TEFL Resources and Lesson Ideas

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: 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). [...]

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 [...]

You can use this method to interestingly revise either present or past narrative forms.
Suggested levels: pre-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to revise present or past narrative forms; to practise note-taking and writing stories; to practise listening for detail; to practise conveying emotion through different intonation patterns.
Preparation: a short, strange/ ghost story to tell your students. It should [...]

Suggested levels: pre-intermediate to low upper-intermediate.
Aims: to revise grammatical structures; to encourage creative use of language, to aid memory; to focus on natural and unnatural contexts for specific language items in English.
Preparation: think of an unusual sentence containing the grammar structure you want to focus on, or google the grammar structure and see what comes [...]

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: strong pre-intermediate to low upper-intermediate.
Aims: to revise past or present narrative forms; to practise telling and writing narratives; to practise changing intonation patterns to convey different emotions and affect an audience.
Preparation: none.
Ask a student what they did yesterday after school. Board their replies, changing the words slightly and asking questions so that each [...]

Suggested levels: pre-intermediate to advanced (challenge higher levels by asking them to rhyme two-syllable words).
Aims: to revise vocabulary; to encourage attentive listening; to encourage awareness of the different sounds of English.
Preparation: none.
This is a good way to get students focussed on particular sounds.
Divide the class into two teams, and get them facing each other in [...]

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 idea comes from Impro by Keith Johnstone.
Suggested levels: intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to practise narrative and question forms; to practise sentence stress and intonation; to practise writing stories; to practise attentive listening and reading; to practise informal story telling; to create group harmony.
Materials: Students should have some paper and a pen.

Procedure:

Sit in a [...]