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Lesson Planning Resources

The Internet provides a wealth of teaching materials for ESL classes. Here are some of our favorites that ESLIM teachers may find helpful.

Dave’s ESL Cafe has one of the most extensive collections of lesson plans and quizzes, as well as very active forums for ESL teachers and students.

Arlington County’s ESL program site includes a variety of resources for both teachers and students. The REEP Curriculum tab takes you to the adult ESL curriculum, family literacy curriculum, or technology resources. Lesson plans are provided at different levels and there are printable teacher resources. The REEP Best of the Web tab links to many other resources.

The Virginia Adult Learning Resources Center provides education and literacy resources and publications for teachers of adults in Virginia, including ESL-specific resources. This site includes multi-class lessons on various topics, including financial literacy, construction, and landscaping. There is also a link to the excellent Fairfax Family Literacy Curriculum as well as other ESL resources, both academic and practical/classroom oriented.

The 100 Best Resources and Guides for ESL Teachers by Alisa Miller is an annotated listing divided as follows: lesson plans and handouts, teaching tips, specifically for teachers, specifically for teaching children, videos and podcasts, newsletters and blogs, high tech teaching, for ESL teachers abroad, and supplemental resources.

A site that is useful and fun is www.eduBakery.com, which provides puzzles that you can either download or create. Using the same or different vocabulary you can construct crosswords, bingo cards, word searches, or word scrambles. This program is easy to use; one of our volunteers who describes herself as “technologically challenged” tried it out and created a set of bingo cards with health-related vocabulary for her Advanced Beginner class. There is a free version in addition to a more advanced subscription-fee based application available.

Other Useful Resources