REALIA: Real-Life Materials Every Teacher Should Be Using

An informative guide that explains the concept of realia, provides examples, and covers multiple realia-based activities for all ages and levels that can be used in ESL lessons

If you’ve been teaching for some time without using realia in your lessons, you’re missing out on one of the most effective ways to bridge the gap between teacher and learner. Realia can make it easier for you to quickly show your students what a word or phrase means within context.

It also has countless benefits for students because it not only helps them connect new vocabulary or other parts of speech to things found in the real world, but also enhances learning by appealing to the three senses of sound, sight, and touch. If you’re not familiar with this concept or are unsure of how to incorporate realia into your teaching practices, here’s a quick guide with some tips on how to do so.

What Is Realia?

The concept of realia is simple, as it’s anything that you or your students would encounter in the real world that is brought into the classroom. This could be anything from your home or theirs or from virtually anywhere else, such as nature or a store. The beauty of using realia is that it can fit just about any topic you’re teaching, and the materials can be easily found in most cases.

Examples of realia include:

• Videos
• Music
• Toys
• Maps
• Manuals
• Utility bills
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Recipe books
• Stuffed animals
• Office supplies 
• Classroom items
• Advertisements
• Restaurant menus
• Cereal/soap boxes
• Application forms
• Train or bus tickets

Ideas for Realia-Based Activities

As for specific activities and games that you can use realia with, here are some creative ones that can work well for teaching students of all ages. After first introducing vocabulary words to your students, these activities will then strengthen what they’ve learned so it sinks in and becomes knowledge.

Remember the Object

Place a group of objects on a desk and individually cover them using cups, cloths, or anything that you can quickly lift. One by one, reveal each object quickly before hiding it again and then ask students which object they just saw.

When a student has correctly called out the name of an object, uncover the object and repeat out loud what it’s called (and do the same if nobody correctly responded).

Tip for Older or More Advanced Students:

If playing this game with more advanced students or older ones, it can be expanded upon by briefly revealing every object in a certain order and then asking students to call out each item in the order in which they were revealed. You can also make it more difficult by asking students to say which items are next to each other (e.g. “The red pen is next to the black marker.”)

The Guessing Game

Set out items on a desk and ask students to guess something specific about them. For example, if you’re teaching a lesson about items that one might find while shopping, you can ask your students to guess how much each item might cost in a store while saying its name.

If it’s objects that might be used for something, such as those found in an office, you’ll do the same, but instead of asking about their price, you can ask students to guess what they’re used for.

Nature Survival

Also known as Island Survivor, this popular game involves having students describe how they would use particular items or objects to survive in nature. The items should be in clear view on a table or desk while you call upon students one by one to name the items while explaining how they’d use them.

Although it may seem like some items might not work as well as others in a real survival scenario (e.g. a pencil), the beauty of this game is that it gets students to think long and hard about objects, which enhances both vocabulary and contextual learning.

Tip for Group Lessons:

Although this game is normally played with each student being called upon one by one, you can also put students into groups and have them work together to brainstorm ideas of how each item would be used. This can lead to increased interest in the game and peer-to-peer scaffolding where students transfer knowledge between each other as they repeatedly say the words in front of their peers.

What Do You Feel?    

To enhance kinesthetic learning, which is learning through hands-on experiences, you can hide objects in a bag, then allow students to put their hands in the bag to feel them without actually seeing them. Ask students to call out the names of each object and only reveal them after they do so or if they struggle to respond.

As you’re revealing each object, hold it up in front of the class while saying its name out loud so that all students can hear you. Get everyone else in your class involved by asking others specific questions about each object, such as whether they have one at home or how they would use it in a particular scenario.

Roleplaying Activity

Regardless of which age group you’re teaching, roleplaying can be universally used to teach vocabulary and grammar, and there’s no limit to the types of realia that you can incorporate into each roleplay activity.

However, you’ll want to tailor each activity, as well as the materials or objects used to your group of students. This is especially true for Business English students, as the materials should be more business-focused than those used with regular ESL students.

Regular ESL Students:
For most ESL students, you can easily create a roleplaying activity around everyday realia. For example, if you’re teaching vocabulary related to foods, you can have your students act out a scene in a restaurant with food items where some play the role of customers and others play the role of waiters.

Business ESL Students:

Business English students can roleplay with PowerPoint presentations, sales charts, application forms, or other business-related realia to act out employee/manager, interviewee/hiring manager, or sales agent/client scenarios.

Scavenger Hunt

If you have plenty of space available in your classroom to place things around the room, then you can do so with various objects in a scavenger hunt-like game. So, for instance, if the topic is food, you can place a pair of bananas in one location, a can of beans in another, and a can of soda elsewhere. Have your students locate these objects and then describe what they are and where they are.

Example:
A student finds the bananas and says, “Those bananas are on the desk.”

Another student points at the can of beans and says, “That can of beans is under the chair.”

A third student locates the can of soda and says, “This can of soda is near the chalkboard.”

Not only does this activity teach students vocabulary words, but it also incorporates prepositions of place (e.g. those, this, that, etc.). For more advanced students, you can make it more difficult by asking them to describe the objects with other forms of grammar.

A Few Important Tips for Using Realia

1. Use Engaging Realia

Any materials or objects that your students can physically interact with and experience first-hand, whether it’s stuffed animals with children or newspapers with adults, can be more advantageous over realia that is more hands-off and only incorporates one sense (e.g. sight or sound), as it creates more memorable learning experiences.

2. Create Realia in Class

To engage your students even more with realia, you can incorporate it into lessons by having them create it in class. Examples of this would be having your younger students create maps with the names of buildings labeled (e.g. hospital, library, etc.) or your older and more advanced students working as a group to write a newspaper article using target vocabulary.

3. Have Students Bring Their Own

Whenever possible, you should try to have your students bring their own realia to class instead of providing it to them. Younger students are often excited to share realia from their home with others, which leads to increased engagement, and vocabulary will sink in better for all learners, regardless of age, when they’re seeing how these words fit within the context of their lives outside the classroom.

What Are the Benefits of Using Realia?

Incorporating realia into your lessons is beneficial because it: 

• Connects vocabulary to real-life things
• Motivates students by making learning fun
• Saves time by showing rather than explaining
• Activates schemata (puts things into context)
• Stimulates creativity by involving the senses
• Utilizes the senses (sound, sight, and touch)
• Appeals to visual/kinesthetic (hands-on) learners

Get to Know Your Students

While realia may not be appropriate for every lesson, the many benefits of using it are undeniable, so you should always make a point to incorporate it when it makes sense to do so. If you’re teaching the same student or group of students on a regular basis, over time you may start to notice what types of realia they respond well to. By getting to know your students in this way, you’ll know how to be more effective when it comes to choosing realia for future lessons.