ESL Lesson Plans

 Quizlet is an app which enables you to create sets of words for your classes. Students can access them on their smartphones or other electronic devices and practise by doing various exercises/games generated by the app. It’s a modern solution for flashcards and a fantastic tool for learning vocabulary. All our students love it and now can’t imagine studying new words in a different way! See these getting started videos and quick guide for students provided by Quizlet here.

 How do we use it for in-class revisions? It’s simple. We print English words from the created sets and at the beginning of the lesson students need to build one sentence with two flashcards (we encourage them to be creative). If you work with groups, make them build and ask each other questions with words provided.

 The other way we use it is to play a Taboo-like game. Students work in pairs and each of them has a few flashcards. One student tries to describe the word/phrase they have without using any keywords and the other guesses what that word or phrase is. This way students have a chance to use new vocabulary and you can check whether they know when and how to use it properly. This turns out to be a very dynamic activity and students come up with various ways of guiding each other to the right expression!

 These are small cubes with images on all their walls designed to trigger ideas and stories. The basic idea behind Story Cubes is that you need to roll 9 dice and tell a story combining all 9 images that starts with “once a upon a time…”. Really simple and straightforward but does magic! There are various Story Cubes sets. Start from the original and explore – we recommend the Actions pack and Clues mix.

 We use Story Cubes quite often during our classes, not only for vocabulary revision games. We give them to our students and they have to prepare a story (sometimes just sentences) based on images as well as words we provide them. It’s real fun as students can combine various ideas and create crazy and sometimes illogically amusing stories.

 What’s more Story Cubes are a perfect tool to be used for grammar revisions. For example, you can make your students build conditional sentences relating to a few images from the cubes or practise past simple and past continuous tenses for story telling.

 Dixit is a game which consists of a set of cards with very colourful and dreamlike illustrations. Our students really like them as they can build a lot of stories around them. Very often, they have to choose one card and using the words from the last class they need to build a story or describe cards to each other.

 They are also perfect for practising past tenses when telling stories. You can basically let your students use all tenses using the cards, depending how you setup the task, for example:

 Apart from vocabulary revision games, we’re also fans of translating sentences for revising. It may be seen as an old-fashioned way, but it will help intermediate/upper-intermediate students learn how to use new language in context. The most common way we do it is:

 Give students 5-10 sentences in their mother tongue. They all should contain underlined words/phrases which you would like them to revise. Students need to translate sentences and recall English equivalents of the words from previous classes (if you want to make it more challenging, include various grammar points).

 Provide students with 5-10 gapped sentences which they need to fill with English equivalents of the phrases in their mother tongue provided in brackets after the gaps. It is a less demanding version of the usual translation exercise, i.e. suitable for less proficient students.

 Let your students amaze you and don’t require from them a one-to-one translation. It is all about conveying a message and students will come up with various surprising ways of saying the same thing.

 In order to make your students practise new words/phrases while speaking, it is also a good idea to give them gapped questions which they have to complete with the provided words which appeared during previous lessons. After completing them, students answer them. Avoid using closed (yes/no) questions when creating such a revision for your students. Depending on your students level you may:

 How about you? What kind of methods for reviewing language work for your students? Share you favourite ones in the comments below so we can use them during our lessons.

 Do you use Kahoot during the lesson or assign kahoots as homework? I heard about the services but have never tried it out. What’s your opinion about it and which feature you like the most?

 My high school and adult ESL students LOVE Kahoot. It is good for fostering a little competition between students. I mostly use it in class to review vocabulary and grammar structures. I also use it for special holidays like Christmas or Halloween. Students can also download the app and play alone to review alone. ű

 The main restriction is that every student needs a mobile device or computer that is connected to the internet. In a smart classroom or with students who have data on their phones it is easy. But sometimes it doesn’t work because the technology isn’t working or adequate.

 Hmm, I’ve heard of Kahoot but never really tested it out extensively. It seems like a lot of work designing those quizzes/games but I guess I need to look into that. Thanks for the recommendation.

 Kahoot live (played in groups) always works great in class. Ss cooperate, are motivated, and have fun. Even a “boring” fill in the gaps grammar revision exercise becomes exciting 🙂

ESL Lessons

 I’ve already heard about this service, and really want to try it out. But I can’t imagine how to play it with the whole class (not every student has a device connected to the Internet). I’ll be thankful if you share your experience!!

 I liked Quizlet very much. But I didn’t understand if I have to pay. It seems to have an upgrade, but I’d like you to tell me if I can or not create lessons for free.

 Well, you can create sets and assign to classes or just make them publicly available with the free account. The paid teacher mode removes the limit of classes you can create and gives you some stats on how your students progress and their score. I think it’s quite useful as you can see what words and phrases you should revise with your students.

 When asked why they study English, most students will say it’s because they want to communicate. They might also want to find a better job, pass an exam or simply be better at English, but oral communication is what students usually put very high on their priority list. What is more, many foreign language students admit that the fact that they can speak a language they couldn’t speak, say, a year earlier, makes them feel extremely satisfied and keeps them motivated. Whether you teach low-level or advanced learners, use these five speaking fluency activities for ESL students to help them communicate better in English. You can use the activities as warm-ups, fillers, and whenever you feel that your students (and you!) need them.

 Used every day by people all over the world, small talk or a quick chat is a great way to practise fluency, revise and make students feel more confident about speaking English. It can be used with students on all levels and repeated regularly in different forms. You can simply ask your students how their weekend was, or how they’ve been, but you could also choose a couple of questions from the list below to make the classroom small talk more varied. Ask follow-up questions and encourage other students to do so, too.

 Visual aids are not only a great prompt for speaking, but they also make the lesson more interactive and engaging. Regardless of the students’ level, they are a valuable tool for practising speaking. There are numerous websites where you can generate random pictures (like here or here) and use them to make your students talk. Apart from the obvious ‘describe the picture’ part, use the set of questions below to make the task more interesting or more appropriate for high-level students. The questions work with any picture, and develop not only speaking fluency, but also the ability to think critically in English.

 Do you think your students could benefit from such speaking fluency activities? In this lesson for lower-level students you will find tasks to help with picture description, and at the end of this lesson for advanced students you will find sets of photos with extra questions.

 An oldie but a goodie. Everybody likes talking about their preferences, and as teachers we can use this fact to get our students talking. The rule here is that students must explain why they prefer something over something else, because that is when production happens. Use the examples below, and once your students get the gist of the activity, ask them to prepare more of the ‘Would you rather’ questions in pairs. Give them a theme: holidays, work, lifestyle, possessions, extremes, etc. They can then answer other students’ questions.