Lesson Planning Made Easy

I'm in the office, here on a Friday night in South Korea getting ready for the upcoming semester which has come alarmingly fast. Time flies when you're having fun jet-setting around the world, or something like that. Anyway, onwards and downwards back to Earth.

I checked out my class rosters and it appears that many of the students I had last semester are back for round 2 this semester. Same students, same teacher, just different subject. Which is fine and I actually like having repeat students who've conformed to my system, but one area where is does throw a little wrench into the system is the class warm-up. I did word puzzles last semester and felt like by the end, I had exhausted every single appropriate one I could find on the Internet. Finding good ones for my students is tricky,  since they're not little kids, but they don't necessarily understand ones with complicated language.

So, my solution! ESL Trivia, Logic Puzzles and Word Games. It's $9.99 well spend, let's just say that and the deeper I've dived in as I'm planning, the more impressed that I am. I can't believe I wasted so much time last semester scurrying around the Internet looking for stuff that's all in one place (this book!). Seriously...it's kind of the ultimate way to start off your class with a couple little brain-teaser trivia puzzles.

Teaching Websites and Resources I use in my own classes

Teaching Resources for ESL Teachers

A quick post about some resources from around the Internet  that I use for my own classes when I'm in need of a bit of inspiration.

Classroom Resources for ESL Teachers

ESL Speaking-  The ultimate site for ESL speaking games and activities, as well as ESL textbook recommendations.

Breaking News English - My go to site for any kind of current events ESL conversation or ESL discussion class. I like the short 2-page mini lessons, but they also have full lesson plans here.

ESL Writing -Also a great site for lesson plans specifically for ESL writing classes. My favorite ones actually are the ESL listening lesson plans, which are perfect for an hour-long class.

Speaking Activities That Don't Suck- Lots of ready-to-go speaking activities and games for ESL classes that you don't have to put a lot of thought into. Perfect if you get a last minute class thrown at you and you're in a bit of a time crunch.

Presentation Expressions -If you teach presentations or public speaking, you'll want to check out this site (and also buy yourself this book: Speaking of Speech: Basic Presentation Skills for Beginners).

Business English Pod -My favorite site for business English and interview preparation. They have paid content, but much of it is free and you can probably get by with just that for your lessons with a bit of preparation by you.

ESL Trivia and Word Puzzles- I love to do a warm-up brain-teaser at the beginning of every class and this is the best book I've found with puzzles and trivia geared specifically to ESL students. The stuff around the Internet either has language that is too difficult or is geared to kids.

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Teacher Resource Pack

I've run across this helpful resource from Rob Whyte over at ESL Writing and perhaps most famous from his work on Lonely Planet Korea. As a cool aside, we hung out yesterday doing some "research" for the upcoming edition. Anyway, onto the helpful thing.

It's a teacher's resource pack which contains the following:

160 logic puzzles and word games
ESL Trivia Challenge volume 1
ESL Trivia Challenge volume 2

I always do a bit of trivia or a puzzle of some sort to start my classes off in an interesting way, but it's kind of hard to find things appropriate for students who don't speak English as their first language, so this could be quite useful for sure. You can buy it at: ESL Publications  for $9.99 and it comes with a money-back guarantee if you're not happy. You can buy each book individually, but click through to the second page for the resource pack which contains all three-it's a much better deal!