3 Travel Lesson Activity Ideas
If you ask me what topic always ends up in ESL textbooks, I’d definitely answer, “Travel.” Every semester, without fail, I teach a lesson about travel. And it’s a great topic! But if you’re needing some inspiration, I want to share a few activities I’ve done before.
If you’re looking for some ideas to make your travel lesson more interesting, here are 3 ideas for activities you can try!
1) Classroom Airport
I LOVE this activity—and students do too. I transform my entire classroom into an airport. First, I divide students into four groups: Passengers, Airline Employees, Security Officers, and Flight Attendants. Each group has a few minutes to prepare for what they’ll need to say. Then I have passengers check in, go through security, and board the plane. They get to practice saying super useful phrases like “Please put on your seat belt” and “Do you have a checked bag?” “Do you have a power bank in your carry-on?” Students have so much fun with the chance to get up and move around, but they also love actually getting to use the language in a practical way. If you want to see all exactly how I organize everything, check out the full article with all the details here: https://www.atlasteaching.com/lesson-planning/theclassroomairport (It’s not as complicated as you’d think!)
2) Plan a Vacation
This might be the most basic activity in any travel ESL lesson, but there’s a reason! It’s an oldie, but a goodie. Ask students to plan a vacation. This one is excellent because it’s so practical and there’s so much room for variety. They could plan it alone or with a partner or with a group. You could let them plan anything they wanted, or you could add qualifiers to challenge them. For example, maybe they have to plan a vacation for a group of their best friends or maybe they’re taking their parents to another country for their wedding anniversary. Both of those vacations would look completely different. Maybe it’s an adventure vacation, filled with hiking and white-water rafting.
You could let them choose their dream location, or require them to research a little about London before planning a trip there. Maybe you give them budget restrictions time restrictions.
If you do keep it pretty open, here are a few questions I like to ask to get them thinking:
Where are you going?
How long will you be there?
Who will you go with?
What type of place will you stay at? (Hotel, Airbnb, hostel, etc.)
What activities will you do there?
What food do you want to eat there?
3) Packing List
This is another personal favorite, just because I’ve never seen this in a textbook, and most of my students have said they’ve never done this exercise before. I challenge students to write down a packing list of everything they’d need to bring with them on vacation. emphasize that this is a vocabulary exercise, and they should think carefully and be specific about everything they put in their “suitcase.” To give them some guidance, I tell them they should think about 4 categories: Clothes, Electronics, Miscellaneous, and Toiletries. I also give them some examples and show them how specific I want them to be.
For clothes, I ask them where they are going and what they are doing. Are they going to the beach? Do they need a swimsuit? Are they going hiking? What shoes should they bring then? What’s the weather like? Are you packing short-sleeved T-shirts or a jacket?
For electronics, I hold up my phone. “Of course, we need our phones! Is that all we need?” (Usually, I’m met with a resounding, “Yes!”) “But what do we use to charge our phone when the battery dies?” “What if we want to listen to music on the train?”
Usually students don’t know the word miscellaneous, so it’s a great chance to teach it. Do they need foreign currency? A passport? A visa? Any hotel confirmations? Sunglasses? Air sickness medication?
Since students don’t usually know the word toiletries, I use it to teach them about guessing meanings. I ask them to look at the word and see if they can recognize any other word inside it. Smiles start to spread as they realize the word toilet is right there. “Can anyone guess what this word means?” Many get it right. I then start to guide them to supply some examples. “What do we wash our hair with?” “What do we brush our teeth with?” “What do we put on top of the toothbrush?” About this time, students start to realize that there are a lot of super useful, super common vocabulary words that they don’t know. Many students have stopped me after class and told me that toothbrush was a word they learned in elementary school, but have long since forgotten.
It’s always amusing to see students at the beginning of the assignment think, “This is going to be so easy” and watch their faces quickly change as they grab their phones to look up new words.
Notes:
I always add that they have to pack things. I had a smart-alecky student say, “I’m just going to bring money—I can buy everything I need!” True, but 1) How many people actually do that? And 2) The point of the exercise is to practice your English.
I really emphasize being specific. I once had a student only write down “phone” and “shorts.” She wasn’t trying to cause trouble. She genuinely thought that would be enough for a week-long vacation in Thailand!
I’ve had some students get strangely insistent on not needing to know words like these, saying they’ll never need to talk about a toothbrush. True, it’s not something that comes up often in daily conversation, but when traveling, those odds increase quite a bit. What happens when you were planning on using the hotel’s toothbrush, but the maid forgot to re-stock your room, and you have to ask the front desk for a new one? Or when you’re lying on the beach and someone asks you if you have any extra sunscreen?
I hope this gives you some ideas! If you try them or if you have any other ideas, let us know!