helping them learn.

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A picture is worth a thousand words.

Nowhere is this truer than in the ESL classroom.

Suppose after a verb game or during some reading comprehension exercise, one of your curious students wants to know the difference between "He danced at the party" and "He was dancing at the party."

What will you do?

You could probably give a really clear explanation about how one sentence states what happened at a specific place or time, and the other gives background information to establish a scene in the past.

And then maybe you'd give a couple more examples prior to showing how the two very similar tenses-past perfect and past perfect continuous-do in fact differ.

Or, you could draw a picture of two timelines, one representing each sentence, and have the students describe them.

Which would be more effective?

The Benefits of Using Visual Aids in the ESL Classroom

Visual aids, like those two timelines, are so perfect for the ESL classroom. Here's why:

Helps students understand and remember concepts more easily

When you present a concept using a visual aid, you are giving your students something they can associate with that concept. Later, when they try to recall it, all they have to do is bring up the image you used.

Visual aids also help you present clearly and smoothly, without complications or tangents.

Reduces Teacher Talking Time

Like I said at the top of the post, a picture is worth a thousand words. Visual aids allow you to explain the meaning behind various vocabulary and structures without explanation. In addition, you can ask prompting questions about your visual aids to boost Student Talking Time and lead them to the answer.

For example, if your visual aid is a timeline illustrating someone's work experience, you can ask them "How long did Bob work for ABC Inc.?," etc.

Provides a touchpoint you can refer back to throughout the lesson

Visual aids not only help put the new language out there, they also help remind students of the language they've learned as the class goes on.

For example, if your students make an error with the target grammar, or use a different word when they could have used a new word from the lesson, you can direct them back to the visual aid as if to say, "Try and say it like we practiced earlier."

Makes the class more dynamic and fun

Visual aids add some pizazz to your lessons, and help take the focus off of you or the textbook.

Now that we've outlined just some of the benefits of using visual aids, let's look at seven visual aids that work.

7 Easy ESL Visual Aids You Can Use Immediately

There are tons of games and activities that you can do with visuals, but you're not going to find in-depth activities here. Rather, I want to show how you can use visuals to introduce new words or clarify concepts-without giving lengthy explanations to your students. (We're reducing TTT, remember?)

These are simple, effective teaching aids. So here we go:

1. Pictures

Pictures are great for presenting many nouns, adjectives and simple sentence patterns. If you are using a textbook in class, make use of the pictures in it; they are sometimes very simple and effective. With younger students, solicit words by asking "What do you see?" Be sure to call on many students and meet all of their suggestions with positive feedback. With older students, you can have them predict what a chapter will be about based on the pictures from the opening page.

But what if your textbook doesn't have any good pictures? Or if you're not using a textbook?

In those cases, try using realia, such as pictures from newspapers or magazines. (We'll touch a little more on realia later in the post.) If your school has them, flashcards or picture dictionaries also work well for teaching nouns, adjectives and verbs across a wide range of themes.

Here are a few ideas of how to incorporate pictures into your teaching:

Use personal pictures: Whenever possible, use pictures of yourself or photos around town/school (that students would recognize) in PowerPoints or games. This will make it much more interesting and memorable for the students, so words will stick that much easier.

Include celebrities for interest: Likewise, if you use pictures of a well-known celebrity (whether local or global) in activities, presentations or games, students will perk up and you'll have captured their attention more than before.

Draw stick figures: When all else fails, or you need a quick solution, use the simple drawing or stick figure. Stick figures take only a second to draw, can be used to teach just about anything, and are guaranteed to get a chuckle (or at least mine are).

The site ESL Flow has many more ideas about using pictures to teach English.

2. Timelines

One thing that pictures aren't very helpful for is introducing grammatical structures, particularly anything beyond the present simple or present continuous.

For this, we have timelines.
Sun-Hee has to finish her thesis by March 12. Sun-Hee will work on her thesis until 10:00 tonight.
Timelines are a great way to illustrate tenses and time expressions. For instance, suppose you are trying to teach the difference between "by" and "until."

You could draw simple timelines to illustrate the following sentences:

Maximize your Student Talking Time by presenting timelines interactively and leading your students to the answer.

For instance, if you're using timelines for the above sentences, ask questions like, "What is Sun-Hee working on now?," "When is the deadline?," "When will she stop working on it tonight?," etc.
ABC has a larger market share than XYZ. LMN has the largest market share in the industry.
3. Charts and Graphs

These work beautifully for introducing and practicing a variety of structures. For example, you could use a pie chart or bar graph to illustrate comparatives and superlatives, such as:

Because line graphs indicate change, they also work like a charm for verbs of change, like "increase," "decrease," "dip" and so on.

When you are working on vocabulary building in class, use a chart. I myself like to use charts to teach word families. I have columns for "noun," "verb," "adjective" and "adverb." So let's say the word "tired" comes up in class. I'll expand on it by eliciting "tiredness," "tire" and "tiredly." Get the words in the chart, and refer back to it through the lesson.

4. FluentU

A super effective type of visual aid that's also an English immersion platform is FluentU. FluentU takes real-world videos-like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks-and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

It's got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the English-speaking world actually watch on the regular. These are videos that your students already love watching, so they'll be beyond excited to interact with them in the classroom.

On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. In addition to the strong visual cues in the authentic videos, students will see an image with every word. Each word also comes with an in-context definition, audio and example sentences. Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos.

Worried that students might be stumped by some of the harder videos? No way. FluentU brings authentic content within reach by providing interactive captions and in-context definitions right on-screen. For example, if a student taps on the word "brought," they'll see this:

Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games like "fill in the blank."

It's perfect for in-class activities, group projects and solo homework assignments. Not to mention, it's guaranteed to get your students excited about English!

5. Opposites

Showing a word's antonym or opposite is a sure-fire way to teach its meaning without a word of explanation. Suppose your student doesn't know the word "least." Just jot down something like this on the whiteboard:
A: I work for a securities firm.
Alternatively, you could use hand gestures: Spread out your arms for "most" and bring them in for "least." Hand gestures are also good for opposites like "fast/slow," "cheap/expensive" and "big/small."

And, speaking of opposites, what's the opposite of an answer? That's right, a question! Introduce question structures by showing the question's answer. For example:

6. Gap Fills
Mary always goes to the beach ___ the summer. Richard has a meeting with his boss ___ October 7. They're meeting ___ 2:30 p.m.
Like opposites, gap fills help you introduce or reinforce grammar by accessing the knowledge your students already have. They're perfect for things like pronouns, prepositions and articles. Let's say your lesson today is about "in," "on" and "at."

Having three sentences on the board like the following is all you'll need to make their meaning clear:

If you wish, you could expand on this by creating a chart (like in #3) with "in," "on" and "at" at the top. Then you can have your students come up with time expressions that go under each category. It's interactive, easy and reinforces what you made clear via the gap fills.

7. Realia

Realia is an incredibly effective visual aid in the ESL classroom. Realia means real-life, authentic items. For example, if you're teaching a lesson about booking a hotel room, students will become much more engaged if they have an actual hotel brochure to look at. You could use the brochure to introduce new language items, and even as the basis for a role play if you wish.

Celebrity photos

Menus (eat-in and take-out)

Weather reports

Hotel pamphlets

Maps (world, country, street, train, subway)

Train/subway/bus timetables

Movie/concert schedules

Want ads

Property ads

Family trees

Car rental brochures

I highly recommend taking some time to build a "realia collection" for your ESL classes. Take a walk around town or go online to gather some essential realia. Anything you print should be laminated to make it last longer.

Here is some "must-have" realia for you to start off your collection with.

And there you have it! With these visual aids, you can teach a diverse range of structures, words and concepts with pizzazz and, best of all, very little talk time.
Bring English immersion to your classroom!
Practice trying out different types of visual aids in different situations. Over time, you will develop your "go-to" visual aids-ones that you'll use every time you teach a particular lesson or topic, because you know they work. Good luck!

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach English with real-world videos.

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7 Easy ESL Visual Aids to Teach Anything Effectively | FluentU English Educator Blog

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A picture is worth a thousand words. Nowhere is this truer than in the ESL classroom. Suppose after a verb game or during some reading comprehension exercise, one of your curious students wants to know the difference between "He danced at the party" and "He was dancing at the party."

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This worksheet has pictures along with words for them to find. The pictures will help grasp what the word means. This would be good for second graders.

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Holiday Word Search: Thanksgiving | Worksheet | Education.com

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Challenge your kid to search for and find the hidden Thanksgiving-themed words in this fun word search!

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This website gives many ideas of how you can teach Thanksgiving in the ESL Classroom.

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Holidays are a great way to break out of the normal classroom routine, grab your students' interest, and introduce some culture to the ESL classroom.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it's a great time to think about ways to incorporate this fun and meaningful holiday into your classroom.

You may not have time to put a lot of focus on Thanksgiving with all of the other material you have to cover, but don't worry! You can still have a fun time with it by doing a short lesson and incorporating what you have learned into the rest of the day's classroom activities.

Start out the class by introducing some Thanksgiving vocabulary, either with a story, a worksheet, or a fun game/activity (check out the resources below for ideas!).

Make sure to briefly introduce the history and culture of Thanksgiving to your class Click To Tweet, as well, so that they have some context for the vocabulary. If you only have a little bit of time, you may not even want to delve into the history of Thanksgiving.

Simply giving your students an idea of the significance the holiday holds in American culture, and the way that it is typically celebrated can give them just enough context without overwhelming them with information.

Throughout the rest of your class, keep using the vocabulary and incorporating information about Thanksgiving into other parts of your lessons. Teaching a new grammar pattern? Use a few Thanksgiving-themed sentences to demonstrate it. Reviewing vocabulary? Play a Thanksgiving-themed game.

Art projects are also a great way to incorporate Thanksgiving into your classroom. (see the resources list below for plenty of ideas). Make sure that students understand the significance of the craft they are making.

If you are doing a turkey craft, make sure to take a few minutes to introduce what the turkey's connection is with Thanksgiving - don't take it for granted that your students will recognize it as a symbol of the holiday.

If you are going to be taking a break from the normal routine and dedicating an entire class - or multiple classes - to Thanksgiving, then you've got a lot more freedom to enjoy, but a lot more planning to do.

Depending on how advanced your class is, and how much time you have, you may or may not want to dive too deep into the history of Thanksgiving.

For young learners who may not have any idea who Native Americans are or why the Pilgrims were coming across the ocean, introducing the history can end up being more confusing than enlightening. Instead, you will likely have a much more fun class by focusing on the culture and traditions surrounding Thanksgiving.

For more advanced learners, finding some simple stories and easy reading is a great way to get them familiar with the history. Look for readings geared toward introducing Thanksgiving's history to ESL learners. There are some worksheets in the resources list below that will be a great place to start.

Regardless of how in-depth you decide to go into Thanksgiving's history, once you have introduced the basic concepts and vocabulary, let your students have some fun with it. Incorporate a game and/or craft, reinforce what you have learned with a worksheet or by reading them a story, and then come up with a fun activity to wrap it all up at the end.

Here are a couple of great ways to wrap your lesson up at the end of class:

Have students make pilgrim hats, headdresses, and/or turkeys as an art project, and then use those crafts in a simple play that they act out at the end of class.

Have the class write a story to retell the history of Thanksgiving in their own words.

Have a Thanksgiving "dinner" at the end of one of your classes. Arrange the desks into one large table, and ask students to bring in snacks from home to share with everyone. Take time before you eat to go around the table and have everyone say something they are thankful for.

For more lesson plans, activities, art projects, and worksheets, check out these resources:
everythingesl - A good start for a lesson plan, including links to printables and some suggestions for reading materials for your students.

eslkidstuff - Another well-thought-out and thorough lesson plan, lasting about an hour, and geared toward younger learners.

esolcourses - Worksheets for various levels, and focusing on various themes: reading-based, vocabulary, grammar, etc.

islcollective - A great collection of colorful, interesting, and unique Thanksgiving-themed worksheets.

bogglesworldesl - Lanternfish has a fun collection of Thanksgiving activities and worksheets for a variety of age levels.

everythingesl - A great basic story describing the history of Thanksgiving. Geared toward more advanced ESL learners.

eslholidaylessons - Another great reading activity focusing on Thanksgiving's history.

parenting - This collection of adorable Thanksgiving-themed crafts is a little more unique than the typical hand-turkey that we all know and love. Most projects are a little more involved, too, but worth it if you have the time.

allcrafts - Scroll through these pictures for some great craft ideas and instructions - everything from super simple to super involved.

night.net - Some fun and unique ideas for Thanksgiving-themed kids' games.

kidactivities.net - A list of fun, kid-appropriate Thanksgiving games that could easily be adapted for the ESL classroom.

womansday.com - Most of these games are a little bit more involved and require some prep on your part, but if you have the time, they are tons of fun and a great way to reinforce vocabulary and concepts.

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Teaching Thanksgiving in the ESL Classroom

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Holidays are a great way to break out of the normal classroom routine, grab your students' interest, and introduce some culture to the ESL classroom. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it's a great time to think about ways to incorporate this fun and meaningful holiday into your classroom.

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Thanksgiving Facts and Activities
This website is all about Thanksgiving for students and teachers. It has examples of holidays in other countries that are similar to Thanksgiving .

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What is Thanksgiving Day?
History of Thanksgiving
How did Thanksgiving became a holiday?
Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner
Symbols of Thanksgiving

What is Thanksgiving Day?

Thanksgiving Day is a day set aside each year where people in the United States and Canada give thanks to God for all the blessings they received during the year by feasting and prayer.

History of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day first started in New England. It was for thanking God for the abundant harvest of crops. This is usually somewhere in late fall when the crops have been harvested. People from many parts of the world have been holding some kind of harvest festivals for thousands of years. They just called it by different names, for example :

U.K. - Harvest Festival UK
China - mid-autumn festival
Korea - Chu Suk, or also known as the Harvest Moon Festival.
India - Indian Harvest Festival (find out what it's called)

American Thanksgiving Day is probably a harvest festival at the beginning too. The first Thanksgiving Day in America was on December 4, 1619. At that time, it was a fully religious thing. A group of 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Plantation via the James river (near Charles City, Va) on December 4, 1619 and their charter required that the day of their arrival be observed yearly as a day of thanksgiving to God.

In New England, the first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in Plymouth in 1621 by the Pilgrims together with 91 Indians. The Pilgrims first set foot at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620. The first winter in Massachusetts was really bad and 46 out of the original 102 Pilgrims died. It is believed that the Indians helped the Pilgrims through that difficult period and without them, the Pilgrims would not have survived.

In the following Spring of 1621, Samoset of the Wampanoag Tribe and Squanto of the Patuxtet tribe, taught the survivors how to plant corn or maize and how to catch alewives, a kind of fish to be used as a fertilizer for growing pumpkins, beans, peas and other crops. These two braves also taught the Pilgrims the art of hunting and angling. Things got better in 1621 when the corn and pumpkin harvest was bountiful. Governor William Bradford made arrangements to celebrate the bountiful harvest and to recognise the help given to the colonists by the indians with a feast. The feast was more of an English Harvest festival celebration and it lasted for three days. Governmor William Bradford sent four men out "fowling" after ducks and geese but it is not very sure if it included the turkey. The Pilgrims used to call any type of wild fowl, turkey. Unfortunately, this celebration was not repeated for many years.

In June 20, 1676, the governing council or Charlestown and Massachusetts held a meeting and by a unanimous vote, they instructed Edward Rawson, the clerk, to proclaim June 29 as a Thanksgiving Day. The Indians were not included this time as the celebration was more about the Pilgrims' recent victory over the natives.

Read the 1676 First Thanksgiving Procalamation

Native Americans Activities and Resources

This custom soon spread from Plymouth to other New England colonies. In October 1777, all the 13 colonies joined in a thanksgiving celebration. This thanksgiving celebration was to commemorate the victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary war. Eight days of thanksgiving was observed. This celebration was not repeated.

In 1789, President George Washington issued a general proclaimation naming November 26 a day of National Thanksgiving. Some were opposed to it as many felt it was not right to celebrate when there were hardships among some pilgrims.

Read George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation

At the same time that year, the Protestant Episcopal Church announced that the first Thursday in November would be set aside yearly for giving thanks. However, it was only in 1830 when New York had an official state Thanksgiving Day that other Northern states soon followed. Viginia, in 1855, became the first southern state to adopt this custom.

How did Thanksgiving Day became a holiday?

During the 1800s, a famous editor of the Ladies' Magazine and Godey's Lady's Book by the name of Sarah Josepha Hale (author of "Mary had a little lamb") worked many years to promote the idea of a National Thanksgiving Day. She was credited for persuading President Abraham Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November 1863 as "A day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father." However, in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed it to one week earlier. This was to help businesses by lengthening the shopping period before Christmas. There was an uproar and it was changed back to its original date two years later. Then, Congress changed it again after 1941 to the fourth Thursday of November and it would be a legal federal holiday.

Read Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863

Today, Thanksgiving Day is usually a family reunion dinner celebration. Roast turkey is a favorite dish on this day. The Christians also attend church services and pray, thanking God for all the blessings for the year.

Traditional thanksgiving dinners those days usually includes turkeys cranberries, fish, dried fruit, clams, venison, plums and lobsters. Modern times thanksgiving dinners include the pumpkin pie.

To find out more about Thanksgiving dinners, check out the sites below.

Food Timeline : Historic American Thanksgiving Dinner Menus

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All About Thanksgiving for Kids and Teachers

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What is Thanksgiving Day? History of Thanksgiving How did Thanksgiving became a holiday? Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner Symbols of Thanksgiving What is Thanksgiving Day? Thanksgiving Day is a day set aside each year where people in the United States and Canada give thanks to God for all the blessings they received during the year by feasting and prayer.

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I chose this resource because it is a hands on activity. The colors of the beads collaborate with the lines in the poem and the colors would help the kids remember the story.

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This is an animated video told by Plymouth Rock. He tells how the pilgrims came to America, but did not know how to survive by planting. A Native American saw the pilgrims and showed them how to plant and harvest food.

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Scholastic provides a website that includes lesson plans for every grade. These activities include historical letters, virtual field trips, and information about housing, dress, and the feast. This also includes resources about different books and activities as well.

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Thanksgiving Lessons for Grades PreK-2 | Scholastic

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This lesson plan gives younger students an in-depth look into the First Thanksgiving and helps them understand the experiences of the Pilgrims on their voyage to the New

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Chelsie Goodwin: PreK-3rd
Hannah Everett: PreK-3rd
Peyton Ferrell: K-5th
Keashia Seats PreK-3rd
Leslie Bradley: pre-k - 3
Emily Kelly: K-5th