Horror Movies ESL Lesson - Perfect for Halloween.

I have just finished doing this lesson with my high level classes and they really got into it. My students didn't need to be taught much of the vocab for the movie script activity but depending on the level of your class you could add in a vocabulary teaching activity as well.

Business English Lesson - Swot Analysis

This is the second in a mini series of Business English Lessons I gave to my high level students. It is taken from my text book so I am unable to share the whole lesson, however there are many ideas and activities you could use in your own lesson. The lesson is about SWOT analysis, which is a tool that businesses use to analyse business ideas. The lesson has the students looking at a couple of examples of SWOT analysis, before making their own for different products.

Business English Lesson - Blue Ocean Strategy

My textbook has recently had a section on business English and it brought up this very interesting lesson on blue ocean strategy. This is a theory that suggests that rather than trying to beat competitors in a crowded market (a red ocean) companies should create clear uncontested blue oceans. They do this by creating demand for a new product that was not previously there.

The metaphor of red ocean/blue ocean comes from an ocean being red due to the blood of sharks fighting and competing, while the blue ocean is completely free of competition.

Autobiography Writing Lesson Ideas

 

Recently I have taught a section on writing autobiographies from my text book. Alot of the activities were textbook based, so I am unable to share them here, however alot of the activities could be used in any lesson about Autobiographies. I will aslo explain the textbook activities as it would be easy to creat your own material for most of them.


High School ESL Self Portrait Conversation Lesson

This is a fun lesson about analysing self portraits that all my students enjoyed. First you will teach them some vocabulary related to self portraits then the students will have to draw a self portrait that represents themselves. The downside is that a fair amount of time is spent drawing a self portrait of themselves, but you could either ask them to do it as homework or set a specific time limit for drawing the picture.

How to teach an ESL Debate Lesson.

Debate ESL Lesson

I have recently started teaching debate lessons to my high level high school classes. The students seem to really like them and they get very involved in the debate. The lesson as a whole gives them great practice in presenting, speaking, listening and even reading depending on how you ask them to research their ideas. This is how I structure my debate lessons.

Business English ESL lesson-Analyzing Graphs

 

One of my high schools specializes in teaching science so this lesson was particularly useful. The students first learn some phrases they can use when analyzing graphs before having the chance to practice these phrases with some real graphs. Finally they make their own graphs and present them to the class.

Food From Around the World ESL Lesson Plan

Photo From Epsos.de

This is a great lesson to teach advanced or adult students about food. The quiz at the start is tough but gets them really interested in the topic. The rest of the lesson is spent talking about different categories of food and the differences between what countries eat and what the reasons are.

First Day Back Year Goals Lesson

This is a lesson I have recently used on the first day back at school. The aim of it is to get them thinking about what they want to achieve at school and in their personal life for the following year. It is a good lesson to do to get the students settled into their new class environment and to get them thinking in English. This lesson has two different levels, one with lots of free thinking and a reading /analysis section and one lesson that is more structured for lower levels.

Great Video Resources for ESL Sports Lessons.

Sports is a topic that ESL students love, and also a topic that I love to teach! This is a list of some useful video resources that you can use in your sports lessons. I have also included a few links to some lessons where I have used these videos so you can get an idea of how they can be used in your class.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!