Teaching English to native speakers and teaching English as a second language are two quite different sports. Still, what’s common for both is that you need to make learning fun and interactive—nobody learns a language by writing down definitions and circling multiple-choice questions.
As an ESL teacher, you need to come up with lesson plans that allow your students to master various language concepts and do so at a steady pace so that English eventually becomes second nature to them (or they learn how to use the present simple tense—whatever comes first).
ESL lesson plans will help you organize your classes and give them structure, ensuring that all of your students reach the goal line. You only need to choose whether you want to write a lesson plan on your own or get one online.
Source: @Maria_Sbytova via Twenty20
The Shortcut to High-Quality ESL Lesson Plans That You Can Download Now
If your lesson planning can’t wait another minute, don’t worry—we’ve compiled a list of excellent ESL lesson plans that you can get in just a few clicks:
- Film | Upper Intermediate Lesson Plan
- Leisure Activities | Intermediate Lesson Plan
- Good, Well & Fine | Beginner Lesson Plan
- Reported Speech | Upper Intermediate Lesson Plan
- Actions—ESL Lesson Plan for Kids and Early Learners
- Telephone Skills Lesson Plan | Business English Level 1
- Greetings & Introductions—ESL Lesson Plans for Kids and Early Learners
- Age—ESL Lesson Plan for Kids and Early Learners
- Connecting Words | Intermediate Lesson Plan
- Mixed Conditionals | Advanced Lesson Plan
- Scientific Developments | Advanced Lesson Plan
- Sales Lesson Plan | Business English Level 1
- Asking Questions | Beginner Lesson Plan
- Environment | Advanced Lesson Plan
- All About Cooking | Intermediate Lesson Plan
What Makes ESL Lesson Plans Unique?
When teaching English to ESL students, you need to focus on both the content of the lesson and the language itself, whereas native speakers already know the language by heart, and you need to give them context and structure. For example, little Joe from Montana will know the difference between son and sun but won’t know what a homonym is. Andrea from Rome will need to learn both.
Source: Teaching Expertise
This may seem overwhelming, and teachers tend to go easy on non-native students, especially when creating first and second grade lesson plans. Still, youngsters’ brains are perfectly adapted to learning new languages, and in reality, the older we get, the harder it becomes to learn a language.
Another interesting difference is the focus on communication. Most kids (and even adult students) won’t feel confident speaking in a different language, and you’ll have to find ways to get them to open up and use the words they’ve learned. If you’re new to ESL studies, this can be the complete opposite of what you’re used to—chances are what you’ve had to deal with is a classroom that won’t quiet down despite your best efforts!
Online Lesson Plans for ESL Students
If you’re looking for a lesson plan you can adapt and use instead of writing a new one from scratch, you can hop on Google and find hundreds of:
- ESL lesson plans for kids
- TEFL lesson plans
- ESL kindergarten lesson plans
- ESL lesson plans for beginners
- Lesson plans for ESL adults
- ESL lesson plans for elementary students
The only issue is that you need to find a trustworthy source. For instance, you’ll come across dozens of free ESL lesson plans, but the quality of these resources is usually dodgy.
They are often too vague or general and without clearly set objectives. Without clarity and conciseness, these free lesson plans aren’t useful. Most of them fail to align to any official teaching standards as well.
The most that you can get out of a free lesson plan is to get inspired if you want to write your own lesson plan and see what elements you need to include. You can also rely on lesson plan templates for that purpose, but even though they may be pretty and great for organization, they come empty—you still need to fill in the blanks by yourself.
How To Spot a Poorly Designed Free Lesson Plan
It’s not easy to tell good lesson plans from bad ones just by looking at them. You need to go through the details and see if they could work for your lessons. Regardless of your teaching style, you can skip a lesson plan if it:
- Comes with a vague, unmeasurable lesson plan objective
- Doesn’t use activities adapted for ESL students
- Doesn’t meet curriculum standards
- Has no defined timelines
- Doesn’t leave room for students that need more time to catch up
- Doesn’t take into account students’ background knowledge
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High-Quality ESL Lesson Plans
Everything with value has a price, but this doesn’t work the other way around—the price doesn’t always guarantee value. A lot of websites with teaching resources offer paid ESL lesson plans—exclusively or in addition to free resources—but that doesn’t mean that they’re automatically good for you.
In most cases, you will get a chance to see a brief preview before you pay, but the preview doesn’t tell you a whole lot except that the lesson plan is—pretty. A lesson plan can (and should) be colorful and joyful, even more so if you plan to share it with your students. Still, what is written inside those nice-looking pages is what counts.
Most of these websites charge per download, so teachers spend hundreds of dollars every year on additional materials. Without a chance to be sure whether the resource is suitable before downloading, teachers often waste money on buying lesson plans or games and printables they don’t use in their classrooms in the end.
Even if you hit the jackpot and find a source of high-quality paid lesson plans, you’ll keep taking your credit card out. With a few dollars spent on a good printable here and several dollars spent on a single lesson plan there, you’re bound to do some serious damage to your monthly budget this way.
But what if we told you there was a subscription-based platform with teaching resources that would make you stop worrying about costs piling up and let you simply teach?
Find the Best ESL Lesson Plans on Teach Simple
Teach Simple is a platform that offers high-quality resources made for teachers by other teachers. Our platform is completely subscription-based. All you need to do is sign up, and you can download as many lesson plans and other materials as you like without any extra fees other than your monthly subscription.
Our contributors have years of classroom experience and know exactly what you’re going through and how often the quality of ESL resources leaves much to be desired. Before making the materials available for download, other teachers review them to ensure they meet top quality standards and official curriculum requirements.
Why Subscribe to Teach Simple
Teaching is fun—that’s why we become teachers. When students enjoy your classes, they’re more engaged and motivated to learn, but without adequate materials, your lessons will be drab, your students uninterested, and nobody’s happy in the end.
Teach Simple is here to change that by helping you significantly with your lesson planning and offering great resources to spice up your lessons.
On our platform, you’ll find:
- Quality—Our contributors are seasoned teachers exclusively. They know what it takes to create high-quality materials, and we have an intensive review process to make sure we post only top-notch, ready-to-use content on our website
- Versatility—You can use Teach Simple to find all kinds of resources you need. Weekly lesson plan templates, lesson plans from preschool to high school, games, flash cards, graphics, projects, e-books, audiobooks—you name it, and we have it. You can also find materials for other subjects, not only ESL classes
- No limitations—Once you subscribe to our platform, you can make unlimited downloads for a whole month for free. After that, with a monthly plan, you can continue downloading as many games, printables, and lesson plans as you need for your classes
- Collegiality—We understand how important teachers are to our society. That’s why we give 50% of our monthly revenue to our contributors. When you sign up, you technically give money directly to your colleagues
- Inclusivity—Teach Simple caters to all types of students and teaching methods. You can use our platform to find resources for students who need help with speech therapy, social-emotional learning, or different social skills
You’ve Downloaded an ESL Lesson Plan—Now What?
Regardless of how good a lesson plan is, it needs you to give it substance. Nobody knows your classroom like you do, so you will probably need to adapt the plan slightly to match your and your students’ needs. The best way to do so is to incorporate activities your students can relate to.
For instance, if your class is made out of Spanish native speakers, try to find some cognates to connect the two languages.
You can also spice up your lessons with additional materials not provided in the lesson plan. Remember, learning should be about having fun. Try to use different materials to engage with students, such as:
- Games—They are the best method of learning for younger students, who learn best while having fun and not focusing on studying itself
- Songs—Use songs to get your students grooving and learning. You can hand out the lyrics sheet with some words left out to see if your students can fill in the gaps correctly
- E-books—Even beginners can read some books to enhance their language skills. The beauty of learning through reading is working out the meaning of a word based on the context of the sentence
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Example of a Game for ESL Students
To give you a clearer idea of what type of material you can download from Teach Simple and use in your ESL classes, here’s an example called ESL Taboo Game.
To play this game with your students, you should hand out cards that look like these:
| Trailer | Costume | Star |
| To see Watch Internet New Before | To dress Clothes Realistic Dress up To make | Famous To recognize Rich Actor Paparazzi |
The goal of the game is to describe the bolded word without using the words in the lists below. This will help students work on their vocabulary skills while trying to work on synonyms and words they don’t use as often.
While the game is aimed at younger students, you can use it for any age group. Adults also enjoy playing games in ESL classes as they help them relax and get out of their heads, so you can get them to get adult learners to speak more freely.
Use Teach Simple ESL Lesson Plans for Free
You no longer have to scour the internet to find that perfect lesson plan that you can use in your ESL classroom. It will take seconds to find one on Teach Simple, and you can use our platform to download any other supporting materials that will make your students speak English more confidently and make you their favorite teacher.
Sign up for Teach Simple for free for 30 days. During the trial period, you can download as many resources as you want without any obligations.
Once the trial ends, you can decide to continue your subscription for a low monthly fee or go back to the bleak world of writing lesson plans on your own and wasting time and money on sub-par ESL resources. We can’t possibly imagine what you would prefer.
