Adult ESL resources for teachers-tips and tricks

Hello everyone!
I've got some resources you may be interested in! I have created a folder containing vocabulary and important expressions for topics that are commonly taught in our classes. I am putting up my entire folder for each topic for purchase. As an instructor of at any level, having a folder of recording expressions is invaluable to your learners and yourself. You can create various listening activities, use the recordings for pronunication practice and provide students with opportunities for spelling and writing practice as well.

If you would like to hear a sample, please click on the link (I promise it's safe!)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PyxOnCIu-S1uk0ke95yTEQXj_Meu5FiZ

The whole folder consisting of 85 words is $10. Please feel free to message me to buy the folder.

Disclaimer: The folder is copyright protected. The folder is restricted for classroom use only. Sharing with anyone is strictly prohibited. If you share this file with others, you will be subject to a fine.

Pharmacy topic EXAMPLES - Google Drive

Newsinlevels.com

I have probably mentioned this already but for students who are interested in reading or listening to the news, try NEWS IN LEVELS. Its a website that has three different levels of the same article. Students can read or listen to it and as teachers we can probably create a range of activities based on their level and reading needs.

ESL Library is AMAZING!!!

If you haven't subscribed to ESL Library, do so now! They have a range of resources that can be used in the classroom and assessments are there for you as well! How's that for preparing in advance?

Bravolol

A language APP that lets your students learn many different languages. Each language is divided into sections or topics and common words and phrases are provided. There is a subscription fee but it may be useful for pronunciation practice and learning new vocabulary!

Have you heard of "hioffer"? It's a website that lists a range of online and face-to-face ESL teaching opportunities for teachers. Browse the jobs and see what you can find. Most of the jobs are in Asia (China, Korea, Singapore) and you will have probably make an account and upload some information about you before you can apply for jobs, but if you're interested in working online or abroad, check out this website

hioffer.com

This page started as an opportunity to let other teachers know where the jobs are. However, it has slightly shifted to help ADULT ESL LEARNERS by providing resources and activities to use in their classroom. NEVERTHELESS, I am happy to post information about job opportunities and places where teachers can work, but it will most likely be geared for ESL TEACHERS. Thanks for your understanding.

Hello there everyone! If you've been looking into this page for ideas and resources, please feel free to use whatever you may find useful for your class or group of students! As a resource of READING, I found a nice little website that provides Adult ESL learners with opportunities to practice vocabulary related to the topic they are learning in class. Teachers! You can use this in your classroom. Have a look!

gcflearnfree.org

If you go under "Simple English", there is an interactive video that comes up for the topics you may be teaching in class.

One of the most wonderful things to hear as a teacher is for your student to personally come up to you and express how grateful they are to have you as a teacher and tell you that you need to know how amazing you're doing. I was lucky enough to hear those words from one of my students today. She told me that when she walks into my classroom she feels happy and feels like she's important. Supposedly another teacher she met questioned her for coning into her class (which she just signed up for) late and joining her class when the semester is almost done. My student came up to me and told me how she felt about this. She said "I probably won't go back". When a student doesn't want to come to your class, I think you need to stop and rethink what the meaning of a "teacher" really means.

Hello all! Please make sure to check out my blog! I have posted a ton of resources already that I developed for my class. I would appreciate feedback about the activities I post. I am also happy (and free) to develop any resources you need or do some searching for you! Send me a message, let's talk and I can help!

If you haven't yet heard of teacherspayteachers.com, a site that allows you to access a wide range of resources, you should try it now! It's absolutely free to join and you are welcome to download free resources or pay for the ones you like! Try it and see what you think :)

Hi everyone! For those of you who have been reading my posts, I've moved over to a blog that gives you access to the resources I develop, find and/or adapt. I would love for you to have a quick peek at
https://connecting-teachers.blogspot.ca/
It's still in its development stage but I have started posting information. I would love for your advice and comments as you download and use the resources!

Thanks so much!

Connecting Teachers with Teachers by Vinuthini Vinothan

I found a website that provides audio and activity sheets to practice pronunciation. Have a look!
http://international.okanagan.bc.ca/pronunciation/

English Pronunciation International Education at Okanagan University College is dedicated to English language training to all foreign and domestic students who wish to improve their English. The pronunciation modules contained herewithin are also available on CD-ROM

Hello there everyone! It's been such a long time since posting anything on this site. I developed this page to help teachers like me share resources and ideas. Then, I became really busy trying to find a job and trying to do my job that I stopped posting. I've finally have some little time to post activities I've developed (or found!) and links that I feel could be useful. Keep watching this page for new posts! :)

In order to practise listening, I adapt information about specific topics we learn for the week, develop specific questions, provide those questions to students and then read the article or piece of writing. Students listen for details to answer the questions. Its a quick way to learn information, listen for details and then have a quick conversation afterwards about what they already know about this topic or learned that day. It's also important to provide the written version of what you read to your students. That way, not only can the read and practise on their own, it allows them to make sense of what they heard by reading it independently. Otherwise, what they hear is lost once the listening activity is complete.

Reading workshop
level: beginners (level 1-3)
Activity: create your story
Although they're adults, the students in the class loved creating their own story using the pictures provided. After the activity we talked about everyone's comprehension and understanding of what they read differs. Everyone has a different perspective and use their own prior experiences to understand and give meaning to what they read.

The activity: I gave students a set of pictures that were adapted from a website which already provided the story. I used only the pictures and gave each student the pictorial story. Each student practised writing what was happening in each picture. They practised writing in full sentences, practised using verbs in tenses specific to their story and learning new vocabulary. We used this activity to talk about collocations, phrasal verbs and verb tense among other things.

One of our topics for my high intermediate class was learning about physically challenged people and how they overcome obstacles to succeed in life. While the work book provided for students contains vocabulary and vocabulary building activities, I always bring in activities of my own to deepen student understanding.

Topic: Learning about physically challenged athletes
Activity: Adapted from the "reading jigsaw" activity

I provided students with information about different athletes with different physical challenges. Each piece had information about the athletes name, what happened to them, the medals or awards they won and the sport they play. In order to develop student reading and comprehension skills, I made sure each group member read about a different athlete. Then they had to fill out a chart that requested information about the author's name, the sport they play, the physical challenge and the awards they won/goals they achieved. After completing each section for their athlete, they joined others and shared the information. Not only did the students learn about athletes around the world, they shared more in their groups then just the information on the page. The had meaningful conversations about the topics, shared their own experiences and prior knowledge.

i had a student comment this activity was really helpful for them! :)

Hello everyone! I know there hasn't been a post in so long and I'm very sorry for that! I finally have some time to share some of the activities I developed during my teaching days at Quest Language Studies! You'll see more posts soon about activities that worked, tips and tricks for having fun in the classroom!

Hey everyone, please take a minute to read the "Current Events" ideas I posted. For this post, I'll be sharing some activities I prepared for our unit on FOOD SHIFT. As an introduction I created a chart that taught time expressions: always, often, sometimes, rarely, never, and so forth along with questions about each student's preferences and habit around eating.

I also did a quick true or false food statement activity, in which students had to discuss each statement with a partner, decide whether it was true or false and support their opinion with reasons (if possible). Most of my activities tend to be partner work. If not, I encourage students to work together in partners to complete even the most simple activities because it encourages discussion and helps students become familiar with each other.

Another activity was to write opposing views of a topic around food and have two sides come up with ideas to present their views. This could be altered to have groups of students to think of a situation like: I'm a busy adult who has no time to cook because I work full-time. Therefore, I buy most of my food out and that's okay. The opposing team has to explain why they should prepare their meals rather than buying out and provide suggestions. We tried this in class and one side prepared situations and their other side provided solutions to their problems. It was an interesting discussion to say the least!

Hello everyone! I hope everyone's been having a good week so far. This week I was given the freedom to plan for the "Current Events" workshop. Honestly, I found it hard to be given such freedom because I didn't know where to start and how to plan for an exciting week of current events! Throughout the week, I've found some activities to work really well. A few include:

1. On the first day of class when students introduce each other, have them introduce their names, where their from and a current news they've heard or seen. This can help you open up discussions and make the classroom feel more inclusive.

2. I cut up some comic strips from the Toronto Star's Diversion section online and had students put the comics back together. I had seven different sets and gave students one minute to put the comics in order before moving to the next one. After sitting in one spot all morning, this gives them a reason to move. It also is a little bit fun because they get to read English comics and try to figure out what exactly is going on. We had a great discussion about certain expressions that were used and looked deeper into the meaning of some of the comics (e.g. Zits)

3. There was a website I found that gave me ideas on what I could do to teach my students current event topics. One of them was the New York Times Roundup questions. Each debatable topic had a brief article linked to it. Students read the article in pairs and then chose a side. We then debated about the topic and had great discussions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/learning/lesson-plans/year-end-roundup-2016-17-questions-for-writing-and-discussion.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Flearning-student-opinion&action=click&contentCollection=learning®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

These are some ideas that hopefully work well in your classroom. Thanks for reading and please hit the like button!😁

Year-End Roundup, 2016-17 | Questions for Writing and Discussion A year’s worth of writing prompts tied to New York Times articles, videos and images.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF.....
I have found in my speaking workshops, my students like to answer the "what would you do if...." questions. They love thinking through the different situations with their peers, discussing their reasons and automatically, without any pre-teaching involved, the use words related to agreement/disagreement, take turns speaking and can hold their spot in the conversation. One of the topics was around attending dinners and what students would if they found themselves at the dinner table disliking the food, what they would bring to a friend's for dinner, what time they would arrive and so forth. We had a lot of discussions around cultural practices and how it different to how we'd behave in Canada. Such interesting conversations came out of our "what would you do if..." session!

Speaking activity success!
On the first day of our speaking workshop, I played a game called "I like". The goal of the game is to collect cards that resemble each person's likes, beliefs or personality trait. Each card has a sentence like "I like to watch a film rather than party", "I like to play tennis", "I like to try extreme sports". Each student had six cards. Some of the cards reflect their likes and some don't. If they found a card in their set that didn't apply to them, they were allowed to switch with someone else who agreed with the card. For this activity, they had to walk around, introduce themselves and politely ask to switch cards. The end goal was to have six cards that fit their personality or likes. Although some of the students ended up with three cards and others more than six (I'm not sure why), the students learned a lot about each other and maintained a conversation with each person they met. They also became familiar and friendly with their classmates!

Speaking activity success!
I tried an activity that went really well today. My students enjoyed the activity and didn't stop talking! I wanted to share the two activities with you and I hope you can incorporate into your classes if you already don't. The first activity I played was to help students learn about each other. I printed questions on little cards and thankfully I had an even number of students. I gave 5 out of 10 of the students a question each. They stood in a line and had the other 5 students facing them (each person with a question had a person without a question standing in front of them). I gave them one minute to talk about the question they had without stopping. They loved it! I ended up giving them more time because they were sharing so much information about themselves, finding commonalities and looked really comfortable talking to each other. Then, after a minute or so I told the students to move to the next person in line with a different question. The last person in the line moved to front and everyone else moved down one person. This way, they all had a chance to meet each other and talk about the question!

A job posting has arisen for the LINC Home Study and Online English Instructor position. It can be found through TESL Ontario's career page. Make sure to have a look and apply before the deadline date!

A COMMUNITY OF TEACHERS: SHARING OUR TEACHING RESOURCES!!!
We would like to start posting activities that have been created as part of our prepping for our classes. I will be uploading these files to google docs. If you would like to have access to the activities, please message us with your email address.

As part of working at Quest, I was able to develop a few different materials and find some neat resources that I could pull ideas from. For my Oral Communication class (from now on will be referred to as OC), I found a file that has around 50 ideas to use in the class. I was able to use two to three and the students enjoyed the activities!
https://www2.cortland.edu/dotAsset/c1a635f6-a099-4ede-8f15-79b86e315088.pdf

www2.cortland.edu

QUEST Language Studies
Located: College and Yonge
School for international students. Junior program for ages 13-17 and the adult school for students over 18.
It's been a week since I started working at Quest and I have to say I enjoy it. Although it takes me an hour and half from Scarborough, I enjoy my group of students (all adults). My class is made up of Brazilian, Japanese and Korean students. The class size is small (12-16 students) and I teach Oral Communication and a workshop class in the afternoon (which differs by subject. I teach a different workshop each week. This makes it interesting for me and as a teacher, I have the opportunity to teach a variety of topics and skills.
Each level of students are given a book to follow. For my morning class, we complete a unit a week. Thus, I get to develop the unit with my resources, have lots more group discussions and plan exciting activities. The workshop classes are similar in terms of one or more specific units for the week. I should say, students sign up for the workshops they would like to try each week as well. This gives them a sense of ownership over the material they would like to learn. It also encourages them to meet all the teacher and for us teachers to get to know all the students. Its a lovely campus and with a great influx of students this summer, they've had to rent out classrooms in other buildings near college street! Although the classes are a bit long (oral communication is from 9:40-12:20), it is a great way to learn a lot about your students and help them improve. If you have any questions or would like to post about where you're working, please do so. We would appreciate your help!

Hello everyone! I know it's been a long time since our last post. We hope to be posting more in the upcoming weeks. Summer is a really busy month for private language schools. If you are working at a private language school please feel free to post about your experiences on our page!

Do you have questions about working online as an ESL Teacher? Would you like to discuss the interview process and learn some tips and tricks to help you through the interview? Let's discuss!

Sometimes we forget that our first language can be very beneficial in terms of finding employment. If you don't know already, YRDSB hires teachers who can teach various languages, including: Japanese, Sinhalese, Greek, Arabic, Punjabi and more!