EFL Teaching Methods: While EFL Teaching Methodology is not rocket science, it is an important skill to master if you wish your students to succeed. Here...

Try out Retell the Story, a speaking fluency activity for ESL students that's interesting, fun and challenging. Your students will love it!

Fun and engaging ESL activities, games and worksheets in printable PDF format with full teacher's notes and answers for English teachers to use in class.

'If you plan on teaching English as a foreign language, you may need to obtain an officially recognized teaching certificate (such as TEFL) before you start looking at the positions that are available. In some countries, these certifications are absolutely necessary when it comes to finding a paying job as a teacher. Once you have completed your TEFL training you can then follow these 5 steps to ensure your job interviews go smoothly. Step 1: Set Up a Professional Look It’s a good idea to set up professional email accounts before you start looking for jobs, because doing so can increase you'

Find out the best activiites, resources and lesson plan ideas for teaching English online. Level up your ESL online teaching game!

Students don't remember answers to questions they are not asking. Let's take a look at how we can inspire tour students to wonder...

Check out the following ESL lesson plans and lesson plan templates to get your teaching on in style! It's English teaching made easy!

'As you have learned during your TEFL certification course, a good lesson starts with an engage, or warm-up phase. This usually consists of a fun and interesting activity to get your students going and speaking in English. For new teachers, it’s often these more casual moments of a class that are a challenge because of their lack of teaching experience. However, these top 5 icebreakers for new TEFL teachers will help you to get your class energized and ready for your lesson. 1. Two Truths and a Lie This is a great activity for your very first lesson with a new class. Basically, the students'

This 3rd part of ESL ideas (view other parts of the series here: part 1, part 2) features 7 more quick but powerful tips. Some of them will will definitely come in handy one day. Who kn

Are you a first-time ESL teacher? Here are some amazing tips for new TEFL teachers! They are sure to help you succeed in your career.

How to plan effective lessons for ELL students? Using the SIOP approach will help.

Here's the 4th poster in our new 'Grammar' series. You'll love these simple, yet very effective classroom activities to teach or review the Present Progressive! Click the image to view the f

'Most EFL teachers abroad will - at some point in their career - teach children. The English education market catered to young learners is a billion dollar business and many countries hire teachers to fill this need. What you can do to brace yourself besides taking our 50-hour specialized TEFL course in Teaching English to Young Learners is to take the following 10 tips to heart. Listen to this blog post: Don’t Think it’s a Piece of Cake Teaching numbers and colors seems like the easiest job in the world, right? Wrong! The truth is, teaching children demands a great deal of energy and '

Click here for tips and advice on how to teach spelling.

We’ve all been there. You’re grooving with your newcomers when October rolls around and, all the sudden, another newcomer arrives with zero English. I used to have no plan for this scenario and just flew by the seat of my pants. Now I have a curriculum that newly arrived students can get to work on, no matter what their English language proficiency is at the time. I have been selling this curriculum online for about a year as of this post, and here is how to use it with a student who is not at t

Teaching mixed level ESL classes can be quite the challenge, especially speaking classes but it's not impossible. Check out these tips!

Some newcomers arrive with no English at all and need to focus on basic classroom English first. This pack will help.

Teaching ESL/ELL students of different proficiency levels in one classroom can be tricky. Here are a few tips and strategies that will help you be organized and effective.

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Learn about some of the differences between teaching phonics to ELLs and native English speakers. Also discover some new resources.

'We have many teachers throughout our lives and in very differing forms. For example, our very first teachers are ourselves, as we learn to grow through nature and get stronger. Our next teachers are our parents, family, and friends who essentially teach us how to communicate with others, right from wrong (if we are lucky!), and how to navigate our way through life. We also have our more formal education in the form of Nursery or Kindergarten, Primary, Secondary and Further Education such as College or University. Teachers are a huge part of our lives and therefore it is a huge privilege, resp'

Kid-Inspired Teacher is a book about teaching wildly productive ELL classes."Love this book!""Relateable. Humorous. Inspiring and humble.""A must for every teacher, every classroom."Want to engage your ELLs? Help them learn more quickly? Close the gap? And do it all without breaking a sweat?In this practical book filled with heartwarming advice…

Teaching ESL/ELL students of different proficiency levels in one classroom can be tricky. Here are a few tips and strategies that will help you be organized and effective.

My list of top tips and resources for the new TEFL teacher; videos, songs games and advice on how to survive your first TEFL job.

'One of my favorite aspects of teaching is the role of the teacher in the classroom. To some, the role of the teacher is only to teach people information that they then regurgitate during a later exam. However, to me, teaching is a fascinating profession because a teacher is many things to many different students. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Derek G. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Instructor The most prominent role of a teacher is the conveyor of information. Whether the class is about learning a s'

'What is the role of the teacher in English learning? Although ‘teacher-centered education’ was taught in the past, ‘student-centered education’ is more emphasized in the modern era. Accordingly, the role of the teacher is also changing from the teacher who delivers the knowledge of the subject to the teacher who facilitates students’ successful learning. It is important to recognize that teaching and learning are an integral part of each other. (Harmer, 2007). Teaching practice should not be simply ‘one-way’ delivery of knowledge to students. Teachers should play a role in motiva'

ESL/ELL students need to understand what you are teaching them. But how do you do that? Providing comprehensible input to ESL/ELL students is key. But what IS comprehensible input? Herre is a video that demonstrates this ESL/ELL strategy

These awesome ideas will come in handy one day. Or more than once. Who knows - you might even end up using them all with your class! This is a high quality print-friendly poster that you ca

Improve your second language teaching skills by avoiding mistakes such as talking to much, echoing, sentence completion, and unclear instructions. Follow @tesolAmerican TESOL

I always try to find new ways to inspire my students. That is why I have chosen to include more video-based lessons in my curriculum. Since I started using TED talks, short videos and TV shows, they have literally transformed my ESL classes. My students pay more attention in class and their performance is a lot better because they are obviously more willing to complete classwork that is interesting and they can relate to. Although I do not use these authentic materials to simply entertain my stu

Here are the necessary components of an excellent ESL/ELL lesson plan

Lesson plans, worksheets, word games and PowerPoint slides. There are many ESL websites for teachers. Find the best one for you and your students!

Discuss your ESL teaching needs, questions and concerns during a personalized consultation session via phone, Skype or email.

Tips to help newly-qualified ESL / TEFL teachers starting their first teaching job. Why not try our FREE ESL teaching materials?

Let's be real, planning weekly lessons in the ESL classroom can be an overwhelming task. Factors include caseloads and the sheer number of students/small groups serviced. Also, heterogenous groupings with a variety of language levels make it difficult to target specific language needs of students. Perhaps you're a new teacher and simply haven't had the guidance yet on planning ESL lessons. Here are a few tips to help make planning less stressful. ESL instruction is often vague because, in most cases, there's no curriculum to follow or even to guide. We are left to our own devices to plan and provide lessons for our students that build language skills in the four language domains of listening, reading, speaking and writing. That alone can make planning overwhelming. Tie in grade level content and setting language goals, and it's a LOT to consider! Let's start with a few pre-planning tips. These will support successful lesson planning. PRE-PLANNING TIPS 1- Lesson Planner Book It's really important to have a place to keep all things planning in one place. I don't know where I'd be without my lesson plan book. Things I keep in my planner in addition to lesson plans are: 1- Student lists with ELP levels broken down by each domain, 2- The curriculum my students are learning in their gen ed classrooms so that I can integrate my ELD lessons with the grade level content whenever possible, 3- A calendar to keep me on track with events that impact my instructional schedule, such as meetings and testing, 4- Language goals and data collection to track student progress. There are some really awesome print and go planners, as well as digital planners out there. Find one that suits your needs AND brings you joy. :) 2- Know Your Students One of our main goals is to take students from their current language proficiency level to the next level. Knowing students and their needs is critical to planning appropriate lessons. Students have an English Language Proficiency (ELP) level, but what does that mean exactly? So, my student has an ELP level 3, but what can she do in each language domain? I won't know what to teach her if I don't know the starting point for her. Look at the breakdown of all 4 language domains and identify the weaker domains for each student. Keep this information in your plan book, or somewhere easily accessible. This is valuable information, but it's a very small piece of data. More importantly, I need to know what my students can do right now. Their latest scores might be 6 months old, so I want to also gather current data. Assessments I give at the beginning to determine starting points: phonemic awareness (newcomers) phonics writing (give a prompt that students have plenty of background knowledge) reading I need to know what level of reading I can expect from students, not just with decoding, but more importantly comprehending. For writing, if my student is a newcomer with little to no English, I want to see a sample of their writing in their native language. This will give a lot of information about the literacy skills new students bring to the table. Once I know what my students CAN DO, I can then plan targeted ELD lessons to meet their language and literacy needs. Without this information, I'd be trying to hit a target in the dark, and that's not servicing the students or myself. 3- Student Placement in Small Groups Each small group, in my opinion, should be homogeneous. I group students according to needs, not necessarily by ELP level, although generally it works out that most level 3 students, for example, have similar needs, but not always. Grouping students with similar needs is key to targeting the skills they need to move from one level to the next. OK, I've got my plan book, my student data and my small groups identified by need. Now what? Tips to Make Lesson Planning Less Stressful 1- Consistent Weekly Activities Incorporate consistent activities that target your students' needs, preferably that don't require planning time, and add them in your plan book every week. For example, I go through my plan book and add "phonics" to certain days for certain groups each week, so that's one less thing I need to plan. I have all the phonics materials on hand, so I simple print out and copy what I need and go. I also do an Idiom of the Week activity and a "Friday Focus on Grammar" for other groups. Those automatically go into my lesson plan book each week as well! Several of my groups have a warm-up activity when they first come into my room. The activity takes about 5-10 minutes, but that's another chunk of time I don't need to plan. My level 1s and 2s have an irregular sight word booklet, and my level 3s and 4s have a Restate the Question writing prompt. Irregular Sight Words - Warm Up Activity Finding consistent and meaningful weekly activities to add to your plan book cuts down on planning time. Other examples of weekly activities: -Grammar lessons (so many possibilities- What do YOUR students need?) -Vocabulary - multiple meaning words, synonyms/antonyms, shades of meaning words, content vocabulary, affixes, thematic monthly vocabulary, etc. -Idiom of the Week -Word Work - Affixes is a great focus area! -Read Alouds -Let's Talk! -oral language activities (purposeful oral language development is so important) One of my favorite "Let's Talk!" activities is projecting a picture and having students talk about what they see happening. It could be content related or simply an interesting photograph. An awesome resource for this is Chuck Dillon's website. He's such a fantastic illustrator! Each picture has tons of action, which means there's never a shortage of things to talk about. Pick a couple of "Weekly Activities" and plug them into your plan book each week. Here's a blog post that shares "3 Weekly Activities that Do Not Require Planning." 2 - "Go-To" Activities These are helpful to have on hand whenever you feel unsure about what to plan next, or you just need a meaningful "filler" lesson. We all need those from time to time. These lessons are still high-quality lessons that target the needs of our students, but they don't require planning time. Some Go-To Activity Examples: PWIM with any picture (picture word inductive model) Inferring using pictures 5 Ws and H using pictures Mind Maps Language Games This Build a Sentence activity uses the PWIM strategy to generate words about a picture. In this activity, we use the words to generate sentences of varying lengths. And on this particular day, I also challenged my students to use position words in their sentences. To start, I ask students to tell me something they see in the picture. The students generate the words and I write them on the board in different colors depending on the part of speech. Students also generate the sentences, and I support with grammar, as needed. It's a great activity to have on hand, as it covers many skills and is easily adaptable. They are "one and done" lesson activities that are meaningful AND build language skills. Having a variety of these resources to pull from definitely makes planning less stressful because I know I have language building lessons that I can plug in whenever needed. 3- Language Function or Thematic Units If you know me at all, you know I LOVE planning and teaching language function units. This truly makes my planning less overwhelming. MOST, if not all, of my students across multiple grade levels work on building language around the same language function, so when I plan, I have one LF in mind for everyone. Whoo-hoo! For example, when I teach the language of Compare and Contrast, I focus on that language with all of my groups. I don't have 10 different groups doing 10 different things; they are ALL learning the language of Compare/Contrast, which makes planning SO much more manageable! Some groups might need more focus on expressive language skills while others need more practice with receptive language skills, but I know that the overarching focus for all is the language of Compare/Contrast. Plus, often times I can reuse lessons with multiple groups. Halleluiah! And by tweaking lessons with some additional scaffolds, I can use them with even more groups. This is a huge time saver! Language Function: Compare/Contrast Language Function: Fact/Opinion Each language function unit lasts about 4 weeks; and once it's planned out, there's not a lot of additional planning that needs to be done during that time period. I don't start a new unit until all my groups are finished, so while I'm finishing up the unit with some groups, I use "filler" lessons with the groups that are already done. To learn more about incorporating language function units in the ESL classroom, check out the blog post links below. 4- Reusing lessons is honestly my #1 tip for making planning more manageable and less stressful. And maybe you can't use an entire lesson with multiple groups, but you can use a portion of the lesson. How many groups can I use this lesson with? How can I tweak this lesson so that I can use it with more groups? Those are questions I ask myself as I plan. RECAP: 1- Incorporate Consistent Weekly Activities (phonics, grammar, vocabulary) and plug them into your plan book each week. 2- Go-To Activities (have a variety of meaningful filler activities on hand) 3- Language Function Units (all groups learning the same Language Function) 4- Reuse Lessons with multiple groups! As I mentioned earlier, sometimes the overwhelming feeling of planning comes from the sheer number of students and groups serviced. Or it could be that our numbers are low, but we service 6-12 grade levels. Many ESL teachers travel between schools. There's a variety of reasons that can make planning stressful. Regardless of the reasons, having these tools in your teacher toolbox can help make planning less stressful. Linked below are some of the blog posts and instructional resources mentioned in this post. Teaching Language Functions with English Learners Language Forms and Functions in the ESL Classroom

5 Strategies for Teaching ESL Newcomers.

Just in time for the beginning of the school year!

Learn about the benefits, challenges, and tips for co-teaching between a classroom and ESL or ESOL teacher. This is a great way to support ELLs but...

How to teach beginner ESL students is just as important as what to teach them. Here are 7 strategies that will help you out.

Music is a great tool for teaching English. It allows us to hear words in context and feel the actual rhythm of the language itself. Here I share my reasons why music should be incorporated in teaching and a lesson plan

English may sound daunting to English learners but it does not have to be. Use these 5 tips to teach phonemic awareness and phonics to older ESL students.

Beat the overwhelm of teaching an absolute beginner with this downloadable checklist

Here is a list of my most favorite ESL teaching resources: books, websites and simply products that make my life as an ESL teacher easier!