Ready Made Lessons for Advanced ESL Students

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/lifestyle.html

What I like most about this website is how comprehensive each lesson idea is, and how easy it is to print and go. All the prepared activities are useful.

It may not look fancy at first glance, but the activities and content on this site are top-notch, including a wide range of skill building exercises related to the initial article posted at the beginning of each  lesson.

To use this resource:
1. search for an article that is on the topic you want and click on its title

2.  scroll down the page a bit to see the lesson. It isn´t exactly obvious where the lesson begins. It begins where you see the article headline (inside a dark blue banner)

3. Scroll down the page to see the myriad of activity options based on that initial article.

4. Copy and paste the activities you like into a new document and print and go.

If you are lucky to find an article on the topic you want to teach or review, you´re set.

I think this resource works best for use as private tutoring materials or in very small classes of 2.

For larger classes, you could easily adapt the exercises, choosing the ' article' of your choice and then only using selected vocabulary building activities and writing activities to round out the lesson.

Encyclopedia.com for free short articles in simple English

http://www.encyclopedia.com/
Encyclopedia.com is a good alternative to wikipedia for quick fact lookups, explanations of concepts, and dictionary definitions.

 

Although some articles are for purchase ( through High Beam), a lot of general information is available for free.

Good for younger teens, and for historic and geographic topics.


CLASS ACTIVITY IDEAS

DICTOGLOSS -
Dictogloss is a classroom dictation activity where learners are required to reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words, which are then used as a base for reconstruction.
Example :
Learners discuss the sea. The teacher then explains the task, and reads a short text on the sea to the class, who just listen. The teacher reads the text again, and the learners take notes. In groups, the learners then reconstruct the text.
 Source:
 http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/knowledge-database/dictogloss

ASK QUESTIONS TO FILL IN THE BLANKS IN YOUR COPY
Pairwork
 Make a reading assignment into an interactive activity by making 2 copies of a passage, and blacking out some words in one of the copies and different words in the other copy.

TIP: Make sure to write out the questions that would need to be asked to recover the missing information to make sure that the activity is pitched to the correct level for your students. It´s surprising how difficult it can be for the students to manufacture the correct question to get the information they are missing, and how easy it is to accidentally create a situation where the question you would need to ask is very complicated.

Then make enough copies of both sheets to be able to give one of each to person in this pairwork activity.