What Are Some Engaging Earth Day Activities for Middle and High School ESL Students?

Updated: Mar 10

Beginner ESL

Want to teach your beginner ESL students about the importance of Earth Day and how they can care for our planet? Worried that the language you'll need for this is too complex for novice level English Language Learners? Stress no more! This resource that I will describe below will allow you to teach about Earth Day to beginner ESL students in a fun and no-prep way!!

*A caveat: I don't really recommend this for a true Newcomer. If you have a student that arrived last week, this resource will not be ideal (nor is it really practical). That recently arrived student likely needs school and survival vocabulary before worrying about Earth Day content. However, for a beginner who has even a little bit of vocab under their belt, this product is great!

The first reading passage is about how global warming affects polar bears' food supply. The second reading is about plastic in the oceans and how to recycle properly.

Next, each reading has an accompanying writing prompt with a picture. Students are provided with a word bank and sentence starters to help them describe what they see. This is one of the key standards of the WIDA English Language Development Standards (being able to narrate/describe). Students will write their responses on the Answer Recording Sheet on the lines provided.

This product is a great way to build confidence with reading content-based texts. It is designed for secondary grades so it does not have a "little kid" look to it. (My older ELLs often feel embarrassed when a teacher gives them something that is for a 5 year old). The texts are carefully scaffolded.

You could use this resource in your ESL classroom and/or in the Science classroom as a modification for your ELLs.

This resource addresses the following WIDA ELD standards:

WIDA Standard 1: Social and Instructional Language

WIDA Standard 4: The Language of Science

The key language uses for this resource are: Narrate and Inform

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Intermediate to Advanced ESL

Now perhaps, like me, you teach multiple levels of ESL students. Maybe you need an Earth Day resource for intermediate to advanced learners that has academic language, but is still comprehensible to an ELL. The advanced version of the Earth Day reading activity takes away the pictures and asks students to use context clues to deduce meaning from the text.

The texts are written in clear and straightforward language but still include key academic vocabulary that ELLs in grades 6 through 12 will need. There are four Earth Day topics addresses in this resource:

Polar bears and how their food source is affected by global warming
Plastic in the oceans and how to recycle properly
Food waste and how composting can make a big impact
Water conservation and daily habits you can do to help

The texts are clear but still challenging for the level 3/4 ESL learner.

The comprehension questions for each text are multiple choice and the product includes an Answer Recording Sheet for students. It also includes a Teacher Answer Key for you! Each reading has 5 multiple choice questions. The questions ask about key understandings from the reading passage as well as vocabulary in context.