American English
“American English is a resource center for teaching and learning about American English language and culture. This website provides a variety of engaging materials and resources for teachers’ professional development and for students in the classroom. Both teachers and students will find new ways to practice English and learn more about the United States. Go to “resources” and then choose your audience, theme, objective, or just type “lesson plans” to get more than you can process!”
Breaking English News
“FREE, Interactive & Printable English Lessons 7 in LEVELS. 26-Page Handouts | 2-Page Mini-Lessons | 30+ Online Activities. 5-Speed Listening | Multi-Speed Reading | Dictation | Speaking.” *Multitude of activities per lesson, recent news on a variety of topics, multiple listening speed and options very useful for differentiation.
British Council Classroom Resources
“…classroom resources, produced by leading professionals in education, have been designed to be used flexibly in the classroom.The topics covered on Schools Online are applicable to all age ranges and can be used by teachers regardless of their partnership status.”
Busy Teacher
“Find That Perfect Worksheet. Browse our database of 16,989 free printable worksheets and lesson plans for teaching English. No matter if you teach kids or adults, beginners or advanced students – BusyTeacher will save you hours in preparation time. No registration required.”
Dave’s ESL Cafe*
“The internet meeting place for ESL / EFL teachers worldwide.” Job board (mostly overseas), teacher resources, lesson plans, resources for students, and lots more.
DLTK’s Crafts for Kids
“…features a variety of printable children’s crafts, coloring pages, worksheets and activities including projects for holidays, educational themes and some of our children’s favorite cartoon characters.”
Edgalaxy
Edgalaxy was “started it back in 2009 as a way to share some of my ideas with staff I was working with at my local school and since then it has taken on a life of it’s own with over a million teachers stopping by in the last 12 months from all corners of the globe.” *lots of free classroom posters, lesson plans, ideas for teachers, etc.
Education World’s Special Theme Center
“You will find many popular teaching and issue themes listed on this page…” with accompanying lesson plans and resources. Holidays, back to school, black history, community service projects, and many more themes have free resources available.
English 4 Kids
“This website is basically for parents and teachers trying to help their kids study English. You will find a guide to the materials you need in the TEACHERS and PARENTS section of the site. Sine these resources have been prepared by ESL professionals with at least 5 years teaching experience, you will find this site a great help. Good luck. We have worksheets, Games, Videos, Interactive Video Lessons & Powerpoint Downloads for you.”
English is a Piece of Cake
“If you are looking for free lesson plans and English teaching resources for intermediate, upper intermediate, advanced and proficiency level English you have come to the right place! Here you will find lessons for conversation classes, reading lesson plans, ESL listening exercises, lessons that use videos and multi-media, grammar lessons, tips on vocabulary revision, general teaching techniques, as well as ideas on how to write your own lesson plans.”
ESL Basics
“Free English Learning and Teaching Resources! These practical resources include printable PDFs & Word documents or downloadable English training videos for teachers and students….download the free stuff”
ESL Gold
“ESLgold.com provides tons of great teaching resources to make your classes fun, interesting and helpful to students.”
ESL – English as a Second Language
Very good for beginning students; lots of low level reading and listening exercises. Links to outside resources but the real value lies in the sheer amount of reading / listening exercises for beginners.
ESL Partyland
Lots of resources for teachers and students. New teachers can find lesson plan ideas; veteran teachers can find new approaches to familiar topic. “Our mission is to: provide Students with the content and tools necessary to learn online, provide Teachers with class materials, and allow for students and teachers to easily communicate together. We believe that we can transform how students and teachers communicate together, creating a more rich and engaging learning environment.”
ESL Printables
“Welcome to ESL Printables, the website where English Language teachers exchange resources: worksheets, lesson plans, activities, etc. Our collection is growing every day with the help of many teachers. If you want to download you have to send your own contributions.”
ESLVideo
ESLvideo.com provides educational resources for English as a Second Language Students to improve their listening, speaking, grammar, and vocabulary skills. The quiz activities and lessons are created by teachers, and are free to use in class, lab, or at home. Teachers are welcome to build a library of favorites, assign quizzes, view student scores, and create new quizzes
Everything ESL
There are a multitude of resources on Everything ESL. Especially useful to ESL teachers may be the support and suggestions for content teachers working with ELLs. Judie Haynes is the content editor of this great website for K-12 ESL/EFL educators. Everything ESL features staff development ideas, content-based lesson plans, downloadable activities, tips on classroom resources, interactive discussion boards, and more.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Part of the Florida Center for Reading Research’s mission is to disseminate information about research-based practices related to literacy instruction and assessment for children in pre-school through 12th grade. This includes a number of classroom activities developed by teachers at FCRR for use in kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms and pedagogical information for empowering teachers with the skills and knowledge for effective instruction in the classroom. These materials have been developed through the Center’s commitment to applied research projects with the purpose of providing information that can be used to improve reading instruction to all students. Additional resources such as a glossary of terms and the FCRR report on corrective reading may provide further insight into the usefulness of the materials provided.
How-to videos
How-to videos shot in the classrooms of Asia that focus on lesson planning, activities, games, classroom management, tips and more.
iCONN (Connecticut Digital Library) provides online access to reference, periodicals, newspapers and library catalogues in addition to databases for K-12 students, a full-text Spanish database, a database for all academic disciplines, business and general interest titles, a Professional Collection Online for educators as well as a Business & Company Resource Center and a Health & Wellness Resource Center. iCONN databases can be accessed from any school, college, university or public library in Connecticut; in addition, Connecticut public library patrons can access iCONN databases from home using their library barcode as their pin number.
Lanternfish / Boggle’s World
“LANTERNFISH contains printable teaching resources for language arts, TESOL, TEFL and ESL.” *Some very good worksheets for young learners / beginning learners, although there are thematic activities available for more advanced learners, as well as lesson plans for adults. Worth a look.
MES English
“Welcome to MES English, Resources for teachers of young learners. All of the resources are designed to be versatile and useful across a broad spectrum of ages and levels. This site hosts flashcards, worksheets and handouts to match, phonics worksheets, ESL games, certificate templates, and other activities all ready for printing.” *MES flashcards can be used with older students as well; they are not too childlike or young for new ESL learners.
Movie Segments for Warm-ups and Follow-ups
“This blog contains a series of movie segments to be used to brainstorm, warm up, follow up, and activate schemata, preparing the students for the topic that will be discussed in class. Here you will find the segments, the lesson plans, and varied topics to foster conversation. You may use the activities for a full two-hour class or they can be used separately to brainstorm or wrap up the topic, focusing on conversation, vocabulary and listening comprehension.”
NASA for Educators
“Search hundreds of resources by subject, grade level, type and keyword. These lesson plans and teaching materials support your STEM curriculum.”
Newsela
“Read closely. Think critically. Be worldly. Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction that’s always relevant: daily news. It’s easy and amazing.See the impact Newsela can have on your classroom.” Leveled non-fiction readings with quizzes. Option to track student progress. Free basic account for educators.
PBS (Public Broadcasting System)
Not specifically for ELL / ESL teachers; however, lessons could be adapted. Very well organized website for locating lesson plans; allows for search by grade and subject. Best feature – a search option for lesson plans aligned with specific Common Core standards. “…you can tap into America’s #1 Educational Media Brand for access to thousands of innovative, standards-aligned digital resources, compelling student experiences, and professional development opportunities.”
Reading A-Z
“Thousands of downloadable, projectable, printable teacher materials, covering all the skills necessary for effective reading instruction.” Annual subscription required. Leveled books, accompanying lesson plans, multi-level books, downloadable and projectable books, and many more resources available. Phonics and sight word resources also available. RAZ-Kids is an accompanying website (additional subscription required) which allows teachers to assign levels and books to students and track their progress. RAZ-Kids books are accompanied by audio and feature a quiz at the end.
Read Theory
Create classes and assign leveled readings, with quizzes, to students. Track learner progress and assess.
ReadWorks
“The non-profit ReadWorks is committed to solving the nation’s reading comprehension crisis by giving teachers the research-proven tools and support they need to improve the academic achievement of their students. ReadWorks provides research-based units, lessons, and authentic, leveled non-fiction and literary passages directly to educators online, for free, to be shared broadly. The ReadWorks curriculum is aligned to the Common Core State Standards and the standards of all 50 states. Most importantly, ReadWorks is faithful to the most effective research-proven instructional practices in reading comprehension.”
ReadWriteThink
“Lessons, interactives, calendar activities, and more, right at your fingertips” Huge collection of free lesson plans searchable by grade, objective, theme, and more. Correlated with national standards (but not Common Core). *Most lessons can be easily adapted for ESL / ELLs.
Rewordify
“Rewordify.com is powerful, free, online software that improves reading, learning, and teaching. This site can: intelligently simplify difficult English, for faster comprehension; effectively teach words, for building a better vocabulary; help teachers save time and produce engaging lessons; and help improve learning outcomes.”
Southern CT State University Curriculum Library
“Welcome to our English Learner Curriculum Library! Our Training for All Teachers Program maintains this online curriculum library of at least 250 teacher-modified curriculum units across all subjects for English learners in grades K-12, as well as adult ESL. The library is searchable by grade and by subject (science, math, history/social studies, language arts, etc.). Each unit (PDF) contains the following information: author, date, unit title, lesson overview, content and language objectives for three levels of English language proficiency, and lesson content.” *Excellent for content teachers who need to adapt material for ELLs.
Stickyball
“We have tons of FREE, PRINTABLE ESL resources for teachers, including ESL worksheets, ESL grammar exercises, ESL writing exercises, ESL phrasal verbs worksheets, and an ever-growing bank of EASY, USEFUL games and activities for the ESL classroom.”
Storybird Studio
“Inspire your students to write better and read often. Used in 400,000+ K-12 classrooms worldwide.
Free for any educational setting. Works with any curriculum or device. Storybird is a unique language arts tool. We use illustrations to inspire students to write stories: picture books for K-5, longform chapter books for Grades 5-9, and poetry for everything in-between.”
Teach with Movies
A note from James Frieden and Deborah W. Elliott, the Founders of TeachWithMovies.com: “…during 40 years of marriage and raising children, we came to realize that carefully selected feature films could supplement curriculum and foster social-emotional learning. In 1998 we started TeachWithMovies.org as a way of sharing this concept. Materials are free to download.”
Teacher Tube
“TeacherTube was designed just for you. Easily find vetted and trusted educational videos and even create your own playlist to correspond with your teaching lessons. TeacherTube is the safe, easy and reliable resource you have been looking for to bring education alive for your classroom. TeacherTube was designed by teachers, for teachers just like you.” *Often accessible in locations where YouTube isn’t.
Teaching Channel
“Teaching Channel is a thriving online community where teachers can watch, share, and learn diverse techniques to help every student grow.”
Teaching with TED
“The intent of this project wiki is to explore how TED talks can be used as springboards for further discourse, exploration, reflection, and action. The individual pages (see sidebar) not only contain the original TED talks, but also additional references, resources, and activities about the topic and/or speaker. Using it is simple. Please add! Just choose a page from the RH sidebar and dive in. You can add your own comments or suggestion by selecting the ‘Edit’ tab.”
Telescopic Text
“Telescopictext.org is an experimental tool for creating expanding texts. It is based on telescopictext.com. The tools can be found by clicking Write in the navigation at the top. Texts will house an ongoing collection of selected texts. Resources provides help for using this website, and also any news, updates, guides, support and a Q&A.”
TTribune
“TeenTribune, TweenTribune, TTEspañol and TTJunior (hereinafter collectively referred to as “TTribune”) is a free online educational service offered by the Smithsonian for use by K-12 grade Teachers and students. TTribune consists of daily news sites for kids, tweens, and teens, and includes text, photos, graphics, and audio and/or video materials prepared by the Smithsonian and others about current events, history, art, culture and science. TTribune also includes lessons, instructional and assessment tools, and opportunities for the registered users to communicate with other participants.”
Understanding Language
“Our team is currently developing sets of teaching resources that exemplify high-quality instruction for ELLs across three content areas. The resources will correspond to the widely-adopted Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics and to the Next Generation Science Standards.”
A large collection of English as a Second Language (ESL) tools & resources for students, teachers, learners and academics, covering the full spectrum of ESL, EFL, ESOL, and EAP subject areas.
Zoom In
“Zoom In is a free, Web-based platform that helps students build literacy and historical thinking skills through “deep dives” into primary and secondary sources. Zoom In’s online learning environment features 18 content-rich U.S. history units that supplement your regular instruction and help you use technology to support students’ mastery of both content and skills required by the new, higher standards.” *Not specifically for ELLs but could be adapted. US history/social studies lesson only. Free registration. Allows teachers to create a class to monitor students’ progress, track performance, etc.