Flash Card Vocabulary Exchange
This is a semester-long assignment that helps boost students vocabulary a lot. I’ve been doing it in my class this semester with great success and plan to keep it as a norm in all of my future classes.
The Affective Side of Things
Learn about effective classroom routines to support students’ affective needs and promote retention and success.
Discussion Question Slides Bank
Access this series of over 50 discussion questions in slides format to add more speaking opportunities to your ESL class.
Three Steps to Better Pronunciation
This is a great activity to help English learners improve their pronunciation of English sentences by paying attention to phrases and stressed words.
Become an Expert Language Learner
Are you learning a Language? Check out these strategies to help you be an expert language learner. Are you a teacher? Use this article in your class to help students develop their language learning strategies.
Ways to Study Over Break
If you’re learning English, read about different ways to study English to help your language skills improve. If you’re a teacher, print the handout to give to your students or share this article with them to encourage them to study over the break.
Making Inferences
Help your students improve their reading skills with this complete lesson on making inference. The post includes lesson slides and a group activity handout
ESL Open House and Orientation
Do you coordinate an ESL program? You may consider hosting an ESL open house and orientation to boost enrollment and support your new students. Check out these ideas from an event we host at my school.
Word Webs: Vocabulary Routine
Although we put a lot of effort into helping our students learn words, I would venture to guess we don’t often stop to reflect just how these words are stored our minds. What does research of the mental lexicon show and what classroom practices can come from this knowledge? Read to find out.
SPUNKI Reading Response
You can use this collaborative sharing activity to get students to see their classmates’ reflections on a particular class reading. It’s a great way to start a discussion of a class reading.
Five Introduction Icebreakers
Having students introduce themselves and learn a bit about each other is a first day of class staple. Of course, there are many different ways this can be done. This post shares a few of my favorites that I’ve heard about throughout the years.
Position Posters Debate
The art of argument isn’t always easy to master, especially when you’re doing it in another language. This poster position debate is a fun and engaging way to scaffold this skills whether the end goal is an essay or an oral debate.
How To Write a Paragraph: Lesson Slides
Use these lesson slides and accompanying collaborative group activities to make your students paragraph experts without even having to lecture on it.
Oral Fluency Assignment
Helping students recognize and correct error patterns in their own speech can be a challenge. This assignment helps students gain an awareness of their own speech patterns by transcribing their own speech and then analyzing it.
ESL Program Brochure Template
Improve your program’s outreach with this program brochure template using Canva.
Theme Based Reading/Writing Unit
The unit is based around the theme of Herd Mentality and Mob Behavior. At the end of the unit, students will work on an essay that applies the terms to a short story in the unit.
5 Awesome Vocabulary Websites
The more I teach and study language, the more I believe in the power of words. There are many great websites that can help you when creating vocabulary activities for your class. Here are some of my favorites.
Money and Shopping: For Sale Cards
Try these shopping cards to easily bring realia into your class without lugging in boxes of items. Each card has a picture of an item and price and will work great for any shopping/money related lesson.
Fantastical Stories: Past Tense Fun
“How can grammatical knowledge be transferred to oral fluency?” I don’t have all the answers, but this past tense activity will certainly get students chatting.
Conversation Class: Wonders of the World Slides
In my last post, I shared conversation class material on the theme of travel and survival. In this post, you can access material for a conversation class centered around world wonders. This topic is always fun because it’s perfect for an activity that asks students to share information about some significant place in their own country.
Conversation Class: Travel and Survival Slides
These ESL conversation class lesson plans (including beautifully designed slides and handouts) on travel and survival are sure to get your adult ESL learners engaged and learning.
Simple Past Tense Quick Reference Handout
The simple past is a commonly used verb tense in English. It’s also a tense that English learners often struggle to form and use correctly. This handout is a great resource for learners to keep with them in their notes to reference when they’re using the past tense.
Simple Past Tense Cloze Paragraphs
Help build verb knowledge with these three past tense cloze paragraphs. There are two paragraphs in simple past and one paragraph that requires both simple past and past progressive.
Simple Present Tense Tip Sheet
It’s not always easy to find a condensed handout that explains the basics of a particular grammatical structure. I recently created this one for the simple present tense for my class. I’m planning to do some activities this week on the simple present, and I want them to have this handy if they forget a particular structure.
Simple Present and Present Progressive Cloze Paragraphs
Verb tenses can be a challenge for students. This document contains clozes to help English learners practice the simple present, the present progressive, and then both tenses together. The three different cloze activities contain a picture to help contextualize the paragraph.
Flash Card Vocabulary Exchange
This is a semester-long assignment that helps boost students vocabulary a lot. I’ve been doing it in my class this semester with great success and plan to keep it as a norm in all of my future classes.
First Week of Class Community Building Lesson Plan
I made these slides for my intermediate integrated skills course for this first week. The lead the class through all of the big first week tasks: building community, talking about course policies, learning names, etc. The slides also contain links to all handouts that you will need.
Becoming Multilingual: Study Strategies for the Language Learner
Even though there are many benefits, the question many people have is how? Learning another language can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. This article tells about some great strategies to help you learn another language.
Community Building: Obstacles and Solutions
This particular activity is aimed at bringing students together to acknowledge struggles and work together to brainstorm solutions. If students share struggles at the beginning, they may get great ideas from others with how to deal with particular obstacles. They may also feel more comfortable asking for advice should they face a particular challenge during the semester.
English Verb Tenses and Aspects Handout
Verbs are very important, but they’re also challenging for students. This handout breaks English verbs down by tense and aspect and then gives examples for each.
Conversation Class: Art Vocabulary and Discussion Slides
These slides include among other things discussion questions, vocabulary introduction using pictures, phrases for reacting to art, and an activity where students discuss their thoughts about a particular work of art.