Secondary ESOL Links

Lesson Plans and Classroom Resources

• Asia Education Foundation

  Teaching resources, cultural information and useful links (Australian).

• BBC World Service Learning English The Flatmates

  A serial with audio script at a slow pace. Includes optional written script and specific language focus.

• Beyond the Fire :Teen Experiences of War

  Real-life stories of 15 teenagers, now living in the U.S., who have survived living in war zones. Interactive site with teaching resources that are aimed at mainstream students.

• Clip Art Collection

  Copyright-free clip art (simple line-drawings) for use by language teachers. Designed to be culturally and linguistically neutral,the drawings are grouped under - verbs, adjectives, nouns and pronouns.

• Escort

  A comprehensive resource guide for mainstream teachers of ESOL students. It provides practical, research-based advice on how teachers can more effectively teach, evaluate, and nurture their ESOL students (State University of New York).

• EverythingESL.net: Activities for Newcomers

  When new English language learners first enter your school, it can be overwhelming for the teachers responsible for their instruction. Here are some activity-based tips to get you started.

• Graphic Organizers: Schools of California Online Resources for Education

  Check out this site for its variety of downloadable graphic organisers.

• Hot Baked Potatoes - Half Baked Software

  You can use this software to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises. Enter your data and the programme will create the web pages for you. You can even include feedback that leads the students who are having difficulty to the correct answers.

• Japan: Kids Web

  A fun site that introduces Japan to students from other countries. Sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs

• Korea for Kids

  Three interactive activities - numbers, words and virtual journey. Companion site to the Australian text book "Inside King Sejong's Gate".

• LearnEnglish

  A British Council site. It offers opportunities to learn and practise English online. It is aimed at the intermediate learner.

• Migrant Education-Secondary Sheltered

  Individual units of work that together make a course of study for students at the elementary level.Suitable for intermediate or secondary school students in reception classes. (North Central Educational Service District - NCESD.)

• Paragraphs Game

  Drag the pictures of a road accident or a cricket game into the right order. Practise sequencing sentences to build a paragraph (BBC - Skillswise Words).

• Pasifika Hotshots

  A collection of stories (videos) told by Wellington secondary school Pasifika students. Includes the resources to help your students make their own stories into videos.

• Thinking about How Language Works

  This Assessment Resource Bank resource describes sentence structures, how ideas are linked within and between sentences, and how information is condensed in academic writing. Useful for teachers and students.

• 75 ESL Teaching Ideas

  A list of ideas, activities, and suggestions for teaching. Most are fairly simple and can be used with a minimum of preparation.

• Asian Studies Links

  Cultural, news and other links organised by country (Pacific University).

• AskAsia.org

  Classroom resources and cultural information. From the American Asia society.

• Babel Fish Translation

  Translate school notices, classroom material here. Does not include Pasifika languages.

• BBC Learning English

  Rich site including listening, reading, vocabulary sections.

• Beehive.govt.nz - The Official Website of the New Zealand Government

  Includes news releases about current issues and archival material.

• Blue Pencil Online

  Interactive activities for testing grammar and punctuation skills with guidelines, hints and feedback (Macromedia Flash 5.0).

• Brainpop

  BrainPOP is an educational program, with short, animated movies in science, maths, English, social studies, health and technology. Subscription needed.

• Breaking News English

  Downloadable audio files, with pre- and post-tasks. Updated regularly. Recommended for advanced students.

• British Council - Search English Engine

  A news, information and networking tool for English language teachers.

• British Council Language Assistant

  Teaching materials for the ELT classroom.

• Certificate Creator

  This site offers a variety of templates teachers can customise to reward a student or celebrate an achievement.

• China Virtual Tour

  This site takes you along the route of an Australian teachers' study group tour. Each stop includes resources and a curriculum guide for primary and secondary school teachers.

• Chinese New Year Theme Page

  Links to a wide range of resources on Chinese New Year (from Teacher Planet).

• Color Coded Parts of Speech

  Kinesthetic group tasks focusing on parts of speech.

• Common Mistakes in English by Language Background

  Typical mistakes made by different language groups. No sound files, but links to commonly used pronunciation books.

• Conversation Questions for the ESL/EFL Classroom

  Banks of topic-based questions. From The Internet TESL Journal.

• Crossword Puzzle Generator Maker - Crossword Puzzle Creator

  This is an easy to use crossword maker. To add language value adapt the crossword so that each student has some of the answers and some of the clues and each student must find the missing clues/answers by asking their partner.

• CyberSmart! Lesson Plans

  Lesson plans on introducing safe, responsible and effective computer and internet use in the classroom.

• Dave's ESL Café

  A popular site with news updates, forums for students and teachers, a graffiti wall, an ideas page for teachers, an on-line help centre for students and much more.

• Dave's ESL Café Idea Cookbook

  Lots of ideas here for teaching and learning activities for ESOL students - from twenty ways to get your students into groups to how to teach maths to your ESOL students.

• Digital Conversations

  Check out the latest selection of video conferences added to the NZ Digital Conversations website. Students can chat with experts in the areas of writing, theatre, music, motivation and goal setting, sport and environmental issues.

• Discovery School

  A puzzle generation tool - visit this site to create your own puzzles that recycle the vocabulary you have been teaching.

• DiscoverySchool.com

  A mainstream site for teaches and students. Includes lesson plans plus tools to make teacher materials such as worksheet generators.

• EFL/ESL Lessons and Lesson Plans from The Internet TESL Journal

  A wide range of resources.

• EMA: Online Support for Ethnic Minority Attainment

  Bilingual and EAL resources for teachers, plus professional development and links to many sites. Funded by the UK's Department for Education and Skills.

• English Listening Language Lab Online

  A wide variety of listening tasks with varied accents. For advanced students.

• English-to-go.com

  Up-to-date resources based on Reuters® news articles. Some free lessons.

• EnglishLearner.com: Resources for Teachers of English

  Traditional activities.

• Englishmed.com

  A large EU-sponsored site with exercises and over ninety minutes of spoken conversation – animated dialogues (Flash driven). The site is aimed at training medical staff, but there is plenty of material here that can be used to develop language for outside the classroom.

• ESL go

  ESL go.com aims to give ESOL students help learning English as a second language through free ESL classes and free English practice message boards. Teachers can share teaching activities.

• Eslgold.com

  Hundreds of pages of graded ESOL materials. The language is not embedded in a context.

• ESOL ILT at City College Manchester, England, UK

  Exercises that develop literacy and IT skills, developed by ESOL teachers at City College Manchester.

• eThemes

  An extensive database resources organised around specific themes. You can search by keyword or year.

• Events Calendar

  Information on festivals and other multicultural events. You can add your own event. Downloadable as a poster. From the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Division.

• Everyday Routines

  An activity focusing on the present tense and its use for talking about everyday activities. (The ESL Wonderland).

• Exercises that Help to Build up Confidence During Exam Time

  Practical activites that encourage critical thinking from Davis and Rinvolucri (Humanising Language Teaching online journal).

• The Film Archive: On Disk Library for Secondary Schools

  These archived programmes are made available in digital format through The New Zealand Film Archive. The English/Media Studies collection supports NCEA prescriptions in these subjects, and there are disks for oratory, propaganda, New Zealand film, advertising, women, youth, and New Zealand identity themes. The education package for each disk includes a teacher’s booklet, with online lesson plans being available for some. Borrowing the disks is free for New Zealand schools; orders can be made online from the site.

• Folk Tales from the United Arab Emirates

  From Abu Dhabi Women's College.

• Folktales from Around the World

  Folktales told by students from Laos.

• Fonetiks.org

  Online language laboratory, this page focusing on vowel sounds (British English).

• From Caveman to Spaceman

  Listen and read. A cartoon on the evolution of the human species. From BT Education.

• Games and Activities for the English as a Second Language Classroom: A Project of The Internet TESL Journal

  This is a page on which teachers can share games and activities that they have found useful in the classroom.

• Grammar Safari

  The activities here are suggestions for 'hunting' and 'collecting' examples of specific words used in authentic communication in documents on the Internet. Suitable for independent study by motivated students.

• Graphic Organizer Worksheets

  Just about every possible graphic organiser is here for you to download (EnchantedLearning).

• Graphic Organizers

  Graphic organiser, concept mapping, and mind mapping examples.

• The Graphics Gallery

  Graphics, including animations, organised thematically and copyright free.

• Guardian Weekly TEFL update

  Links to email versions of the materials and lesson from the 'Learning English' sections of the Guardian Weekly.

• Guide to Grammar and Style

  A comprehensive grammar guide for academic writing created by Jack Lynch.

• The Highwayman

  Alfred Noyes's poem with a focus on alliteration, metaphor, personification and simile.

• Hunt the Hazards

  An online safety game designed for junior high school students to learn more about common hazards in the supermarket, warehouse, kitchen and home.

• IELTS

  This is the site if you have questions about IELTS. Although designed principally for candidates, the site has a lot of useful information for teachers. You can scroll through the IELTS handbook on line and there is a search facility for centres.

• Inspiration Lane

  Online, classroom magazine for use on interactive whiteboard. Readings and interactive language activities change daily.

• Interactive Games (LLU)

  Interactive literacy games.

• Internet TESL Journal

  A monthly web journal with articles, lessons and activities.

• Karin's ESL Partyland

  Printable materials that focus on key grammatical challenges for ESOL students, also discussion forums and employment opportunities.

• The Key Newspaper for New Readers

  An online newspaper aimed at older readers who struggle with reading or for whom English is an additional language. The articles are free of copyright, and the archives are searchable by topic. There are lesson plans to accompany some of the articles. Many of the articles have an American focus.

• Korea: Grandfather's House

  Take a virtual tour of a traditional Korean house. Interactive activities for students. Includes teacher resources.

• LangMedia: The Five College Resource for the Study of World Languages

  Examples of authentic language spoken in the natural environment.

• The Language Menu

  Site includes tools for teachers to generate their own resources, and multilingual interactive language exercises for students. Free site although you need to register.

• Language Strategy Use Inventory

  Developed Cohen and Chi to help you find out what sort of language learner you are and to help you discover appropriate language learning strategies (PDF).

• Learning Style Survey

  A tool developed by Andrew Cohen and Rebecca Oxford.

• Learning Style Survey for Young Learners: Assessing your own Learning Styles

  Designed to assess senior primary school students' general approach to learning.

• Learning with iAdventures

  Problem solving activities in which students determine the direction and outcome of a content-rich storyline, using resources available on the Internet.

• The Linguistic Funland

  Internet based resources, journals, software, study options and networking for ESOL teachers and students.

• Local Noise

  Local Noise is an Australian Research Council funded project led by Mitchell and Pennycook from the University of Technology, Sydney. Its focus is on the localisation of hip-hop in different cultural, societal and educational contexts. Local Noise has been looking at hip-hop as an educational tool, expressing people's stories. The focus is on its success in the face of a general failure of education policies for marginalised groups in society, both in urban and rural settings.

• Make Beliefs Comix

  Students create 3-panel comics using tools provided. Can be used for activities such as vocabulary practice, prewriting and summarising

• Making Faces

  An interactive game that allows you to drag and drop different sets of eyes and mouths on to blank cartoon faces to create a range of different facial expressions. From BT Education.

• Making it Real: Teaching Pre-literate Adult Refugee Students - 2006

  This American book (116 pages) describes techniques and activities that are appropriate for pre-literate students from refugee backgrounds.

• Metromagazine Study Guides

  The study guides include notes for Looking for Alibrandi, The Joy Luck Club and Rabbit Proof Fence (PDF format).

• Module Maker

  This site shows teachers how to create online research modules for their students. By Jamie McKenzie.

• My Own Resources

  An extensive site with exercises at the word and sentence level.

• Myths, Folktales and Fairy Tales

  Teaching resources from Scholastic.

• National Geographic Xpeditions

  A great site, although not specifically for ESOL students, with an interactive learning museum and many activities and lesson plans.

• A New Life for Refugees -Focus on Africa

  Australian classroom resource for learning about refugees.

• A New Life in a New Home – A Resource for Schools

  Australian classroom resource for learning about refugees.

• The New Zealand Dictionary Centre

  From Victoria University. Activities for students such as "Unravelling NZ English usage for newcomers" (PDFs).

• The Office of Ethnic Affairs

  A referral and information service for ethnic communities and policy advice to government.

• One World, One People

  A practical and extensive set of plans, games, resources and links for ESOL teachers.

• OnestopEnglish

  Macmillan Publishers' site. Plenty of lesson plans with worksheets, games, professional readings and more.

• Our Digital Storehouse

  This section of TKI hosts a growing number of literacy related digital learning objects produced as a result of the Learning Federation initiative. Registration is necessary.

• Pacific Salutations

  Greetings and phrases in a number of Pasifika languages (Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs).

• Pacific Stories

  Trailers from a series of ABC film journeys through seven Pacific locations (mainly Melanesian, but includes Tonga). Interactive galleries, maps, with video and audio updates from the film-makers and film subjects. Flash driven.

• Pasifika Learning Materials (Learning Media)

• Paving the Way: Materials and Resources for ESOL Tutors

  Resources developed to give literacy practitioners guidance teaching ESOL learners. Classroom resources in the methods and materials section may be useful.

• PB Wiki

  You can create a free class or course webpage which can then be collaboratively built and edited.

• Phil Shapiro Websequiturs

  A shareware program for windows that lets you create reading exercises on the web where students have to figure out which phrase comes first and next in a reading passage.

• PIZZAZ! ... People Interested in Zippy and Zany Zcribbling

  Simple, creative writing and oral storytelling activities with copyable handouts for use with students of all ages.

• Podcast Net

  Here you can search for particular topics or browse a large number of podcasts by category (e.g. Arts, Kids & Teens, Society and Culture).

• The Power of Words

  Ten lessons that explore the uses of language to label ethnic groups, sexual minorities and genders. Although designed for the US, these could easily be adapted for New Zealand.

• Punctuate This!

  From the Eats, Shoots and Leaves site, a quick test of your punctuation skills.

• Quotations for Teachers: Be Inspired

  A collection of quotations.

• Reading - Interacting with Texts

  Directed activities related to texts (DARTs) help students engage with texts and make them more critical readers (the British Council, BBC).

• Reading Signs in English

  An American photo collection of commonly used signs.

• School Journal Teachers' Notes Part 3 & 4

  The School Journal Teachers’ Notes for Parts 3 and 4 are available online only. They follow a similar format to those for Parts 1 and 2, with a focus on teaching purpose.

• School Zone: Evaluations

  Find publishers'information on their digital learning resources and teachers' evaluations of them.

• Science Netlinks

  Resources for primary and secondary science educators, including lesson plans and reviewed internet resources. All site content is organised around American benchmarks for science literacy.

• Self-Study Idiom Quizzes

  From the Internet TESL Journal.

• Sentence Construction Game

  You must jump on the correct logs to complete the sentence and get Bryan the beaver safely to the other side. This game has sound. (BBC Skillswise Words)

• Ship or Sheep.com

  English language pronunciation practice with minimal pairs. Uses Flash.

• Short Stories: British Literature

  Aims to help teachers exploit English literature in the ELT classroom. A range of materials based around the works of various authors.

• Sofweb

  State of Victoria, Department of Education ESL Unit initiative. A wide variety of information, including progammes, curriculum and texts, as well as links to their multicultural site.

• Spelling Bank Activities

  Online, interactive games to help students understand spelling rules.

• Taking My Motivational Temperature on a Language Task

  A tool for assessing motivation developed by Andrew Cohen and Zoltán Dörnyei.

• Talking with Kids about the News

  This web site deals with process of talking through the issues associated with what children see on "the News".

• TalkWorks Comic Online

  An animated comic book with games and exercises that help build communication skills. For primary, intermediate and secondary school students. From BT Education.

• Teachers' Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet

  Resources for cross-cultural interaction and collaborative project work developed to help teachers and students interact globally (U.S.Department of Education).

• Teaching English

  British Council site with professional development readings, lesson plans, e-learning for students and much more.

• Teaching Strategies

  A list of strategies useful in English from the Tasmanian government Office for Curriculum, Leadership and Learning

• Teaching with the Web

  Links to WWW resources for language teaching.

• Teachit's English Teaching Resources

  In the UK this resource fills a similar role to English Online.

• Teleteach

  From Hong Kong University, an ESOL resource site organised by skill, language focus, topic and level which also includes a section on ESOL theory. It's graphic heavy so you will need patience and you do need to register here.

• Tell Me More

  An online version of an English textbook written for speakers of Korean. Most of the textbook can be used by non-Korean speakers.Communicative tasks that aim to develop oral language.

• Telling Stories: Using Drama and Multimedia with ESL Students

  Storytelling through drama provides opportunities for students to develop language and higher order thinking skills. It also offers students the opportunity to use their background experience.

• Ten Conversation Lessons with Stories, Vocabulary Practice, Questions and Activities

  These short stories can be used orally or in written form. The stories are housed on the Internet TESL Journal's lesson pages.

• Today's Front Pages

  Over 500 front pages from newspapers in 46 countries.

• Tools for Reading, Writing, & Thinking

  This site has a wide variety of graphic organisers.

• Types of Text

  A three level quiz to test students' knowledge about text types and a test with a quiz based game (BBC - Skillswise Words).

• United Nations Literacy Decade

  For those with an interest in literacy globally, in literacy statistics and best practice by region.

• Virtual Picture Album

  A computer archive of photographs and drawings with suggestions for ways to incorporate these pictures into classroom activities. Can be downloaded free of charge for educational purposes (Less Commonly Taught Languages Project, CARLA).

• Vocabulary Builders' Page

  Worksheets and activities for developing content area vocabulary.

• Wacky Web Tales

  Students supply individual words and the programme creates a wacky story using the words. Includes a focus on parts of speech.

• Weblogg-ed: Learning with the Read/Write Web

  Will Richardson's site dedicated to discussions and reflections on the use of weblogs, wikis, RSS, audiocasts and other read/write web related technologies in classrooms.

• WebQuest: The Copabacana Restaurant

  Students decide what kind of restaurant they want based on group discussions, they compose the menu and find the appropriate recipes.

• WebWise - The Internet Made Simple By the BBC

  Learn how to use the Internet step by step.

• Word Games (British Council)

  Word games, grammar games and much more.

• Wordsmyth

  An online dictionary with other facilities such as teacher generated glossaries, crossword puzzles and quizzes. Registration is free.

• Young Learners’ Language Strategy Use Survey

  A draft survey by Andrew Cohen and Rebecca Oxford.