Teach ESL to Kids

Using a simple shopping role play can be a great tool to teach kids ESL conversation. The conversation skills that are used during a shopping role play are quite practical for use in everyday life. But most especially, the kids think that this is a lot of fun.

Start by reviewing food vocabulary and placing each item in your “store”. This works best if you have actual 3D food toys that you can use, but it works just as well with flashcards. Your “store” can either be just the floor in front of you or a special table that you have set up.

Once you’ve placed all of your food items in the store, give each child some pretend money and let them come to the store and buy something from you one at a time. Younger kids should be given just one coin or bill, but with older kids you can give them more than one so that they have to listen to the teacher to see how much money they need to give.

This is great because you can use it as a vehicle for teaching many different types of short ESL conversations:

*How are you?/I’m fine thank you.
*What do you want?/I want…
*Here you are./Thank you.

The kids really like this shopping game. I even have a toy shopping cart in my classroom that we use for the times that we play this. You might even begin to find them playing this on their own during free play time.

Love,

Shannon Sensei

Click here to return from the ESL Conversation-Shopping to the Teaching Ideas page.