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: 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 [...]

Note, a lot of this information comes from Steve Castle at St Giles College London Central.
Webquests are sheets of questions designed for students to answer together, either by conducting their own searches online (which can allow for richer material to be discovered) or by looking at specific websites chosen by their teacher.
According to webquest.org, the [...]

This webquest was designed by Steve Castle.
Suggested levels: intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to navigate the internet in English to find information; to practise scan- and skim-reading skills; to practise reading for detail.
Materials needed: one computer per two or three students and broadband internet access.
Pre-teach any unknown vocabulary; then put students in groups of two or three [...]

A questweb is the same as a webquest, except the game is backwards – students are given the answers to some questions, and have to find out and write down what the questions were.
Suggested levels: upper-intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to practise navigating the internet in English to find information; to practise skim- and scan-reading skills; to [...]

Suggested levels: intermediate to advanced.
Aims: to practise navigating the internet in English to find information; to practise skim- and scan-reading skills; to practise reading for detail.
Materials needed: one computer per two or three students, plus fast internet access.
Students work together to answer the following questions. The activity stops when one group has found all the [...]

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: 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 [...]

Note: This idea comes from Writing Simple Poems (Cambridge: University Press, 2001).

Suggested levels: pre-intermediate to low upper-intermediate.
Aims: to practise a grammatical form; to see how a form can be used in different contexts within one poem.

Before the lesson, think of a kind of poem you could write with the grammar structure you’ve been teaching, and [...]