ESL LESSON PLANS

 We’re happy to announce that we are going to create new teaching materials with you: the Critical Reading Club (CRC) worksheets. They are available in addition to all the regular ESL Brains lesson plans on our website, so there will be more worksheets for you to use every month.

 The idea behind the worksheets is that students read an article before the class and then discuss its content and share their thoughts in the classroom. Previously, we only shared articles and a few discussion questions on our Instagram account. Thanks to your active participation and feedback, we’ve been able to develop these brand new CRC worksheets.

 It’s very simple. Before each lesson, you just need to visit the ESL Brains website and copy a link to an article for your students to read.

 Then, share the link with your class and set the reading task as homework. The ‘in-class’ part is based on a short worksheet, which typically contains four or five tasks related to the content of the article. The activities focus on some relevant language followed by speaking practice, and they take about 30-45 minutes to complete. It might actually take longer, as learners tend to get highly engaged with some topics!

 The articles we curate for every lesson are authentic texts published by reputable online news resources (not adapted!). These original, up-to-date materials in English not only spark discussion, but also serve as a rich source of new language for students to learn. The CRC worksheets do not contain reading comprehension questions such as those often found in ESL course books. Instead, their purpose is to inspire critical discussion while at the same time improving students’ speaking fluency. Each CRC lesson is available in the form of printable worksheets (both teacher’s and student’s versions), as well as an e-lesson plan.

 We’re all aware of the benefits of continuous reading practice whilst learning a foreign language. It stimulates the brain, increases vocabulary and even helps develop writing skills. However, there is often too little time for learners of English as a foreign language to read long texts and do extensive comprehension activities in class. Although we recognise the invaluable role of the teacher in helping students acquire reading skills, we have decided to focus on boosting students’ motivation to read outside the classroom. We want to achieve this goal by selecting interesting and thought-provoking texts as well as designing stimulating questions for in-depth discussions.

 It helps you make the most of every minute of lesson time. Each class should give students the feeling of having learnt new language while maximising their speaking opportunities.

 Being able to tackle authentic texts in English will result in enhancing students’ self-esteem and create more interest in exploring the English language and culture on their own. (Just remember, it is your job as a teacher to make sure your students’ language level matches the level of the article you want them to read, so they don’t get frustrated.)

 Is there an option to just see these CRC lessons? If not, could you make one so we don’t have to scroll through all different types. This would be great if you could do it for all the different types, e.g. speaking etc. It’s something that I want to find quickly but can’t.

 You can filter the lessons by their type. This filter is available after clicking “show more filters” in the Lesson Search page. Read about more ways to browse through ESL Brains lessons here.

 Ever wondered which lessons other ESL Brains teachers would recommend? We have, so we had a closer look at what was trending in the first half of 2022, and created the list of the most popular lesson plans from that period. See which lessons have most often been viewed, commented on and liked, and get inspired!

 Word formation, listening, but most of all loads of speaking practice! This free lesson plan for intermediate and upper-intermediate students is (in the words of ESL Brains teachers) useful, informative and well-structured. Some teachers have even successfully used it to help students change their negative attitude towards English!

 Let your students chuckle and guffaw in this amazing lesson about laughter! The user’s comments are probably the best recommendation there is. Filipe calls it an absolutely amazing lesson, and adds: Great activities. Relevant vocabulary for the intended level and the exam-type activity at the end are splendid. Ece also shares some feedback: Such a fun lesson plan, laughed all the way through it with my students.

 Weddings in Malta? Dining in China? Falling asleep in Japan? Let your pre-intermediate students watch some funny videos about cultural differences and share, compare, and discuss their experience and views! As a bonus, they will learn the difference in use between a bare infinitive and a to-infinitive. This amazing lesson gets ALL students talking!

 Is it in Italy? India? Mexico? Where? Even the quietest students will want to share their opinion on that! This is one of the lessons which show that even pre-intermediate students will speak English if presented with an interesting topic. And who wouldn’t want to talk about food?

 Strive for success, but embrace failure! This lesson is packed with some great advanced vocabulary practice and engaging talking points, and will be a success with both business and general English students.

 Has it? Let you students tell you! The lesson has been called excellent and fantastic by many ESL Brains users. Use controversial topics like this one and help your advanced students practise oral fluency and accuracy.

 Don’t we all need a good excuse sometimes? Use this outstanding upper-intermediate lesson plan to teach your students how to say ‘no’ politely. They will discuss a video about different strategies for saying ‘no’, and practise the new language in every-day situations. This was a great business lesson, according to Sue. And Lizzie said: I loved teaching it and my students were buzzing to go and say no to all of their bosses the next day!

 The ESL Brains team has also made the list of their top lesson picks from the first half of 2022. If you’re interested, make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter!

ESL Lessons

 Apart from being a teacher of English, I’m also a student of other languages. It means that I can experience the teaching as well as learning process first-hand. I observe myself, students and other teachers, and try to draw conclusions. One of them concerns revising vocabulary and grammar.

 Some time ago I noticed that as a student I enjoy and most of all need revisions at my Spanish lessons. I believe that they are an integral part of every lesson and special attention should be paid to them. If you develop a routine of revisions, your students will quickly get used to them and try to be prepared for every lesson.

 Quizlet is an app which enables you to create sets of words for your classes. Students can access them on their smartphones or other electronic devices and practise by doing various exercises/games generated by the app. It’s a modern solution for flashcards and a fantastic tool for learning vocabulary. All our students love it and now can’t imagine studying new words in a different way! See these getting started videos and quick guide for students provided by Quizlet here.

 How do we use it for in-class revisions? It’s simple. We print English words from the created sets and at the beginning of the lesson students need to build one sentence with two flashcards (we encourage them to be creative). If you work with groups, make them build and ask each other questions with words provided.

 The other way we use it is to play a Taboo-like game. Students work in pairs and each of them has a few flashcards. One student tries to describe the word/phrase they have without using any keywords and the other guesses what that word or phrase is. This way students have a chance to use new vocabulary and you can check whether they know when and how to use it properly. This turns out to be a very dynamic activity and students come up with various ways of guiding each other to the right expression!

 These are small cubes with images on all their walls designed to trigger ideas and stories. The basic idea behind Story Cubes is that you need to roll 9 dice and tell a story combining all 9 images that starts with “once a upon a time…”. Really simple and straightforward but does magic! There are various Story Cubes sets. Start from the original and explore – we recommend the Actions pack and Clues mix.

 We use Story Cubes quite often during our classes, not only for vocabulary revision games. We give them to our students and they have to prepare a story (sometimes just sentences) based on images as well as words we provide them. It’s real fun as students can combine various ideas and create crazy and sometimes illogically amusing stories.

 What’s more Story Cubes are a perfect tool to be used for grammar revisions. For example, you can make your students build conditional sentences relating to a few images from the cubes or practise past simple and past continuous tenses for story telling.