The most basic tip is to use the board to your advantage. Even the most basic classrooms are equipped with a whiteboard or the traditional blackboard. You can always start the class with a grammar review on the board. One easy, but challenging, exercise is to write a short passage on the board, maybe from the course book, and remove all of the capitalization and punctuation. Have the students work together to correct these errors.
Sectioning the board also helps your learners to focus on the lesson and keep main grammar points or vocabulary in mind. Simply divide the space into sections for examples, grammatical forms, and new vocabulary. This sectioning takes the place of traditional handouts and saves the lesson’s main points for the learners to focus on and for the teacher to refer to throughout the lesson.
The board can also be used for simple games to help students review new information. One engaging game is a simple board race. Divide the class into two parts and bring one student from each side to the board. Then give the students a word to spell and the first person who spells it correctly earns a point. Then the next students are up. The teams get very involved in supporting the person at the board and students get to review vocabulary or even grammar points at the same time.
If you find yourself in a classroom without a board, there are many other learner centered activities that can help motivate and engage your learners. One activity is the classic dictation. You can simply read a short passage and tell your students to write exactly what they hear. Be sure to limit the number of times you repeat this passage and maybe even offer a prize for a perfect paragraph. Dictations allow learners to practice listening and writing skills. They can review their work in pairs or groups before you give them a copy to check against. Group dictations further challenge their skills. Take a story and split it into parts. Give each student one part and have the class arrange the story. Once the order is perfected, each student reads their part while the rest of the class copies it down. In the end, the whole class should have the completed story.
There are also many learner generated activities that do not require anything beyond paper and a pen. One example is the famous “find someone who” exercise that many teachers use to review grammatical points as well as to allow their students to get to know each other. If you wanted to review vocabulary or a specific grammar structure, you only need to provide your students with an example and then let them come up with their own sentence. Collect all of their sentences and have them turn these sentences into questions and let them mingle to find the right someone. Students will be able to practice their speaking skills as well as their writing.
Limited resources should not mean limited creativity in the classroom. Sometimes the only resources you need are your voice, a pen, and some paper. Students can flourish when they are forced to rely on their own acumen instead of countless handouts or PowerPoint slide shows that might muddle the learning process instead of facilitate it.