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.

Course Hero Flashcards and Interactive Quiz Tool

Course Hero The free flashcard tool on this site is really useful for teaching English either in - class (if you have a steady internet connection) or to email students a link to your flashcard set(s).

You need to register, but it´s free. And afterwards they system saves your flashcards so you can reuse them at will. I really like the simple, clean layout of the flashcards, and the intuitive 'quiz' options. There is an option to set up a timer, and clock the time taken to answer the questions that are randomly generated using your flashcard set, so it works as a classroom race activity ( if your internet connection is fast and reliable). There is no way to print the flashcards out, or embed them in a website or email, which are major drawbacks in my opinion. What I like the best is the clean, attractive layout of the flashcards and the incredibly easy and intuitive layout of the flashcard part of the site and quiz options.

Quizlet Online Flashcard Generator

Quizlet

Quizlet is a free online flascard pr ogram that lets you make and share sets of flashcards. This is a super language learning tool. This is one of the few online flashcard programs that I have come across that lets you print out flashcard sets for free, (creating a re-usable pdf file along the way).

 Or, you can embed flashcards in a website, like the example below.


I love that you can add photos and images to one side of the flashcard if you wish ( using free images in the Creative Commons associated with Flikr), or stick to text for both sides.



Here is how the embedded the flashcards (´learning' option)  look on a website:


You can share your flashcards, or other people´s sets, using Facebook, Twitter and other social media resources, or embed sets into your own website very easily (just copy and paste the code like a widget).


There are some games included in Quizlet, but I am not fond of the layout and my students found them to be cluttered and confusing.

The ' learn' and 'test' features are much more straightforward and easier for students to instantly understand and complete. I have used both of these features as a competitive game between two teams, and they were very successful as long as the internet connection remained steady. The students were bored of how the test always presented new vocabulary in the same way, so this interactive activity perked them up.

I didn´t like the 'export' feature - the layout was not attractive in my opinion- so I always use the 'print' options and save  the PDF file to my computer to show in class instead of print them out.There are a nice variety of print options available. You export the flashcards to your computer as a pdf file that you can print anytime you want.

Or, you can use other people´s flashcards.

Here is an example of a set of flashcards:  1000 basic English words, part 1:

http://quizlet.com/17024192/1000-basic-english-words-part-1-flash-cards/

Making drill practice fun!