 7. Teaching ideas to spice up your ESL classes. Do you want to make your English lessons more exciting? We have the perfect teaching ideas for you. Here are 7 amazing activities to spice up your ESL classes. 1. Headlines. This is a great one to practice different tenses, especially the passive voice. Have your students come up with headlines for their class, such as the teacher's purse was stolen, the students were taught passive voice. This also works for vocabulary lessons and other grammar structures. 2. Controversial issues. This one works well with intermediate and advanced students. Introduce a controversial issue, such as capital punishment, for example. Then, the students choose their side and group into teams. They do some research about the topic and take notes that support their stance. Then, you hold a classroom debate going back and forth between the two teams. 3. 20 questions. One student has to think of someone or something that they want to be. The other students then try to guess what or who the student is by asking 20 yes or no questions. If they guess correctly with 20 questions or less, they get a point and if they can't guess correctly after 20 points, the student gets a pawn. 4. My routine. This is a great activity for practicing the simple present and adverbs of frequency. Have your students either write down or verbally communicate their daily routines. You can also turn this into a continuous activity with a class journal. 5. If I were rich. Print out or bring to class a lotto ticket, and explain the concept of playing lotto, and why some people might want to play lotto. Then, introduce the question, what would you do if you were rich, and have students brainstorm some ideas? Then, the students write down what they would do, if they were rich and share it with the whole class. 6. Grammar Story. Hand out several magazines and newspapers to your class, and ask them to construct a story with a fictitious person using pictures from the handouts. The goal is to use present, past and future tenses to write about the fictional character's life. 7. Plans and predictions. If you're looking for an activity to practice future tenses, this is it. Have your students discuss what they plan for, to be going to, and predict, will, in the future. Which is your favorite teaching activity? As you can see, there are many ways to put some pep into your English lessons to get your students excited and engaged.