Looking for some fun Alphabet Activities for Adults?
Who says that ESL activities for mature learners should be boring? I love
making new games and activities for my adult English language learners. They
always seem to enjoy these activities. And in my experience, hands-on
activities even for adults provide a lot more memory retention than just simple
worksheets.
Worksheets for ESL learners are simply too mundane
Let’s face it – we all use worksheets sometimes. But, I’m a
true believer in mixing things up! I created this little mini pack as a way to
help adult ESL learners who have just started learning the English language
grasp alphabet uppercase and lowercase letters. You won’t believe how many
students I get in an intermediate level who still are confused by letter
sounds, letter identification and alphabet letter writing.
I've created two activities to help further promote alphabet recognition and alphabet order for ESL adults. These were specifically created for mature ESL learners.
I've created two activities to help further promote alphabet recognition and alphabet order for ESL adults. These were specifically created for mature ESL learners.
Here are some simple classroom Find and Match Alphabet
Activities for Adults that you can use:
- Grab some objects from home that start with each letter of the alphabet (or you could choose ones that you’re targeting) for example, letters ‘s,h,p, and m’ you could place ‘star, hat, paper and mitten’ into a box or a bag.
- Have the students guess what objects are in the box or bag by perhaps peeking through a whole or you could have a small square opening.
- Make it fun, and tell the students that they only have 10 seconds to observe then pass the box onto someone else.
- You do this and have the students guess an object each. Tell them if they’re correct by writing the word on the board. Then you could ask them what other words start with ‘s’ or ‘h’? etc...
This pack here targets
alphabet letter recognition – it’s simple, but also colourful enough for
language learners to understand and remember. If you get your students to just
match the colourful squares onto the large mat – it will fulfill its purpose.
How to use:
The first activity includes a simple alphabet mat (you could
choose the uppercase or the lowercase mat). There are also matching colourful
alphabet cards. Black and white versions are included for all these activities
to help you save on colour printing. Let’s face it – who still prints in colour
at work? Ha. I’m lucky if our printer is in actual working order!
So, I print and prep most of my activities at home. That
way, I get to enjoy my morning coffee without fighting for my place in the
copier queue. 😉
- Anyway, print and laminate the alphabet mat on large A3 paper (preferable) but you could also print on A4 paper and use in small groups. Print and laminate the alphabet cards that come with it. I sometimes print these cards on coloured paper and that way you save colour ink but you also get the advantage of having a colourful activity to use and re-use over the years.
- Place them on a table in a small group, I would use one mat with matching pieces with no more than 5 students. This will help encourage every student to participate and learn the information at hand.
- If you want to work on letter sounds. You could start by calling out a letter ‘s’ for example, and get each group to find the matching lowercase card to place it on the uppercase letter ‘s’ and so on and so forth. You can also check each group to be sure they’ve actually completed this step correctly.
- After this, the students will get the hang of this activity and they will know what to do next. Be sure that if you want to work on letter sounds to have them listen to you first before they match. Otherwise if you are just working on letter recognition, you can get them to practice matching the letters on the mat without eliciting the letters yourself.
Find and Match Alphabet Activities for Adults should
be simple but effective enough for them to retain the information they are
learning. For example, my students often get confused with the letters ‘p’ and
‘b’ and their pronunciation. They also can’t pronounce the letter ‘s’ properly.
I will usually do some fun drills with them to help them develop proper
pronunciation of letters and words.
You can definitely mix things up for this activity and turn
it into a letter object matching activity. For example, you could call out
‘sand’ and then have the students find the letter that the word starts with.
They will know it’s ‘s’.
After the students
have finished matching the letters on their mat. You can get them writing the
letter matches onto the recording sheet provided with the pack. Some students
will struggle to copy the letters onto their sheets – but that’s ok. I have a
whole other strategy to teach alphabet formation and writing to ESL students.
Click on the image below to download the free printable pack
to use it with your students! Please feel free to leave me a comment and let me
know how this activity worked for your students!
