Lesson Plans by Area

Brainstorming

• Pre-Writing Techniques

  A lot of students don’t appreciate the importance of pre-writing or brainstorming or warming up to write. Often they want to sit down and start putting pen to paper immediately. However taking a few minutes to think and plan and get your brain working is an important part of writing a good essay. If you know what you are going to say, you can concentrate more on grammar and style while you write. So here are a couple of good exercises to give students in order to help their brain warm up before they get to writing.

• Steps to Writing a Good Essay

  This article was originally written for students. I just wanted to break down the steps for writing a basic five paragraph essay. I had the TOEFL independent or opinion essay in mind when I wrote this, but many high-school teachers still demand this form. While there are more complicated ways to write an essay, this is the basic model of the American academic essay, so it’s good to understand it well, if only to improvise off of it.

Comprehension

• Randy and the Nobel Prize

  Randy makes an important scientific discovery and writes to the Nobel Prize Committee. But he doesn’t get an answer!

• Ireland
• Mystery Unit

  Whodunit, a unit on mysteries comprising a reading, a bit of practice with modal verbs of speculation (as they seem to be called these days) and a writing assignment. Lots of discussion should be easy to add to this unit.

• What a Wonderful World

  A lesson plan for beginners on the classic song by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World” that promotes learner autonomy by breaking students into groups and giving each group a different assignment. The tasks focus on vocabulary, writing, grammar and comprehension.

• Yes Virginia There is a Santa Claus

  A reading lesson plan on the famous editorial about the existence of Santa Claus, “Yes, Virgina, There is a Santa Claus”.

• Trick or Treat Halloween Resources

  Two songs that introduce the idea of trick or treating and set the mood for Halloween. The Trick or Treat rap is a good activity aimed at beginners and includes a lyric sheet and some activities. The Halloween Trick or Treat Rap Video I found on YouTube isn’t much harder to understand though it is a bit adult in character.

• This is Halloween

  “This is Halloween” is the opening song from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. It makes a great introduction to Halloween, especially setting the mood. Note that this song is not to be confused with the Marliyn Manson song of the same name!

• Land Called Paradise

  This is a lesson based on a movie by Muslim American filmmaker Lena Khan. She took a song by Muslim-American singer and songwriter Kareem Salama and made a sort of unofficial music video by asking Muslims what messages they wanted to send to the US about Islam. It’s a really funny and touching short film that should generate a lot of discussion as well as providing comprehension activities in listening and watching movies. Students can also make a project of doing a similar film to spread their message to the world.

• A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

  The classic TV special, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, is a great introduction to Thanksgiving particularly for EFL students who don’t know a lot about the holiday. This lesson plan provides some materials to help students understand the video and this American holiday.

• Newspaper

  This is a lesson plan I originally devised to go with the Straightforward Intermediate textbook, lesson 8A on newspapers. I thought it would be good to bring in some realia so I bought an English newspaper and came up with this activity sheet for my student. I think it works well as a stand-alone activity. And of course it could be adapted to work with a news website

• Alternative Medicine

  A reading and discussion lesson plan for higher level students that focuses on alternative medicine: what it is, what it does, whether it works, and who uses it.

• Can I Put Some Metal in Your Microwave?

  Another story and reading lesson with Randy the Racoon. Learn about modal verbs and find out if Randy is going to put metal in his neighbor’s microwave.

• Pancakes at 8 in the Evening

  Randy is a perfectly normal raccoon, so he sleeps all day and stays up all night. Read about his routine and learn vocabulary of everyday activities and adverbs of frequency.

• Psychiatrist

  Play the party game Psychiatrist to practice asking questions and making guesses. A fun guessing game where students pretend to have a mental disorder and one student has to ask questions in order to find out what the disorder is.

• The Best Car

  Learn comparatives and superlatives with Randy the Raccoon. This series of readings for young learners features the adventures of Randy, and includes comprehension, grammar, vocabulary and discussion questions.

Culture

• Body Language

  This is an activity I came up with to teach American body language to students. It has a cross-cultural aspect to it as students talk about body language in their own cultures.

• Christmas

  A Christmas lesson plan that discusses the American Santa Claus and his counterparts in other parts of the world. Since I teach in the post-Soviet Union, where Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, brings presents on New Year’s Day and has some other differences, I thought a comparison of Kazakhstan’s holiday traditions and American traditions was a good introduction to Christmas. But of course, you could compare American Santa Claus and Sinterklass or other variations in your students’ cultures.

• Trick or Treat Halloween Resources

  Two songs that introduce the idea of trick or treating and set the mood for Halloween. The Trick or Treat rap is a good activity aimed at beginners and includes a lyric sheet and some activities. The Halloween Trick or Treat Rap Video I found on YouTube isn’t much harder to understand though it is a bit adult in character.

• This is Halloween

  “This is Halloween” is the opening song from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. It makes a great introduction to Halloween, especially setting the mood. Note that this song is not to be confused with the Marliyn Manson song of the same name!

• Culture Shock

  This is a discussion lesson that focuses on cultural differences in terms of polite and impolite actions. While the materials were designed with Kazakhstan in mind, they are easily adapted to any nation or culture.

• Halloween

  This is a fun Halloween lesson plan that includes a lot of different kinds of activities, talking about Halloween traditions, learning the vocabulary of monsters, and reading and telling scary stories. The activities can all be used separately of course.

• School Slang

  This lesson plan is designed to teach some basic school slang. Students have often been exposed to slang or at least seen movies and TV shows about high school with slang. So they will appreciate this lesson. Not all the terms here are technically slang. Students who plan to study in the US need to know freshman, sophomore, detention. So this lesson also goes over some of those terms.

• Agreeing

  Not so much a lesson plan as a quick review with examples of different ways we can accept an invitation or agree with a suggestion in English.

Discussion

• First Impressions

  Can’t remember how I came across the article in the first place, but as soon as I saw that a newspaper had photographed ordinary people and then asked other people what their impressions of the photographs were, I knew I had a lesson plan here. It’s a great way to practice talking about people.

• Happiness

  This discussion lesson plan explores the idea of happiness by having students evaluate their own happiness, think about the happiness level of their nation as a whole and look at data on the world’s happiest countries. Then students can talk about what they think about measuring happiness. A lot of extension ideas here.

• Mystery Unit

  Whodunit, a unit on mysteries comprising a reading, a bit of practice with modal verbs of speculation (as they seem to be called these days) and a writing assignment. Lots of discussion should be easy to add to this unit.

• Don't Give Up

  A lesson plan that I adapted from somewhere, but I can’t remember where exactly. This is an idea that can be adapted to any lesson on a song that has a music video. Students watch the music video first, without sound, and try to figure out what the song is about. Then they listen to the song together with the music. Finally, they get a chance to look at the lyrics. Great fun as their opinion on the song changes each time.

• What a Wonderful World

  A lesson plan for beginners on the classic song by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World” that promotes learner autonomy by breaking students into groups and giving each group a different assignment. The tasks focus on vocabulary, writing, grammar and comprehension.

• The Environment and Slow Cities

  A discussion lesson plan on ecology, environmental protection and the slow city (Cittaslow) movement.

• Yes Virginia There is a Santa Claus

  A reading lesson plan on the famous editorial about the existence of Santa Claus, “Yes, Virgina, There is a Santa Claus”.

• This is Halloween

  “This is Halloween” is the opening song from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. It makes a great introduction to Halloween, especially setting the mood. Note that this song is not to be confused with the Marliyn Manson song of the same name!

• Desert Island Discs

  A simple party game that works as a warm-up, cool-down or to give students some easy practice expressing preferences.

• Land Called Paradise

  This is a lesson based on a movie by Muslim American filmmaker Lena Khan. She took a song by Muslim-American singer and songwriter Kareem Salama and made a sort of unofficial music video by asking Muslims what messages they wanted to send to the US about Islam. It’s a really funny and touching short film that should generate a lot of discussion as well as providing comprehension activities in listening and watching movies. Students can also make a project of doing a similar film to spread their message to the world.

• Culture Shock

  This is a discussion lesson that focuses on cultural differences in terms of polite and impolite actions. While the materials were designed with Kazakhstan in mind, they are easily adapted to any nation or culture.

• Corruption

  A discussion-oriented lesson that comes at the concept of corruption from a number of point of views to get students talking including giving them situations, a case-study and research on international corruption.

• Halloween

  This is a fun Halloween lesson plan that includes a lot of different kinds of activities, talking about Halloween traditions, learning the vocabulary of monsters, and reading and telling scary stories. The activities can all be used separately of course.

• A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

  The classic TV special, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, is a great introduction to Thanksgiving particularly for EFL students who don’t know a lot about the holiday. This lesson plan provides some materials to help students understand the video and this American holiday.

• Newspaper

  This is a lesson plan I originally devised to go with the Straightforward Intermediate textbook, lesson 8A on newspapers. I thought it would be good to bring in some realia so I bought an English newspaper and came up with this activity sheet for my student. I think it works well as a stand-alone activity. And of course it could be adapted to work with a news website

Error-Correction

• Error Correcting

  This is not a lesson plan as such. More it’s an exercise or method that you can teach your students in order to improve their writing. By listing the types of errors that they frequently make, they will be able to correct those areas and improve their English. This method can apply to grammar, vocabulary, spelling, syntax, style, or any area of English language learning.

Essay

• Describing Change

  Worksheet to teach verbs that describe changes in numbers, graphs and statistics as well as prepositions. Designed for the IELTS Writing section, Task 1.

• IELTS Task 1: Example Essay Step by Step

  Step by step how to write the Task 1 essay for the IELTS Writing Section. Skills described include: writing a good introduction, conclusion, using transition words, summing up data.

• Steps to Writing a Good Essay

  This article was originally written for students. I just wanted to break down the steps for writing a basic five paragraph essay. I had the TOEFL independent or opinion essay in mind when I wrote this, but many high-school teachers still demand this form. While there are more complicated ways to write an essay, this is the basic model of the American academic essay, so it’s good to understand it well, if only to improvise off of it.

• Transitions Are Your Friend

  A quick review of transition words and a chance to practice using transition words in a paragraph. Good practice for the TOEFL or IELTS essay.

• Sample TOEFL Essay: Favorite Sport

  A sample descriptive essay for the TOEFL independent question on the topic “My favorite sport”, with evaluation and tips for writing a better essay.

• Sample TOEFL Essay

Fluency

• Ordering at a Restaurant for Beginners
• Find Someone Who, Greet Them As If

  A new twist on “Find Someone Who”

• First Impressions

  Can’t remember how I came across the article in the first place, but as soon as I saw that a newspaper had photographed ordinary people and then asked other people what their impressions of the photographs were, I knew I had a lesson plan here. It’s a great way to practice talking about people.

• Happiness

  This discussion lesson plan explores the idea of happiness by having students evaluate their own happiness, think about the happiness level of their nation as a whole and look at data on the world’s happiest countries. Then students can talk about what they think about measuring happiness. A lot of extension ideas here.

• Culture Role Play

  This is an activity that that I adapted from the US Peace Corp’s clasroom guide, Building Bridges. Students role play two different cultures and interact with each other. Then the class can discuss how cultural differences can be misinterpreted. The activity was originally designed for students in the US and I changed it around a bit to make it more accessible to ESL learners of all levels and to make it more universally appropriate.

• Alibi

  A fun lesson plan where students must come up with group alibis and then get examined separately to see how well they remember their alibi and how detailed it was. This lesson works best with classes from 6 to 12 people. For larger classes, this lesson takes a really long time! While theoretically it can be adjusted to students of any level, the procedure is a bit confusing so it goes better with higher level students.

• Accents

  Another lesson plan that comes from my speaking club. This one focuses on accents and regional forms of English which is a topic that students don’t know a lot about. It can be a lot of fun for them to practice new accents. As a side-effect they get a little bit of focus on pronunciation. And of course this lesson dispels the myth that there is one correct way to speak English.

• Speaking with Emotion

  A way to help students speak more fluently with emotion. Many times students are focusing so hard on meaning and making mistakes and when they speak that they end up sounding like robots.

• Psychiatrist

  Play the party game Psychiatrist to practice asking questions and making guesses. A fun guessing game where students pretend to have a mental disorder and one student has to ask questions in order to find out what the disorder is.

• Interview a Star

  This is a pretty simple speaking lesson where each student picks a famous person and then the other students interview him/her as that person. It can be done in class or assign kids to do research for homework first.

• Food

  This is a pretty simple discussion lesson plan to get students talking about food from different perspectives. It can be used as part of a lesson, or supplemented with activities, games, and so on. I found this was a good lesson to do when I was still getting to know students because it is a pretty universal topic and as a foreigner in a foreign country, students love telling me about their traditional food!

• Have You Ever, Would You Ever

  Basically this lesson is a list of questions to get students talking about unusual experiences. It can be good practice for conditional structures so it might follow a lesson on the use of would as hypothetical: ‘I would go to France if I had enough money.’ ‘I would eat a cockroach if they were baked in a cake.’

Game

• Find Someone Who, Greet Them As If

  A new twist on “Find Someone Who”

• Mystery Unit

  Whodunit, a unit on mysteries comprising a reading, a bit of practice with modal verbs of speculation (as they seem to be called these days) and a writing assignment. Lots of discussion should be easy to add to this unit.

• Psychiatrist

  Play the party game Psychiatrist to practice asking questions and making guesses. A fun guessing game where students pretend to have a mental disorder and one student has to ask questions in order to find out what the disorder is.

• Fun Review: Bombs and Jeopardy

  Two fun reviewing games: Jeopardy and the Bomb Game. Great for creating a little competition and helping students prepare for a test in a memorable way.

• Mysteries

  I love reading mysteries and many students love it too. Not only are mysteries often action packed, but they also give students a reason to want to read. Instead of forcing students to read because it’s educational, students want to solve the mystery and find out who did it. There are a lot of great resources out there and a lot of ways to present mystery stories to your students.

• Giving Your Students English Names

  Just some different ways to give your students English names. If you want to do this, it’s best to do it on the first day or so, so that all class long the students will use English names and get used to pronunciation. It has the added benefit that they get used to the names themselves which makes reading texts a lot easier. Finally, it can set a mood in class that English class is a special time with special names and help get students in the mood to study more easily. But in some cases you may want to do this for only one lesson, particularly with some of the suggestions below on picking silly names.

Grammar

• Inversion With the Conditional
• Randy and the Nobel Prize

  Randy makes an important scientific discovery and writes to the Nobel Prize Committee. But he doesn’t get an answer!

• Mystery Unit

  Whodunit, a unit on mysteries comprising a reading, a bit of practice with modal verbs of speculation (as they seem to be called these days) and a writing assignment. Lots of discussion should be easy to add to this unit.

• What a Wonderful World

  A lesson plan for beginners on the classic song by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World” that promotes learner autonomy by breaking students into groups and giving each group a different assignment. The tasks focus on vocabulary, writing, grammar and comprehension.

• Where is It? Prepositions of Place

  My original giving directions lesson plan is focused more on practice in talking about where things are in a town or city and describing how to get there. This lesson is more about teaching and controlled practice. It focuses on basic prepositions of location such as “next to”, “in front of”, “behind”, “near”, “far from”, as well as “on”, “in”, and “at”

• Who Knew?

  A listening lesson plan on regular verbs in the Past Simple using Pink’s song, “Who Knew”. It also gets into some comprehension questions and a bit about love and relationships.

• Bad Grammar

  A lesson plan that touches on bad grammar and slang used in pop music. Students will learn common terms like, “ain’t”, “got no”, and “we be”. They then discuss why pop songs often have bad grammar and spelling and also whether these terms are really all that bad.

• Future Tenses and New Year's Resolutions

  This is just an idea I had to use New Year’s resolutions to teach the future tense. That in and of itself is probably nothing new. However one major issue that many students have with talking about the future in English is distinguishing between when we use “going to do”, when we use “will do” and when we use present continuous, “I am doing”. So here’s a way to help them understand the difference.

• Present Simple and Everyday Routines

  I designed this lesson plan based on the fairly standard one of teaching present simple, every day activities and adverbs of frequency, while trying to keep in mind the critique that this can lead to inauthentic sentences (How often do you take a shower? Sometimes-who talks like that?).

• More Basics for Beginners

  This is another lesson plan I put together for working with young adult beginners. This lesson covers both asking for and giving basic biographical information like name, phone number, address and “Can I/May I” to ask for permission.

• High School Beginners: Lesson 1

  This is a basic lesson plan I put together for a class with teenagers from 15-22 in a vocational school. The students were beginner to elementary level. My main goals were to test their level, and lay a foundation of the basics for future classes, as well as to give them some classroom English.

• Comparatives and Superlatives

  A couple of activities to help students practice the comparative and superlative forms. This lesson doesn’t teach those forms; it’s just to give students a chance to use them.

• Can I Put Some Metal in Your Microwave?

  Another story and reading lesson with Randy the Racoon. Learn about modal verbs and find out if Randy is going to put metal in his neighbor’s microwave.

• Pancakes at 8 in the Evening

  Randy is a perfectly normal raccoon, so he sleeps all day and stays up all night. Read about his routine and learn vocabulary of everyday activities and adverbs of frequency.

• The Best Car

  Learn comparatives and superlatives with Randy the Raccoon. This series of readings for young learners features the adventures of Randy, and includes comprehension, grammar, vocabulary and discussion questions.

Holidays

• Christmas

  A Christmas lesson plan that discusses the American Santa Claus and his counterparts in other parts of the world. Since I teach in the post-Soviet Union, where Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, brings presents on New Year’s Day and has some other differences, I thought a comparison of Kazakhstan’s holiday traditions and American traditions was a good introduction to Christmas. But of course, you could compare American Santa Claus and Sinterklass or other variations in your students’ cultures.

• Trick or Treat Halloween Resources

  Two songs that introduce the idea of trick or treating and set the mood for Halloween. The Trick or Treat rap is a good activity aimed at beginners and includes a lyric sheet and some activities. The Halloween Trick or Treat Rap Video I found on YouTube isn’t much harder to understand though it is a bit adult in character.

• This is Halloween

  “This is Halloween” is the opening song from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. It makes a great introduction to Halloween, especially setting the mood. Note that this song is not to be confused with the Marliyn Manson song of the same name!

• Halloween

  This is a fun Halloween lesson plan that includes a lot of different kinds of activities, talking about Halloween traditions, learning the vocabulary of monsters, and reading and telling scary stories. The activities can all be used separately of course.

IELTS

• Describing Change

  Worksheet to teach verbs that describe changes in numbers, graphs and statistics as well as prepositions. Designed for the IELTS Writing section, Task 1.

• IELTS Task 1: Example Essay Step by Step

  Step by step how to write the Task 1 essay for the IELTS Writing Section. Skills described include: writing a good introduction, conclusion, using transition words, summing up data.

• IELTS Speaking Part I

  Based on my experience teaching the IELTS test, here’s my lesson plan for introducing the Speaking section of the IELTS, starting with part I.

• IELTS Speaking Lesson Part III

  A lesson plan for the first lesson introducing part III of the IELTS speaking section, which asks students to discuss topic more abstractly or generally. This lesson plan was designed with my specific class in mind, but I think the problems they are having are very common so I think it will be useful for everyone.

• Steps to Writing a Good Essay

  This article was originally written for students. I just wanted to break down the steps for writing a basic five paragraph essay. I had the TOEFL independent or opinion essay in mind when I wrote this, but many high-school teachers still demand this form. While there are more complicated ways to write an essay, this is the basic model of the American academic essay, so it’s good to understand it well, if only to improvise off of it.

Roleplay

• Ordering at a Restaurant for Beginners
• Mystery Unit

  Whodunit, a unit on mysteries comprising a reading, a bit of practice with modal verbs of speculation (as they seem to be called these days) and a writing assignment. Lots of discussion should be easy to add to this unit.

• Culture Role Play

  This is an activity that that I adapted from the US Peace Corp’s clasroom guide, Building Bridges. Students role play two different cultures and interact with each other. Then the class can discuss how cultural differences can be misinterpreted. The activity was originally designed for students in the US and I changed it around a bit to make it more accessible to ESL learners of all levels and to make it more universally appropriate.

• Restaurant

  A comprehensive lesson plan to cover vocabulary and commonly used words and expressions for going to the restaurant. It also gives practice in dealing with bad waiters/waitresses or bad customers. Can be followed up by talking about food or common polite constructions like, “would you like?” Note that while this lesson plan can be easily adapted to beginners, and textbooks provide plenty of resources for easy dialogues ordering food, I have written this lesson plan for intermediate and advanced students.

Song

• Don't Give Up

  A lesson plan that I adapted from somewhere, but I can’t remember where exactly. This is an idea that can be adapted to any lesson on a song that has a music video. Students watch the music video first, without sound, and try to figure out what the song is about. Then they listen to the song together with the music. Finally, they get a chance to look at the lyrics. Great fun as their opinion on the song changes each time.

• What a Wonderful World

  A lesson plan for beginners on the classic song by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World” that promotes learner autonomy by breaking students into groups and giving each group a different assignment. The tasks focus on vocabulary, writing, grammar and comprehension.

• Who Knew?

  A listening lesson plan on regular verbs in the Past Simple using Pink’s song, “Who Knew”. It also gets into some comprehension questions and a bit about love and relationships.

• Bad Grammar

  A lesson plan that touches on bad grammar and slang used in pop music. Students will learn common terms like, “ain’t”, “got no”, and “we be”. They then discuss why pop songs often have bad grammar and spelling and also whether these terms are really all that bad.

• Tom's Diner

  A listening exercise where students listen to the song Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega and fill in missing verbs in the Present Continuous. Then students discuss the song and why the Present Continuous tense is used instead of the traditional past simple so it’s great for reviewing verb tenses. You can find the song on iTunes or almost any music download site.

TOEFL

• Writing Good TOEFL Paragraphs Quickly

  A great method from the Michigan Guide for writing good body paragraphs quickly and easily with 6 simple questions.

• Steps to Writing a Good Essay

  This article was originally written for students. I just wanted to break down the steps for writing a basic five paragraph essay. I had the TOEFL independent or opinion essay in mind when I wrote this, but many high-school teachers still demand this form. While there are more complicated ways to write an essay, this is the basic model of the American academic essay, so it’s good to understand it well, if only to improvise off of it.

• Sample TOEFL Essay: Favorite Sport

  A sample descriptive essay for the TOEFL independent question on the topic “My favorite sport”, with evaluation and tips for writing a better essay.

Vocabulary

• What a Wonderful World

  A lesson plan for beginners on the classic song by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World” that promotes learner autonomy by breaking students into groups and giving each group a different assignment. The tasks focus on vocabulary, writing, grammar and comprehension.

• Halloween

  This is a fun Halloween lesson plan that includes a lot of different kinds of activities, talking about Halloween traditions, learning the vocabulary of monsters, and reading and telling scary stories. The activities can all be used separately of course.

• Present Simple and Everyday Routines

  I designed this lesson plan based on the fairly standard one of teaching present simple, every day activities and adverbs of frequency, while trying to keep in mind the critique that this can lead to inauthentic sentences (How often do you take a shower? Sometimes-who talks like that?).

• Jobs and Families

  This lesson plan was designed for high-school beginners as an early lesson to test their level and give them a basic framework for communication. The topic today was jobs and also family words.

• More Basics for Beginners

  This is another lesson plan I put together for working with young adult beginners. This lesson covers both asking for and giving basic biographical information like name, phone number, address and “Can I/May I” to ask for permission.

• High School Beginners: Lesson 1

  This is a basic lesson plan I put together for a class with teenagers from 15-22 in a vocational school. The students were beginner to elementary level. My main goals were to test their level, and lay a foundation of the basics for future classes, as well as to give them some classroom English.

• Fun Way to Teach Vocab

  I’m always looking for fun and interesting ways to teach new vocabulary and I came up with this idea based on Taboo or the $64,000 Pyramid. This game works best when you are sure that students probably won’t know any of the words perfectly, but will be able to infer the meanings of some of them.

• Can I Put Some Metal in Your Microwave?

  Another story and reading lesson with Randy the Racoon. Learn about modal verbs and find out if Randy is going to put metal in his neighbor’s microwave.

• Pancakes at 8 in the Evening

  Randy is a perfectly normal raccoon, so he sleeps all day and stays up all night. Read about his routine and learn vocabulary of everyday activities and adverbs of frequency.

• The Best Car

  Learn comparatives and superlatives with Randy the Raccoon. This series of readings for young learners features the adventures of Randy, and includes comprehension, grammar, vocabulary and discussion questions.

• Appearance
• Design Your Living Room

  This lesson teaches or reviews the names of living room furniture by getting students to design their perfect living room. It could easily be adapted to other rooms in the house as well.

• Machines, Tools and Inventions
• Error Correcting

  This is not a lesson plan as such. More it’s an exercise or method that you can teach your students in order to improve their writing. By listing the types of errors that they frequently make, they will be able to correct those areas and improve their English. This method can apply to grammar, vocabulary, spelling, syntax, style, or any area of English language learning.

• Giving Your Students English Names

  Just some different ways to give your students English names. If you want to do this, it’s best to do it on the first day or so, so that all class long the students will use English names and get used to pronunciation. It has the added benefit that they get used to the names themselves which makes reading texts a lot easier. Finally, it can set a mood in class that English class is a special time with special names and help get students in the mood to study more easily. But in some cases you may want to do this for only one lesson, particularly with some of the suggestions below on picking silly names.

Writing

• Writing Good TOEFL Paragraphs Quickly

  A great method from the Michigan Guide for writing good body paragraphs quickly and easily with 6 simple questions.

• Ireland
• Mystery Unit

  Whodunit, a unit on mysteries comprising a reading, a bit of practice with modal verbs of speculation (as they seem to be called these days) and a writing assignment. Lots of discussion should be easy to add to this unit.

• What a Wonderful World

  A lesson plan for beginners on the classic song by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World” that promotes learner autonomy by breaking students into groups and giving each group a different assignment. The tasks focus on vocabulary, writing, grammar and comprehension.

• Giving Directions

  This lesson teaches students how to give directions in English by using a map to let students practice describe where buildings are located and then give and follow geographical directions to locate specific buildings.

• Draw Label Caption
• Pre-Writing Techniques

  A lot of students don’t appreciate the importance of pre-writing or brainstorming or warming up to write. Often they want to sit down and start putting pen to paper immediately. However taking a few minutes to think and plan and get your brain working is an important part of writing a good essay. If you know what you are going to say, you can concentrate more on grammar and style while you write. So here are a couple of good exercises to give students in order to help their brain warm up before they get to writing.

• Precise Writing

  This is a lesson that comes from my father’s writing course at Amherst College. English 1, a required course at the school in the 1940s, included the assignment to write precise, exact and complete directions on how to throw a ball. I have simply added some new ideas to this basic concept.

• Steps to Writing a Good Essay

  This article was originally written for students. I just wanted to break down the steps for writing a basic five paragraph essay. I had the TOEFL independent or opinion essay in mind when I wrote this, but many high-school teachers still demand this form. While there are more complicated ways to write an essay, this is the basic model of the American academic essay, so it’s good to understand it well, if only to improvise off of it.

• Sample TOEFL Essay: Favorite Sport

  A sample descriptive essay for the TOEFL independent question on the topic “My favorite sport”, with evaluation and tips for writing a better essay.

• Sample TOEFL Essay