ESL teaching topic
Free interactive actions flashcards and ESL classroom activities
Action verb cards turn vocabulary practice into movement, which is especially useful with young and beginner learners. They support commands, guessing games, present continuous sentences, and talk about what people can do.
Vocabulary to practise
Teaching actions in ESL class
Start with commands learners can physically follow, then change the grammar without changing the pictures: ‘Jump!’, ‘Can you jump?’, and ‘She is jumping.’
Contrast similar actions such as walk and run or read and write. This gives learners a reason to listen closely as well as move.
- 1Introduce action verb flashcards and use each word as a whole-class movement command.
- 2Mix the cards and play a fast listen-and-do round.
- 3Let learners mime an action while classmates guess the verb or make a sentence.
- 4Consolidate with a match-the-action worksheet or a Classendo game.
Useful classroom language
- Can you swim? Yes, I can.
- What is he doing? He is reading.
- Please walk, don’t run.
- She can dance, but she can’t sing.
Printable follow-up
Create a draw-the-action or match-the-verb worksheet from the selected cards.
Create a worksheet →Topic-specific classroom activities
Action charades
One learner mimes a card while the class guesses the verb or makes a present continuous sentence.
Listen and move
Call one action for the whole class, then introduce a distractor card to test careful listening.
Can you…? circle
Learners ask a partner a question from a card and respond with a full yes/no answer before changing partners.
Relevant Classendo resources
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