I'm thinking of... This game is similar to "eye spy" but with sounds. You describe the word by giving hints for the beginning, middle, and end sounds (Starke, 2020). This challenges students to think about the sounds they're hearing but also the sounds of other words that are used as hints. As student vocabulary and confidence grows, the words can become more complex and definitions used as hints.

Sound Bingo using words that sound similar, such as 'pat' and 'bat', students listen and work to identify the word on their bingo card. Visual aids can be used with the words and the game can progressively get harder where students explain the difference in the words and the meaning of them.

Matching Morphemes using cards that have different prefixes, roots, and suffixes, students work to combine the pieces in order to make a real word. That can be made easier or more challenging by changing the amount of components such as roots and prefixes only, all 3 or multi-syllabic words. Once a word is created, students can then be challenged to define the word and use it in a sentence.

Sight word catch can be played by having the dolch words for the grade written on index cards. Laying out a few at a time, more will make it more challenging. The leader with say one of the sight words on the table and the students have to identify the words. When the leader says go they can point to the word. This will challenge ELLS to read and recognize various words that can be found in various contexts. This will also support fluency, word solving and writing skills (Linguistics for Teachers of ELLs, n.d.).

Word Trees is where students start off identifying one morpheme and then add different affixes to it to change the word (Hickey & Lewis, 2013). For example, act -->action--> active--> react. This helps to encourage students to identify the morphemes they know within words to determine the meaning of it. This can become more challenging by looking for multisyllabic words.

Root Jeopardy can be used as a review game after students have learned different morphological families. Students will be given a root word and challenged to come up with 3-5 words using that word (Hickey & Lewis, 2013). To increase the difficulty, they can provide definitions and sentences to go with each one. Another challenge would be to provide the word and students have to match or provide the definition to go with based on their identification of the morphemes.

Change it! Working on developing phoneme manipulation, in a small group setting students can take turns passing around a word and changing one sound at a time to create a new word. This can become more challenging by having the last student use the word in a sentence.

Clap and tap Students will use one or two syllable words and clap or tap out the syllables they hear. These words can be accompanied with images but eventually content words and multisyllabic words can be used. This helps build awareness of sounds and syllables within words.

Sentence Analysis is where students are given a piece of a rich text to analyze. Depending on the ability of the student this piece can be more or less challenging. The level of questioning can change with this too. Questions can range from simple identification of components within a sentence such as who, what when, where, etc. This can progress to identifying connectives where words or phrases connect to earlier used words or phrases (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, n.d.). This can help to clarify meaning and intention with sentences.

Fill in the blanks is an activity where students are given a passage that has some of the words missing and they need identify a word that can fit and make sense. This can help them to focus on different aspects of syntax and vocabulary. The types of words can become increasingly difficult as students progress. When starting out students can reference a word bank to help support their thinking.

Language Detectives encourages students to look closer at words. Specifically, they can look for cognates between their L1 and L2. This, and the origins or roots of words, can be used to help break down and understand the meaning (Linguistics for Teachers of ELLs, n.d.-b). As students progress in their abilities more complex and academic words can be used for this activity.

Word Map (semantic maps) helps students to create a visual that relays the meaning and connections of words or phrases (Zorfass, Gray, & PowerUp WHAT WORKS, n.d.). Students identify a word in the text they do not know and work to identify context clues to determine the meaning. They use a variety of resources such as dictionaries, images, and context clues to help. This aligns with various CCSS that ask students to apply, determine, or demonstrate their knowledge of language using context.

Sentence frames can be used to support ELLs as they develop an understanding for pragmatics as it helps them learn how to communicate their idea (Linguistics for Teachers of ELLs, n.d.-a). As students progress, the sentence frame can become more and more open allowing the student the opportunity to express their understanding while still having support. Eventually, the goal will be to remove the sentence frames altogether.

Describe it can be similar to activities done at the beginning of the school year to help define routines. Doing this often will serve as a reminder for all students but help to develop the pragmatics for ELLs. This is where students are asked to explain rules and routines. For example, asking "what does active listening look like? sound like?" This can be supported with an anchor chart to showcase student ideas and contributions. This should include images and phrases to support ELLs at all levels.

Fors, A. (n.d.). Language components and development. Allison Fors – Speech Therapy. Retrieved May 13, 2025, from https://allisonfors.com/language-components-and-development/

Giovanelli, M. (2014). Teaching grammar, structure and meaning: Exploring theory and practice for post-16 English language teachers (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315762029

Lessard-Clouston, M. (n.d.). Focusing on form: A teacher’s research update on form-focused instruction. CALR Journal, 1, 1–14. https://web.aou.edu.lb/research/Documents/Focusing%20on%20form.pdf

Putri Utami, N. (2023). The role of linguistic in English language teaching. In Proceedings of the Conference on English Language Teaching (pp. 544–551). https://proceedings.uinsaizu.ac.id/index.php/celti/article/view/531

Teaching Grammar in Context. (2019, May 1). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XERPdwe0HHQ

Beltrán-Planques, V., & Querol-Julián, M. (2018). English language learners’ spoken interaction: What a multimodal perspective reveals about pragmatic competence. System, 77, 80–90. doi:10.1016/j.system.2018.01.008

Sentence Scramble - students take pieces of a sentence and rearrange them to make a grammatically correct sentence. Lower students can have images or pictures to support them but higher level students can be challenged withe more complex sentence that include prepositions, conjunctions, and new vocabulary words.

Sentence Addition - starting off with a simple sentence, students must add on to the sentences using details such as adjectives, phrases, and clauses. As students progress in ability they can be challenged to use more academic vocabulary or create sentences in different tones or tenses.

Odd One Out is where students identify what word does not belong with the others. This requires students to use context in order to determine what the relationship among words is. For beginning ELLs this can be real objects and simple groups. As students progress, the vocabulary and groups become more challenging and can require students to be able to voice or explain their rationale.

Context Hunt is where students are given a text to read that has a number of vocabulary words underlined. They then need to highlight various context clues that help to determine the meaning of each vocabulary word. This can range from simple sentences and visuals to academic vocabulary and figurative language.

Model the response is where students and teachers discuss responses to a situation to determine the context and if the response was appropriate. For example, you may ask the student if the response was questioning or rude when someone goes up to a teacher and says "You don't like me. Everyone else got an A except me!" This can be followed up by a discussion of what a better, more appropriate response would be. This can be used for a variety of social situations and context. With beginning ELLs this may be done better with teacher support or options to pick from. As they progress, you can remove the options and allow students to determine their own identification of responses.

Journal reflection can be used to have students reflect on situations that happened to them, or situations given as an example. They can describe what happened, how they felt, what was said, etc. This can also be used a social-emotional activity for students. Beginning ELLs can benefit from sentence frames that are supported with drawings. As they progress, their reflections become more detailed and include alternative ways they could have responded to the situation.