World's Ugliest Animals ESL Lesson

My students had a lot of fun seeing and cringing at the pictures of the world's ugliest animals in this lesson plan. The grammar points are very simple so lower level students should have no problems with understanding the lesson. In the reading activity my low level students seemed quite stunned by the length of the text, but when they took their time to read it they could understand the important bits very easily.

How to Ensure Students Speak During Conversation Activities

Sometimes when you want to do a conversation activity it can be hard to make sure that all the students are using the time given to speak English, and are not in fact talking about their favourite TV shows in their own language. This can be especially difficult in public schools where the students aren't intrinsically motivated to learn English. Here are some ways to make sure the students do their work!

Word of the Year Speaking and Listening ESL Lesson Plan

This is a speaking and listening ESL lesson based on the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year competition. It uses authentic material in the form of a BBC article and video and I have included a PPT and a worksheet that you can use in your class. My students had a lot of fun coming up with meanings for the new words and were actually surprisingly accurate!

Low Level Horror Movie Video Lesson

This is a low level lesson based on this fantastic lesson plan. It was perfect for the week after Halloween but as teenagers love horror movies it would undoubtedly work really well at any time of year. My students could not really understand what the narrator was saying, so I just went through the scenes and asked the students what they thought was happening. Each scene also has a fill in the gaps listening exercise.

Teaching in Korea Guide - EPIK, TaLK, Hagwon.

This is going to be the first post in series about teaching English in Korea. This post will explain the three main routes to teaching in Korea and the positives and negatives about each job. The first thing I will mention is that while these are some general situations that people find themselves in, working conditions can still vary massively between schools, hagwons, co-teachers and education offices. Finally if you have any questions please ask them in the comments section!

Origami ESL Lesson Plan

This is really fun  ESL lesson plan using Origami to get the students speaking. I have just finished using it with my class and I now have an army of really cute Pikachus like the one above, 80 swords, lots of swans and some Mexican sombreros! The students really enjoyed teaching each other how to make things using origami.

ESL Writing and Speaking Game

This is a link to a writing and speaking lesson I used with my higher level class last week. http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/writing-bingo/ The link has a great explanation about the activity, but I will add a couple of things I did slightly differently/ think were important.

Firstly I changed the topic from my vacation to my childhood memory. This was simply because I have recently done a vacation lesson. I added a couple of slightly different questions for the students to answer. I think this activity would work well with any topic.

Secondly I had a worksheet with a space for the students to write in which I told them they had to fill, most students got pretty close to filling it too. This mean that all the students wrote a decent length paragraph.

I wrote a paragraph about my own childhood memory before class and used it to play an example game before the students started. In the classes when I used my example the students all wrote a lot more and seemed more imaginative than the first time I did this lesson, where I just explained the activity to them.

Finally as my class has 20 students it would have taken too long to do each game separately, so I split the students into groups of five and they played the game in their groups. I then asked each groups winner to read out their paragraph to the class.

The activity took up a whole 50 minute lesson.

Ideas For Current Events Lessons

This is a list of current events lessons that I have used in my classes recently. My students are at the age where they are becoming interested in the news and current events, however it is still hard for them to understand authentic news sources. These lessons are perfect as they can use their existing knowledge of current events in all these activities, without having to spend ages reading an article! They then have to try and express their opinions about these events in English. These are the five activities that my students enjoyed the most.

7 ESL Activities on Songs, Bands and Music

I recently started planning a lesson on music for my both my beginner and intermediate high school classes. However due to a combination of teenagers loving to talk about music and there being a serious amount of ways to use music in ESL activities, this one off lesson on Music has become a series of 3 lessons. Here are the best activities I have used in these lessons.

Nike Just Do It Possibilities High School ESL Lesson.

This is a lesson based on the new (and FANTASTIC) Nike advert celebrating 25 years of the Just Do It slogan. Because this video is so great, in fact one of the best videos I have ever seen for using in class, I have used it in as many lessons as possible. Over the last few weeks I have used it in lessons about hobbies, sports and the past tense and I am pretty sure it could be used in many other topics. However for my high level high school I decided to dedicate a lesson solely to the advert. Most of my students are basketball/soccer mad boys so they were 100% motivated throughout the lesson and even asked to watch the advert again at the end of the lesson. Here is what I did.

Countdown High/Middle School ESL Lesson.

This is a great game lesson plan, perfect for any lessons you are given on short notice or if the students need a break before/after exams. Countdown is an English TV quiz show in which the contestants have to choose 9 vowels and consonants and then try to make as long a word as possible using these letters in 30 seconds. There is also a numbers game were the contestants have to choose 5 big or small numbers. A random number is then generated and the contestants have to add, subtract, multiply and divide the numbers to get as close to the generated number as possible. Here is a video so you can see both games in action!

Middle School Past Tense ESL Review Lesson

This is a really fun lesson for middle school students to review the past tense. The three videos I use get the students really excited and allow them to use a high number of past tense verbs they are likely to know. The introducing vocab part of the lesson is based on my textbook but it includes really common/basic verbs so I'm sure it would work in most classes. Alternatively you could add the verbs that are used in your textbook to the PPT.

World Festivals Advanced English Lesson Plan

I did this lesson as part of a mini vacation curriculum with my advanced level class. I was surprised as my high level class was able to guess all the festivals without me getting to the final clue. I was very impressed! I also adapted it for my lower level class by changing some word of the words in the word grid, and by giving the students the sentence structure to use when answering the conversation questions. By doing this you could also potentially do this class in a middle school lesson, although middle school students may not be as familiar with the festivals.

6 Things That Learning a Second Language Has Taught Me About Teaching English.

As teachers of English a lot of us are in the very fortunate position of living in a foreign country. I, like I'm sure a lot of you have done, have used this fantastic opportunity to get involved in the local culture and also to try to learn the local language. As well being incredibly useful in my daily life, I believe it has also made me a better and specifically a more understanding teacher. Here is a list of things that I believe learning a second language has taught me about teaching English.

6 Ways to Really Motivate Your ESL Students

Keeping your students motivated, especially if you are teaching at a public school (ie. children that have not chosen to study English) is one of the most important things that you have to do as a teacher. A motivated class are much more likely to listen carefully to what you say, get actively involved in the lesson and therefore they are much more likely to learn English. Here are some ideas about what you can do keep your high school students' motivation sky high.

Middle School Sherlock Holmes ESL lesson

Hopefully your students will have more fun than these two..

This is a middle school esl lesson I did during an England themed summer camp. For the other lessons in the series please go here. The lesson teaches the phrase 'How many .... are there?' and 'There are ..........' and it is Sherlock Holmes themed. The lesson has lot's of activities testing the students problem solving and observation abilities and they really enjoyed it.

How to give a good presentation ESL lesson

This is a lesson I did before my schools English presentation competition. It is designed to give the students an overview of what makes a good presentation and how to give a good presentation. It also has a couple of activities to help them with what they learn and to build their confidence. Even if your school does not have an English presentation competition I think it is a good lesson to teach as the students can learn a useful life skill whilst learning English.

Middle School Lesson Plan - Olympics

As well as teaching in high school, I do 4 lessons a week at a middle school. Whilst the lessons are usually straight from the textbook, I had a summer camp during August and I had to create my own lessons. This is the first of the four lessons that came under the general theme of Great Britain. Both parts of this lesson got really good reactions from around 10 different classes and the students all use a lot of English during this lesson. 

Simple Vacation ESL lesson

This is a very simple lesson that you can use post vacation that gets all the students speaking and most importantly doesn't involve writing a ' My Vacation' diary! The students also really loved trying to guess things about their classmates in the last activity. I would advise changing the first activity to things that your students are likely to have done over vacation or it could be over very quickly. This lesson will also segue nicely into my next two lessons to form a mini vacation/travel inspired curriculum.

High School ESL- Renewable Energy Lesson

This is a speaking focused advanced high school ESL lesson plan with the theme renewable energy. It worked really well at my science focused high school and as it is quite an interesting topic I'm sure it would work well in any advanced class. If you use this lesson I would love to know how it goes, so please leave a comment!

High School Lesson Plan - Heroes! Storytelling lesson

I'm really excited to share this lesson plan as it really got all the students speaking, and more importantly, excited to be speaking. It is quite a high level lesson plan although I think you could easily change some of the key words and include more structure to the key phrases to make it a little easier. The idea came from this website and the lesson Brave Pensioner Foils Raid on Jewellery Store. Also the video I have included is well worth watching even if you don't choose to do the lesson. Incredible stuff!

Low Level High School ESL Lesson Plan - Superlatives

This is a low level high school lesson on superlatives that is great for classes that struggle to stay motivated during English. The interactive and competitive element of the main activity mean the whole class gets really involved in cheering for their team, leading to a great classroom atmosphere. I have also previously done this lesson with middle school students and whilst it worked really well with them, I was a little worried the high school students might be to shy/cool for some of the activities. However they all got really involved in everything and it has ended up being one of my most fun lessons.  

High School ESL Lesson Plan - Modern Technology and GoogleGlass

I have just finished doing this lesson on technology for my open class and it went really well. It is great for higher level students and has a good mix of reading, writing, listening and speaking. It's also a topic the students are really interested in and they got very excited during the GoogleGlass video.

Technology in 2013 ppt1 from Duncan Elder

Objectives

Students will be able to talk about the features and the pros and cons of modern technology.

Students will learn vocabulary relating to modern technology.

Key Expressions:

This technology’s key feature is ….

The positives/ negatives about this technology are that ….

Problems could arise because ….

Materials

PPT presentation.

Handout about the new (and old) technologies.

Activity one.

Introduce the vocab and make sure the students understand it. Introduce the key phrases and ask students to make sentences using the phrases. Ask the class to read the phrases with the information about 3D printers (5 minutes).

Activity two.

Show the class the promotional video for GoogleGlass and ask them to think about the key phrases. Give them 5 minutes to discuss GoogleGlass with their friends using the key phrases then ask them their ideas. Make sure you tell the students you will be asking them to share their ideas after 5 minutes so they actually do the activity! (10 minutes)

Activity three.

Split the class into four groups and hand out three of the pieces of information about technology to each group. Ask them to come up with endings to the key phrases for each piece of technology. Tell the students they can use information from the paper or their own knowledge of the product (15 minutes).

Activity four.

Play a guessing game. Ask someone from the first group to read out their first clue. The other groups have to guess what the technology is. If they guess the answer after 1 clue their group gets 4 points, 2 clues is 3 points, 3 clues is 2 points and 4 clues is 1 point. Then move onto the next group. When a team knows the answer I ask them to put their hand up and write it down a whiteboard (although you could use paper), this means the other teams don't hear the answer so they can carry on playing. At the end the team with the most points wins.

High School ESL lesson plan - Bourbon Street.

This is an intermediate conversation game lesson that I found at  http://www.eflsensei.com/Bourbon-Street/?path=52. Around this time of year lot's of my lessons are changed around due to midterms, school trips and sports days and this lesson is great to use for a fun one off filler. I have extended the original 30 minute lesson found at eflsensei into a 50 minute lesson suitable for use in a High School. The lesson works best with 20 students but if you need more you can either split up some of the more complex clues, or add some of your own.

Lesson aim.

To improve conversational fluency.

Time.

50 minutes

What you need.

A game board for each student.

A copy of the clues, cut out and given to each student.

PPT presentation.

What to do.
Activity one. (Introduction)
Introduce the key vocab to the students, my students are quite high level so you may need to add a couple of words to the slide. Go through the game rules and check the students all understand what they have to do  (5 minutes)

Activity two.
Let the students play the game! Walk around to check that they are asking the questions in English, not just copying from each others paper. Once the first few students have finished and are all correct put the answers up on the screen and let the other students check their answers themselves (25 minutes)

Activity three.

To extend this game into a full lesson I then ask the students to make their own Bourbon Street game. I let them choose their own categories and fill in a blank game board, then challenge them to see if they can be clear enough with their instructions that someone could guess their street correctly using only 20 clues. I also say that only 4 clues can involve house numbers. It is very important to say that you are 'challenging' them to make the game in 20 questions, as every time I made the activity sound like a challenge the students were significantly more motivated.  (20 minutes)

ESL lesson plan - A Question of Sport Quiz

This is a sports quiz ESL lesson based on the tv show A Question of Sport. My students loved it and it the theme was perfect as sports day is just around the corner. Most of the questions are pretty general but a few are aimed at Korean students, so if you teach in a different country you should change them to something that fits sports they like.

Lesson aim.

To review sports vocabulary. To practise talking about sports

Time.

50 minutes

What you need.

Quiz presentation.

Quiz questions.
What happened next videos.

What to do.
Activity one. (Introduction)
First put the class into four groups and go through the games rules on the PPT. Then start the picture round. Basic instructions for the students are in the PowerPoint are in the PowerPoint but here is a more detailed explanation. You should ask one team at a time a question from the list, if they answer correctly they can choose to remove a square from the picture. Once they have removed a square allow them to have one guess as to who the person behind the boxes is. If they answer correctly give them 3 points, if not go to the next team. A team can only answer who they think is behind the boxes when it is their turn   (15 minutes)

Activity two.
Observation round. Show the first team the first video, make sure you then close the window and ask them the three questions on the sheet. If they answer incorrectly I then pass it to the next team along. repeat with all 4 videos. (10 minutes)

Activity three.

What happened next. Show the first video to the class, then shown them the options and make them guess what happens next. Show them the video of the answer and give all the teams that answered correctly 2 points. Repeat with all the videos. (15 minutes)

Activity four.
On the buzzer. Ask the group the first on the buzzer question. The students should raise their hand when the know the answer. Choose the first student to raise their hand. If they answer the question correctly give them 3 points and ask their team the next three questions, each worth one point. Repeat with the next set of on the buzzer questions. (10 minutes)

ESL lesson plan - adverts

This is a conversation based lesson that contains plenty of videos to get the students talking. I have done it with a few different classes and found this to be the most fun and interesting way to teach the students about adverts.

Lesson aim.
To learn vocabulary related to advertising. To be able to talk about adverts.

Time.
50 minutes

What you need.
Adverts presentation. (To watch the adverts just click on the link in the ppt) 

Internet connection.

What to do.
Activity one. (Introduction)
Show the first slide and ask the students to read the sentences. In groups ask them to try and guess the meanings of the highlighted words. Check they are guessing correctly and then finally tell them what the words mean. (10 minutes)

Activity two.
Put the students into pairs with one of the students facing away from the screen. Play the first advert and while it is playing the student facing the screen should explain to the student what is happening (in English). Then show the next slide with the stills from 3 adverts on it and ask them to guess which one they had described to them. Finally show the students the questions on the next page and ask them to discuss it in their groups. Repeat this with all three adverts. (20 minutes)

Activity three.
Show the next advert. You should make sure you start and finish the advert at the times shown in the slides so as not to give the answer away. The students should then guess what they think the advert is advertising and answer the questions on the slide. Then ask the students to tell the class about what they think the product is advertising. (10 minutes)

5 ways to boost your ESL students speaking confidence

This is a link to a blog post I wrote on the British Council website. It focuses on how to improve your students confidence during speaking and conversation activities and also aims to show why improving speaking confidence is such an important thing to do. I also included my favorite 5 ways to build students speaking confidence. Hopefully you will find this article useful and get some ideas for your classroom!

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/crossthebreeze/5-great-ways-build-your-students-confidence-why-it-most-important-thing-you-can

ESL lesson plan - Movie reviews

This is a low level high school ESL lesson that could also be easily used in an advanced middle school class. All my students recognized the films although most of them needed help with the actors names. The key phrases don't allow for much sentence expansion, although any high level students could expand a bit on the final question.

Movie review lesson from Duncan Elder

Lesson aim.
To be able to write a movie review. To be able to talk about movies. To learn the names of movie genres.

Time.
50 minutes

What you need.
Movie Review presentation. (To watch the movie trailer just click on the number in the corner of the slide)

Movie review worksheet. 

Internet connection.

What to do.
Activity one. (Introduction)
This is the first two slides of the presentation. Explain to the students what genre means and ask if they know any in English, explain to the students what the genres on the slide are. Check the students understanding by asking them to name films in that genre and by asking how films from a certain genre make them feel. Next explain what a movie review is and ask the students what they would normally read about in a movie review (7 minutes)

Activity two.
Introduce the four key phrases and check the students understanding. Show the first trailer then ask the students the key phrases, ask the students to get into pairs and ask and answer the questions. Do this with all four slides. (20 minutes)

Activity three.
Ask the students to review their favourite movie. They should do this by answering the four key phrases on their worksheet. (10 minutes)

Activity four 

Put the students into teams, one at a time one person from each team should read their movie review. The other teams should try and guess what the movie is. (13 minutes)

High School Esl Lesson Plan - What Happened Next.

This is a fantastic lesson for practising the future tense and the phrase 'I think that ..' I used it with my lower level class and they absolutely loved it. Honestly this is one of the most fun lessons I have ever used. All credit to the author. You can find the full lesson plan at
http://fourfootprints.com/2011/10/esl-lesson-predictions-middle-school/

The 5 best ESL conversation activities

One of the most important things to do as an English teacher is to get your students talking. However students can often appear shy and withdrawn when faced with the task of speaking. These are the 5 best activities that I use to get the conversation flowing in my classroom.

1. The introduction.
Just after introducing the topic of the lesson, I always ask my students to think about what questions they could ask each other about the topic. This gets the students thinking in English whilst also giving them practice in initiating a conversation. It also gives them control over what they are speaking about, so the questions will always be at the right level, and hopefully more interesting to them. I usually write the questions they come up with on the board and then give them 5 minutes to ask and answer the questions. Once they have finished the activity I choose a few students at random to  talk about the answers their friends gave. This means that they will all take part in the activity. One last word of advice, make sure the questions are open questions that induce conversation.

2. The game.
There are many games that can be used to start conversations, but this is definitely my favorite. First use the word grid game template found in this lesson. Then fill the grid up with words related to the topic of the lesson. Put the students in pairs and give them one grid each. One student will be O and one student will be X. The students should then take turns saying sentences using one or more word from the grid, marking the words off as they say them. The first students to say every word in the grid wins. This is a great activity as the students can practice using words they would not normally say.

3. The best way to get students to use their imagination.
Hypothetical questions are a great and interesting way to get the students to talk about subjects that they are not used to talking about. They can be anything from traditional role play such as 'What would you do if you lost your wallet?' to much more fun made up questions such as 'If you where a Superhero what power would you have?'. I usually ask one question to all the groups in my class and give them a couple of minutes to think of an answer. I then get them to say their answer and make the other groups ask a follow up question that the group has to reply to on the spot.

4. The debate.
For this activity you should again put the students in groups. This time say a controversial statement and make each group choose whether they agree or disagree with the statement. Like in the hypothetical questions activity, once the group has said their answer you should make all the other groups ask one question challenging part of their answer. This makes the students think quickly on their feet and can lead to some very interesting discussions.

5. The challenge.
At my school at the moment I have an ongoing speaking challenge. I have a set of topics that I have folded and put into a box. At the end of each lesson I ask one student to come to front and choose a topic from the box. The student then has to speak for as long as they can without breaks or repeating themselves about the topic. I then write down how long they were able to speak for and once every student has spoken about a topic I will be giving the winner a prize. So far my high level students have become VERY competitive about it as they all really want to be the class winner.

High School ESL Lesson Plan - Art!

This is an advanced conversation focused double lesson that can easily be adapted to suit a low level ESL class. All you need to do is change the words in the first activity to suit your classes level. The final activity is also quite hard so you could either change this for something else or simply make it a one off lesson.

High School ESL Lesson Plan - The worlds most typical person

I have just finished this lesson and the students were really into it, it lasted for two 50 minute lessons. I got the idea and a couple of the activities from this great website www.designerlessons.org. With just a couple of adjustments depending on your class size this lesson should be ready to go.

Lesson aim.
To improve conversation and presentation skills. To review comparisons and to practice backing up a statement with a reason.

Time.
50 minutes x 2

What you need.
The most typical person presentation.
The most typical person national geographic video.
People profiles for second activity.
People profiles for the game.

What to do.
Activity one. (Lesson 1)
Ask the students to read the lesson title and check they understand typical. Show the next slide and ask the students to read the questions. Spit the class into groups and ask them to think of an answer to each question and a reason for their answer. Then ask each group to present their answers too the class. I make sure a different student reads each answer.  (20 minutes)

Activity two.
For the next activity I made lot's of different people profiles, this is supposed to represent everyone in the world. The students will have to gather all the information on the profiles to find out the answers to the questions from activity one. They will do this by going around the class and asking each other questions. I then ask each group to present their findings.  (25 minutes)

Activity three.
I then show the national geographic video with all the correct answers. The students can then see how close their guesses from the first activity were and also they can see who was correct in the second activity. (5 minutes)

Activity four (Lesson 2).
Continuing from the previous lesson I showed the national geographic video again. I then showed the next slide in the presentation with the comparison sentence structures on it and asked the students to compare themselves to the average person. I then asked some of the students to present what they found to the class. (20 minutes)

Activity 5. 
This is a variation of the card game mafia, except instead of trying to find the murderer the students are trying to find the typical person. First print and cut out the profile cards I have attached and,  in their groups, give one to each student. One person in each group will receive the typical person card. The rest of the group has to find out who received this card by asking each other questions. The person with the typical person card has to lie about which card they received so people do not think it is them. When the students in the group think they know who has the card they should eliminate that person. If they are correct then  deal the cards again but if they chose the wrong person the game continues until either they choose the correct person or the typical person manages to deceive the group and become the last man standing. (30 minutes)

High School ESL Lesson Plan - Personality Test.

This is a low level lesson I have designed around this fantastic Prezzie presentation by Harriet Smith. It is ready to go using just the Prezzie and some paper.

High School ESL Lesson Plan - Events that Changed the World

Here is my third lesson titled Events that Changed the World. This lesson has worked really well with both high and low levels and easily lasted two lessons. It should also be ready to use without any further preparation.

Lesson aim.
To encourage the students to use more complex English. To teach them how to analyse events using English.

Time.
50 minutes x 2

What you need.
Events that Changed the World Presentation.
Paper.

What to do.
Activity one.
Introduce the lesson title and check they understand it. Show the second slide 'What was an Important day for you?' and ask the students to think of questions they could ask someone about their most important day. For example: When was it? Who where you with? etc. Then put the students into pairs and tell them to think of their most important day and ask each other the questions the class thought up. At the end ask some students to present their partners perfect day. For Example: This is my friend Miroo, her most important day was her 10th Birthday. It was important because she.. (20 minutes)

Activity two.
Tell the students that you will show them some important world events, show the next slide and make sure they understand what each question means. Introduce the first event one clue at a time and ask the students to guess  what the event was. Ask them to read the information about the event then split the class into four groups and assign each group a question to think about. Give them some time to think about the question then ask each group to tell the class what they think. Repeat this for each event. (60 minutes)

Activity three.
Ask each group to think of a world event that they think was important and discuss and answer each question. Then tell them to introduce their chosen event to the class. (20 minutes)

Download presentation here.

High School ESL lesson plan - Famous People Biographies

Hello English teachers! This is the second lesson plan I used with my classes. It is one of my favourite lessons and it worked really well with both high and low level high school classes, with only some minor adjustments needed.
This lesson is actually 100% good to be used straight from the materials provided on this site.

Lesson aim.
To teach the students how to pick out important information from a text. To improve the students reading ability and confidence speaking in front of others.

Time.
50 minutes

What you need.
Who Am I presentation.
Printouts of famous people introductions

What to do.
Activity one.
First to remind the students of the topic, ask them questions about you from the previous lesson. (3 minutes)

Activity two.
Go though the Presentation showing each clue one at a time. Ask the students to raise their hand when they know who the famous person is. (5 minutes)

Activity three.
Hand out the printouts with the celebrity introductions on them. Ask the students to choose 4 facts about the celebrity and write them down in order of how easy it is to guess the person. Ask them to write the facts down in the form 'I am ...' (15 minutes)

Activity four.
Split the class into four groups. Ask one group to read out the first of their biographies. The other groups should write down their answer on a whiteboard and raise their hand when they know the answer. You should check if it is right or not. Keep going until all the teams have an answer. If the students answered correctly after 1 question give them 4 points, after 2 questions 3 points etc.. (27 minutes)

*I used introductions from www.famouspeoplelessons.com for my high level class. I used the biographies of Steve Jobs, Tiger Woods, Annne Frank, Sharapova, Mozart, Queen Elizabeth 2, David Beckam, Ban Ki Moon, Lady GaGa, Will Smith, Obama, J.K Rowling
For my low level classes I used this word document
The answers to the Who Am I game are 1. Nelson Mandela 2. Psy 3. Adele 4. Ronaldo. Most of my classes knew every one.

Download presentation here

WT7FRVYNXC2W

How to download presentations

There are two ways you can download my presentations and files, both of them are very simple.

First

Click on the dropbox.com link. This will take you to the link for my presentation, then you can easily click on the download button.

Second

Click the slideshare.net button at the bottom of the presentation. This will direct you to slideshare.net, here click on the save button. You will then be asked to sign in to Slideshare, if you don't already have an account you can sign in easily with Facebook. The presentation will then be downloaded!

High school ESL lesson plan - introduction

Hello! This is the introduction lesson plan I used in my first high school esl class.

Warning!
The PowerPoint used in this lesson is personal to me. So please edit it before you use it! 

Lesson aim.
To introduce yourself to the class. To start to build the students confidence in speaking English in front of people.

Time
50 minutes

What you need.

Presentation. 

Worksheet with space to answer all your questions. Space for the students to fill in the true or false  game.

What to do.

Activity one.

To get the students thinking about the topic, ask the class what questions they could ask a new person to find out information about them. (3 minutes)

Activity two.

Go through the quiz on the presentation. When doing this ask the students to read out every question. Go over the answers, go through each possible option asking the students to raise their hand if they thought it was that answer. (20 minutes)

Activity three.

Have the students write out three facts about themselves on the paper. Two facts should be true, one should be false. Have the students cut the true or false section from their worksheet, fold it and hand the paper in to you. Split the room into teams. Have one student come to the front and read out someones paper, in their teams the students should then try to guess which fact is false. (27 minutes)

* Low level modification. In my low level classes I used the exact same presentation, except for the slide about Manchester and the final slide about England.
For the game instead of true or false I asked the students to answer the following questions;
Where do you live?
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
What is your hobby?
What is your favourite food?
I then split the class into groups and asked one student to read out someones introduction. Each group then had to guess who the introduction belonged to.

Download link here

Welcome to High school esl!

Hello! Welcome to my High school ESL teaching website. Whether you are a new teacher fresh off the plane looking for some inspiration or an old hand wanting to add some ideas to you repertoire I hope these high school lesson ideas will be of use. This is what I will be including on this website:

First
PowerPoint presentations, worksheets and all other resources for every lesson I do at my two high schools. This will include both high and low level lesson plans and they should be adaptable to fit most high school, university and even high level middle school classes.
The lessons I will be providing are designed to provoke discussion between students, they will all allow students of different abilities to work at a level they feel comfortable at without taking away from the other students. They will include lots of conversation games, group discussion activities and presentations. However due to the focus on speaking these lesson plans will not be suitable for  teachers who have been asked to focus on grammar or leaning vast amounts of vocab, although I am sure that you could use a lot of the activities as part of a grammar lesson.

Second
I will be describing any individual games and activities I think can be used in a wide variety of classes, and showing how they can be adapted to different students needs.

I hope you and your students enjoy these lessons as much as my classes did!