Your students are interested in the world, even more so now that you’re teaching them. Making a fun and informative ESL Geography PPT is really the way to go, and this post I’ll show you one of them that worked well for me over the five years I was teaching.
Teaching ESL Geography
- Informative: Students really learn a lot with this lesson and they’ll get the names to some countries they may have been wondering about.
- Bilingual: If you’re teaching in China this lesson is great because it has all the names in Chinese and English. If you’re not in China you should be able to go to Google Translate and get what you need fast.
- Lengthy: This PPT seems a bit short, just 18 slides, but it really can take awhile if you put some work into it. A little planning before class will give you ten minutes of introduction, then the PPT, and then perhaps a game or activity at the end. That’s pretty easy and honestly, I did that kind of stuff 5 minutes before class.
Let’s go through some of the slides now, huh?
If your students are anything like mine they’ll probably start copying this down in their notebook. ESL students love to collect vocabulary words, and I think geography is useful.
Most of my students in China didn’t know much about geography, and this ESL Geography PPT is really good to use with the game Where in the World.
When I taught this I’d go over each country, name them, get the students to repeat, and maybe tell a little of what I know about the place. Ask them what they know too, and you can probably get a few minutes out of this.
Here are some good questions to ask for pictures slides:
- What do you see?
- What colors are there?
- What are those buildings?
- Is the sky clean?
- Would you want to live here?
- Have you been here?
- What do you know about this place?
- What continent is this on?
- What is a city in this country?
- How do you spell that city?
As you can see, there are lots of options, and you could probably even get a little game out of it if you put some extra planning in before class.
If you have a smaller class this will go better. Put them with a partner, have them ask these questions, and have them write down a small dialogue. Here’s an example:
Greg: Hello, Tom!
Tom: Hello, Greg!
Greg: So Tom, what continent do you want to go to?
Tom: Ha, that’s easy – Africa!
Greg: Why do you want to go there?
Tom: Because I love hippos!
Greg: Alright…why?
Tom: I don’t know, they’re beautiful!
Greg: Uh, are you sure you’re OK from that football injury last week?
Tom: The doctor said I was fine.
Greg: Whoa, look at the time, I’ve got to go!
Tom: Alright, bye!
Overall I think you and your students will be impressed with this simple yet effective ESL Geography PPT.
You can make your own pretty easily, or save yourself some time and get this one for $0.99.