Although I designed this lesson plan to be about food and holiday foods in general, it originally came from a lesson I taught in an English speaking club about Thanksgiving. The Food Lesson Plan gives students a chance to talk about their national food, then gives you a chance to discuss Thanksgiving and the traditional foods we eat on that holiday. Finally students get talk about their special holiday meals. It’s a great way to approach Thanksgiving with international students because they may not know a lot about this primarily …Continue

Halloween is coming and there’s a ton of stuff on the Internet for teachers. I’ve put together a lesson plan for Halloween based on the best and most interesting activities I could find. It’s especially hard to find a lesson targeted to students who have never celebrated Halloween, so if you’re teaching abroad this lesson plan is for you.
First you have students generate vocabulary, and activate what they do know about the holiday as well as what they know about monsters and scary stories. Then students read some popular …Continue

Word Wise, from English Raven, looks like an awesome resource for getting students to remember vocabulary. It’s basically a book students fill out with vocabulary, but it gets students to use the word in context, translate it into L1, think about concepts associated with that word, and interestingly enough, to write the word in English three times.
In the video, which I recommend watching, Jason explains that he developed it as a way to appease teachers and parents who associate memorization of words with learning a language. So while it’s …Continue

Unsuck It looks like a fun website that translates business speak or management-ese into normal English. There’s also a Browse mode so you can see the phrases and words.
It seems like it could be a really good resource for ESL teachers or students. Introducing the culture of jargon and it’s overuse is one direction. You could discuss some of the terms here and try to get students to translate them or talk about similar phrases they don’t like in their own language. Or have students pick one they like and …Continue

I’ve been going over resources for teaching the World Cup in the EFL classrom. There’s a lot of great stuff up but I’ve been hunting for lessons that can reach all students, even those who aren’t interested or knowledgeable about football and, most importantly for my teaching situation, one-time lesson plans that fit into an hour or 90 minutes, because I teach a lot of groups only once a week.
So here are some worksheets and lesson plans that I really like. ESOL Courses has some nice quizzes and activities, particularly …Continue

I was going to write about this since many people have been following the UK elections, but in searching for a good clear explanation, I found that Wil’s World of Words had beaten me to it.
So as he says, a hung Parliament is when, after an election, no one political party gains a majority of the votes (in the UK’s case it was 326). We call the Parliament hung because it is as if you have picked them up off their feet and hung them on the wall, or …Continue

Another fun vocab building lesson plan, the School Slang Lesson Plan teaches American school traditions and socialization while also introducing kids to teenage slang and terminology like freshman, sophomore, detention, midterm, prom and jock. A lot of your students have been exposed to American teenage movies, and they will love to discuss exactly what all the slang they’ve heard means.
Also this lesson uses pictures to teach idioms which is a great tool to help kids remember new vocab and phrases. Because idioms don’t translate literally, and sometimes metaphors don’t …Continue

One of my favorite lesson plans to teach is At the Restaurant. I compiled it from a series of sources like The British Council and TEFL.net and edited the activities and worksheets to make them more fun and accessible and so that everything relates together into one big lesson.
So if you’re looking for a complete lesson plan about food and restaurants that features vocab building, discussion, reading, cultural notes and a great role play that can be targeted to beginners, intermediate or advanced learners, take a look at At …Continue