Speaker notes is the space where we also place timestamps to help you find the answers to some questions about the videos. Occasionally, you may want to replay the video to let students hear the answers again, or even ask them to watch it again at home and write down exactly where the answers are. Some of the answers, which aren’t visible for students on the slides, are visible only for teachers in the speaker notes.
A typical ESL Brains e-lesson plan is very similar to our worksheets in terms of its structure. After an introductory slide with the lesson title, you’ll find the exercises arranged in the same order as in the worksheets, separated by red section slides.
give you the chance to add something extra yourself – maybe your own question or a favourite short activity related to what follows – or refer back to what you’ve just finished and answer students’ questions.
In our e-lesson plans you’ll often see animations, which we use to reveal the correct answers one by one (most of the time in red boxes or as phrases highlighted in yellow). This way, we give teachers a chance to elicit answers from students first, allowing them some time to make and discuss predictions, and also help focus their attention on specific parts of the lesson. You need to be in presentation mode to be able to see them (check out the last paragraph!).
Whilst guiding teachers through ESL Brains online materials, we mustn’t forget to mention our flipped lessons. A flipped classroom uses a blended learning teaching model where students need to get acquainted with some theory, watch a video or study new vocabulary on their own before coming to class. To help teachers organise their online work, our flipped e-lesson plans are divided into pre-class and in-class activities. You can easily see where each section starts thanks to the section slides in the skipped slides mode which are visible only to teachers and skipped during the presentation. They show you which activities we suggest setting as homework before teaching the lesson, and which should be done in class.
As we all know how much students enjoy games and group activities at the end of a lesson, we’ve included interactive versions in our e-lesson plans. For role-play activities, instead of giving a set of cards to each pair, teachers use a role-play slide with buttons (like the one below). You only need to assign one set to each pair and make sure everyone knows which button to click, or send them direct links to role cards. Then, students follow the instructions on a slide which opens in a new window (an equivalent of a role-play card) and complete the task in a breakout room. The interactive role-play cards aren’t visible in the presentation.
In our e-lessons, speaking practice can also take place as a whole-class activity. In turns, students click a box and do the speaking activity, following the instructions on a new slide linked to that box. Then, they click the ‘Go back’ button in the bottom right corner which takes them back to the main slide.
Depending on your personal preferences, you can choose to use our e-lesson plans in two ways: in edit or presentation mode. There are advantages and disadvantages of each. So, what’s the difference?
Edit mode is what you see when you first open a presentation in Google Slides. It allows you to create and make changes to the slides while presenting. You should use it when you want students to complete the activity you’re teaching by moving content or typing into the presentation (just share your screen with them or even give them control over your screen and let them do it themselves). It also allows you to see speaker notes at all times.
Importantly, if you want to use our presentation in edit mode you must make your own copy of it first. If you don’t know how to do this, see the speaker notes on the first slide of any e-lesson plan for instructions.
This is where information is presented in full screen, without any slides on the side. You can play videos and listen to audio in presentation mode, but students can’t edit any activities or type in their answers. They’ll be able to see the animations, though, which isn’t possible in edit mode.
To be able to see speaker notes, you need to use Presenter view. To do this, click the ‘Down’ arrow on the ‘Present’ button, choose ‘Presenter view’ and ‘Speaker notes’. This way, your students will see only what’s on the slides, while you’ll have access to the comments for teachers in speaker notes. Presentation mode is also great if you want to share information with your students.
‘Authentic’ materials are created for fluent speakers of a language, rather than for language learners. But more and more often teachers are realizing that real-life resources can be successfully used both in ESL lessons and outside the classroom to develop students’ language skills. The internet provides an endless source of videos and articles which, as you will see below, can benefit both you and your students.
With the world changing at a remarkably rapid rate, new and exciting topics are constantly springing to life. Students love sharing their opinions on these changes, as they impact their everyday lives. Authentic videos and articles on up-to-date topics can be used to spark a conversation, as well as introduce, practise or revise any aspect of language. They are a rich source of input and ideas that can be talked over in the lesson. See how it works in the Metaverse lesson, where students watch videos on different aspects of life in metaverse and share their opinions on the idea, but also practise the use of intensifiers.
Being exposed to authentic language builds students’ confidence. They stop seeing English as a completely ‘foreign’ language, and gradually immerse themselves in it. They are therefore more likely to engage in conversations with other English speakers outside the classroom, which is the main reason why many of them learn the language in the first place! A well-designed lesson based on authentic materials will use the real-life language from the video and create opportunities for students to use it in different contexts. Check out the It’s kind of my favourite stuff lesson plan in which students not only watch an authentic video for listening comprehension, but also use the vague language learnt from it to describe their favourite things.
Even lower-level students can benefit from real-life videos. ‘Aren’t these too difficult for them?’, one could ask. Well, they might be. But so what? It is OK that they don’t understand every word from a video, because that is exactly what happens outside the classroom! They need to get used to hearing the language and, rather than trying to understand every word, they should listen for gist. It’s a perfect way to help them overcome their fear of language immersion. What‘s more, authentic materials can be used as a prompt for eliciting specific answers, like in the ‘You’re kidding!’ and other quick responses lesson.
Coursebooks can be a great help when it comes to establishing the structure of a course, but they might lack what your students need at the moment. The topics that textbooks cover are sometimes outdated or simply not adjusted to quickly-changing reality. Authentic materials are a great way of supplementing these deficiencies. Take the Functional language for online meetings lesson, for example. It uses a funny video to teach what is of the utmost importance for any student working in English nowadays.
Textbooks don’t always revisit topics or grammar constructions taught at lower levels. But even if they do, each group of students is different and has different needs. So don’t hesitate to use authentic materials to revise topics which have not been fully understood by your students in the past. What we do and why we do it is a lesson aimed at A2 students, but the language addressed in it often turns out to be a challenge for higher-level students as well.
If you find yourself teaching students of a certain profession, there might not be a coursebook meeting their language needs. This is where real-life materials come in handy. If your students work in IT, try the lesson about blockchain. Are they in HR? Why do we glamourise overwork more than ever? will spark a great discussion on employees’ wellbeing. Do they work in logistics? Check out the How smart can a warehouse be? lesson plan. Are your students engineers or architects? Use the lesson about micro living.
ESL Lesson PlansGrammar is often labelled as dull by students. The good news (for them, as well as you) is that a grammar lesson doesn’t have to be limited to gap filling exercises. Using authentic materials can turn it into something enjoyable and interactive. They will show students that grammar is an essential part of language because they will be presented with broader contexts for its use. For example, learning how to use comparative and superlative adjectives while sharing opinions on old and new technologies in the Better. Faster. Stronger lesson can be a real hit! And if your students hate reported speech lessons, use the Practise reported speech with Vogue interviews lesson plan to show your students how useful this grammar construction can be.
From reading the news to researching a topic of interest to finding a perfect cake recipe, your higher-level students can do it in English rather than in their first language. They just need to develop the habit. The amazing thing is that making your students read in English is easier than it has ever been, given the range of topics available online. The only obstacle is their reluctance, as it is challenging and takes more time. You can help students overcome these difficulties by using our Critical Reading Club lessons. Try Are we lonelier than ever? and other CRC lessons to encourage your students to read in English outside the classroom.
ESL Brains is more than happy to help you make the most of authentic materials. Find the lessons you need using our search engine or browse through the topics you can find near the bottom of the main screen. Have you been teaching with authentic materials? Tell us about your experience!
We sometimes get so hung up on teaching our students to speak that we forget about another important skill they need to express themselves. For example, when they want to leave a complaint about a foreign online shop. Or when they need to message customer support because they have forgotten their password or login. Or both. Or when they need to respond to a message in a work-related chat. Not to mention writing an email. All these things have become essential in our students’ day-to-day activities and very often they have to do them in English. Below, we would like to share a few ideas on how to make students practise writing in English and integrate it seamlessly into their lives, without causing too much stress or discomfort.
The ways to exploit social media are endless. We can ask students to leave comments under the posts of people they follow. We can also find a post we like (there are hashtags to help us out) that ignites a discussion, choose a couple of existing comments and ask our students to start a thread with one of them. We can even suggest our students give it a try and write their own posts in English (provided they are active users and have something to say to their followers). We also have a couple of lessons where students can practise writing comments or blog posts.
All our students are customers or users of various services. And they are often either pretty happy with them or incredibly disappointed. Either way, they might have something to say about their experience. So we as teachers can help them communicate their thoughts and feelings and urge them to write reviews. They can either go directly to the website or leave a Google review. Along with restaurant reviews, we might appeal to our students’ other interests and encourage them to leave a film review on IMDb or a book review on Goodreads. You might start with one of these lessons if you want to make your students practise writing reviews: The power of reading or Let’s go to the movies.
Another useful thing connected to user experience and a way for our students to practise writing in English is customer service. Students often face difficulties and need help resolving something. But not everyone feels comfortable writing to a customer service representative straight away because they don’t know what to say or how to say it. Even if our students are not experiencing any problems at the moment, we can always make them remember something or model the situation for them and ask them to imagine they have to write about it to customer services. By doing so, we practise clarity of thought and politeness, and not just writing sentences. Here’s our lesson on problems and solutions which can come in handy here.
We sometimes overlook the value of these short but essential messages. Whether it’s to wish someone a speedy recovery, send greetings on their birthday or thank them for their help, it requires some knowledge of what and how to say it. Teaching it is simple: use different occasions. Someone is missing a lesson because they’re not feeling well? Make the rest of the group write something to them along the lines of ‘get well’ or ‘we missed you here’. Or when a holiday is approaching, prompt students to exchange greetings. We can even devote part of a lesson to creating greeting cards in Canva with special wishes that students come up with themselves. Here are some of our lessons that might help with writing these short but useful messages: Have yourself a merry little Christmas or Time to say goodbye.
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