5 websites to help you plan incredible lessons

As teachers we always struggle while preparing lessons. Good teachers usually tend to stay away from the age-old units in course books. Even though publishers make a great effort when planning their units, they all fall short when it comes to fit all your students’ needs. So, today we want to tell you about five websites that will help you plan incredible lessons.

Remember that you can always check our article HOW TO INCLUDE ALL FOUR SKILLS WHEN PLANNING A LESSON and it will help you make much more effective lessons. You can find many other tips and resources in our course for teachers.

As the saying goes, you can never plan enough. In fact, many times you plan incredible lessons and nothing goes as planned. After you have spent hours looking for an interesting topic, then broken down the vocabulary and the grammar and then designed some consolidation exercises, you end up with a very mediocre lesson. In order to avoid that and help you plan lessons more efficiently we have chosen 5 websites that will surely help you get great ideas to plan your lessons.But before that we want to tell you about the seven steps that will help you plan lessons almost on the go:

1. Identify an interesting topic relevant to the students’ context
2. Pick the most interesting words for your students to remember
3. Have them practise and use all these words. Through pair or group work.
4. Take note of the interesting grammar points and help your students understand them
5. Make, if necessary, a small worksheet that may require your students to use their writing skills (essays and opinions)
6. Help them generate a conversation in which they interact and hone the words and structures that are interesting.
7. If necessary, make distributable flash-cards so that your students can actually see which words are really interesting.
8. Make a rewards system for whoever uses a word or structure that was intended to be practised. Candy or sweets are always a good incentive.

Let’s now move on to the 5 websites that will help you plan incredible lessons:

The Guardian

Online journals, newspapers and magazines are always a good source for ideas to have incredible lessons. Remember that you need to make your lessons interesting, with specific aims and overall super useful. In order to do this your lessons need to be adaptable and having a headline ready to use as a lesson is always a good idea. WE’RE NOT SAYING THAT YOU HAND OUT A COPY OF AN ARTICLE. No! What you need to do is just follow the 7-step process described above. Focusing above all on vocabulary and grammar. DON’T MAKE YOUR STUDENTS READ ANYTHING IN CLASS. Just focus the lesson on practising the vocabulary and the grammar that are interesting.

Soulpancake

In this case you can get ideas from the incredible videos this audio-visual company makes. You can always use these videos as conversation starters and then break down and pick the most interesting language that appears in the video. Most of the videos included are less than 4 minutes, which is perfect to watch in class time. Don’t forget to follow the 8 step process.

Business insider

This business news portal has an incredible amount of videos and articles that your business students will find super useful. Carry out the 8 step process with the most interesting articles or videos and you will have super effective lessons for your business English students.

The food network

One of the most popular websites in the world. The food network is huge website that specialises in food recipes from all over the world. Remember that talking about food is something that can spark very interesting conversations about nationalities, cultures and people. So, do check this website every now and then and pick recipes or interesting videos or articles to make your lessons delicious.

12 minute Athlete

We all know that health and sports are a very trending topic nowadays, so make a couple of lessons a course on this. 12-minute athlete is probably one of the best websites that will help you create super interesting lessons. Exercises, muscles, nutrition, everything will help you to make lessons that your students won’t just find interesting but also useful.

Try to plan lessons using these 5 sources and tell us how they go in a comment below. We are sure your students will find them super useful.

We hope you found this post useful and if you did don’t forget to share it with other fellow teachers.

Catch you in our next post.