TEFL Resources and Lesson Ideas

Suggested levels: intermediate and above, especially relevant to teenagers, young adults and parents.
Aims: to engage students with an authentic listening task; to provide meaningful speaking communicative practice; to encourage students to justify their opinions; to check vocabulary used for describing parents and children.
Materials: copies of this worksheet and chopped-up copies of these questions for all [...]

Suggested levels: strong pre-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to learn and practise using interesting conversational gambits in English; to practise informal speaking; to practise turn-taking, etc., in English conversations; to create a strong class bond.
Materials: these questionnaires (one for each student); enough classroom space to make two circles of chairs.
Procedure:

Give out the speed-date questionnaire (see above).

Ask students [...]

Suggested levels: pre-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to engage with the structure of informal English letters; to practise skim-reading and reading for detail; to practise writing informal letters; to compose drafts and scan for grammatical and vocabulary errors, and mistakes in register.
Materials: some “doctored” agony aunt letters (pre-intermediate examples are here, upper-intermediate examples are here and advanced [...]

Suggested level: advanced.
Aims: to engage with a classic of English literature; to practise writing and giving presentations; to experiment with different intonation patterns to evoke different emotions and convince an audience; to read for gist and detail.
Materials: these pictures of busts of Mark Antony, Julius Caesar and Brutus; these speeches from Julius Caesar; these [...]

Suggested level: intermediate.
Aims: Students practise listening and speaking on the topic of superstition, and writing using the first conditional (I would use this after a lesson on the first conditional, as this is good free practice of it).
Materials needed: a recording of the song “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder (a great version on YouTube is here). [...]

Suggested levels: intermediate to upper-intermediate.
Aims: Students practise listening, speaking and writing, and learn miscellaneous vocabulary.
Materials: You will need a recording of “She’s Leaving Home” by the Beatles (a YouTube version is here), a copy of the lyrics, several copies of the first verse printed out (widely spaced) for the running dictation, copies of the gapfill [...]

Suggested levels: upper-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to practise the “pure sounds” of English; to hear and produce these sounds in a published poem.
Materials: the YouTube lessons below (familiarise yourself with these before the lesson); this recorded poem by Thom Gunn.
This is a great way to practise pronunciation of individual phonemes (especially monophthongs) and sentence stress; it [...]

Note: this idea was inspired by the Peter Watcyn-Jones’ quizzes in Pair Works 2 and 3, this BBC article and this article from the TimesOnline website.
Suggested levels: upper-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to practise law-related vocabulary; to practise modals of speculation by answering a multi-choice quiz.
Materials needed: one copy of this quiz for each pair of students, [...]

Suggested levels: Pre-intermediate to low intermediate.
Aims: to build vocabulary and practise using functional language connected with travel via airports.
Materials: an interactive whiteboard; this IWB lesson; enough copies of this text and this gapfill task for each student, or pair of students.
Procedure:
1. Introduce the task by asking students what the longest journey they’ve ever taken is. [...]

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; [...]