TEFL Resources and Lesson Ideas

NB I have adapted this activity from Deck of Conversations, on the onestopenglish website.
Suggested Levels: elementary and above .
Aims: to practise speaking, listening and polite turn-taking in informal conversations.
Materials needed: dice and students; a list of conversation topics.
Procedure: Before the class, prepare a list of conversation topics, one for each number of the dice; [...]

Note: the ideas for most of these activities come from Jim Scrivener’s excellent Straightfoward Pre-Intermediate Teacher’s Book.
Suggested levels: elementary to advanced.
Aims: to enliven gapfill tasks in coursebooks.
The One-Minute Gap Fill
This can cause a few laughs from students. Present the gapfill in the usual way, but set a strict time limit of one minute for students [...]

Suggested levels: beginner to advanced.
Aims: to revise vocabulary and the spelling of newly-acquired words.
Materials: a word search grid on a familiar coursebook theme for each pair of students (a crime one is here); a blank word search grid (here).
Preparation: photocopies of the two grids.
This is a good vocabulary revision exercise, wherein students focus on word [...]

Suggested levels: strong elementary to advanced.
Aims: to revise vocabulary; to focus on different contexts for recently-acquired vocabulary items; to practise writing in different registers and for different functions.
Materials needed: a large envelope, box, plastic bag or wallet containing vocabulary from past lessons; willing students.
Keep a vocabulary bag for new words. Every now and then, pick [...]

Suggested levels: beginner to intermediate.
Aims: to focus on English sentence construction; to revise a grammatical form.
Think of or find a long-ish sentence containing the grammar structure you’re focussing on. Give one word to each student. Ask them to stand in lines and say their words. See how many different positions they can stand in.

Note: this is a splice of an activity I found in Trouble with Prepositions, Articles, Nouns and Word Order? and another I found on the British Council’s teaching English website, here. The vocabulary revised relates to household furniture.
Suggested level: pre-intermediate/ strong elementary.
Aims: to revise prepositions of place and movement; to encourage group harmony.
Preparation: one copy [...]

Note: This idea comes from Humanising Your Coursebook by Mario Rinvolucri (used with permission). I’ve found it to be a very useful way of practicing clear articulation, splitting sentences into meaningful chunks (“connected speech”), listening, writing, and various vocabulary, spelling and grammatical points.
Suggested levels: strong elementary to advanced.
Aims: to encourage attentive listening; to experiment with [...]

Note: this idea comes from Jackie Jays, courtesy of the smokers’ corner at St Giles London Central. It’s a really good one to use with new classes, or old classes with a new teacher.
Suggested levels: strong elementary to advanced.
Aims: to revise and practise the grammar of English question forms; to practise polite turn-taking and the [...]