Practical teaching ideas

Name of the resource: Teacher Man, Teacher Ms.
URL: http://jockmackenzie.wordpress.com/
Brief description: This blog is from an experienced teacher and provides practical teaching ideas.
What it is useful for: It is useful for teachers that want to find different and original language activities.
What you liked the most: THE TEACHER MAN'S SONG!!!!

What you disliked the most: I think the resources could be best organized.

IT Tools to be used for Language Teaching and Learning

Name of the resource: IT Tools For Thought (ITFT)
URL: http://ictlanguagelearning.wordpress.com/web-20/
Brief description: This blog provides IT Tools that can be embedded into language learning and other links, articles and resources which enhance teaching and learning experiences.
What it is useful for: It contains useful ways of integrating technology into foreign language learning practices.
What you liked the most: If you don't have a clear idea of what to do in your next sessions, this blog can be very helpful. You can find a wide variety of ideas for teaching by using IT tools.
What you disliked the most: If you want to find a specific teaching resource, sometimes is not so easy to find it.

English Attack!

Name of the resource: English Attack!
URL: http://es.english-attack.com/
Brief description: English Attack is a website created for English learners that contains a whole set of different multimedia activities and audiovisual materials that are updated in a daily basis. Within this page we can also find thousands of interactive games, chunks of movies and series, pieces of news, lots of information about the entertainment world, etc. All the materials gathered are organised by topic and by language cathegory. Besides, there is a forum available to comment on the resources. 
What it is useful for: it is particularly useful for the students just to move around the webpage and get some cultural information about many topics related to entertainment in English. The Photo Vocab section offers a lot of specific vocabulary and the Video Boosters might be a really interesting resource for those students who have special interest in movies and series. They can also be handy for the teachers when preparing a listening comprehension activity. These are just, however some examples of all the things that can be done with this resource.
What you liked the most: In my opinion the Video Boosters section is extremely interesting and useful, particularly for those students who still don't feel comfortable with watching long videos in English. It offers a brief definition for those terms that might be most difficult, the level of the English spoken in the video and a short summary of what they are about. All the audiovisual materials are extracted from the latest movies, series or songs, which makes the resource even more appealling for the students.
What you disliked the most: The way the page is organized may seem a bit too messy, and in order to have access to all the materials you need to sign in and pay a monthly fee (from 6 to 10 euros).

English Exercises

Name of the resource: English exercises
URL: http://www.englishexercises.org/
Brief description: A webpage with grammar and vocabulary exercises.
What it is useful for:this website is useful to practice the grammar points and vocabulary that has been taught in class.
What you liked the most: that there is a wide range of exercises to do
What you disliked the most: some of the videos do no work correctly sometimes and the students need headphones to watch them

PRINTABLE FLASHCARDS AND WORKSEETS

Name of the resource: PRINTABLE FLASHCARDS AND WORKSHEETS
URL : http://bogglesworldesl.com
Brief description It is a blog full of flashcards and worksheets to practice the different language skills in class.
What it is useful for : It is useful for the TEFL teacher to get extra and different material to work in class.
What you liked the most: You can take and print all the activities and use them in class.
What you disliked the most: Sometimes there is too much information and it is not easy to find what you are really looking for.

English as a Second or Foreign Language


Name of the resource: Isabel's ESL site: English as a Second or Foreign Language

URL:  http://www.isabelperez.com/

Brief description: This web is full of resources for teachers that contains created exercises, some of them with authentic material, web-based materials, workshops and WebQuests.

What it is useful for: It serves for having extra resources to do either reinforced or extensive activities with students.

What you liked the most: Exercises can be done directly online, so students may prefer this modality of working with a computer.

What you disliked the most: Despite it is well organized, I find the web a bit messy, because there are too many written things in just one page.

Teaching English


Name of the resource: Teaching English

URL: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/

Brief description: It is a web from the British Council focused on teachers' role since it contains a great variety of resources such as activities, lesson plans, tips, as well as useful articles, seminars, conferences and publications.

What it is useful for: It helps teachers to have a guidance during his/her job, to come up with new ideas and to be informed of related events.

What you liked the most: It provides teachers with worksheets to be downloaded for all levels.

What you disliked the most: Resources are classified by alphabetical order but not by categories.

Resources for teachers of English

Name of the resource: 
Resources for teachers of English


URL:    http://englishlearner.com/teachers/index.html

Brief description: 
It is a web page where teacher can find many activities to their classes.


What it is useful for: 
It is useful to prepare activities to English classes.


What you liked the most:
Activities are well described.


What you disliked the most:
The fact that there is no video simulating the activities.

busyteacher.org

Name of the resource: Busyteacher.org

URL http://busyteacher.org/

Brief description: worksheet sharing facility for TEFL teachers with added articles related to teaching, e.g. discipline, using film in the classroom, making grammar fun etc. I moved on to this site once I'd used everything on the British Council website.

What it is useful for : Finding colourful, original materials to supplement textbook activities which can be freely edited and adapted for specific groups and classes.

What you liked the most : The cultural content: they always do a special collection of worksheets to mark culturally relevant days: Christmas, St Patricks, Halloween, Valentine's, Chinese new year, Martin Luther King Day, Australia day... Worksheets are graded according to difficulty and content. Other teachers rate worksheets and highly ranked worksheets come up first.

What you disliked the most: The search tool isn't great. You need to register to use the site and upload a worksheet in order to download others. This would be fair enough, but sometimes the login fails, so I stay permanently logged in on my home computer. It's worth perservering though.

British Council Learn English

Name of the resource: British Council Learn English

URL: http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/listen-and-watch

Brief description: British Council has designed a website which encloses several activities you can add as extra material to your day-to-day classroom.

What it is useful for: This website is an useful resource for designing “filler” activities and it contains a lot of different activities to perform listening, readings as well as audio-visual media

What you liked the most: all the topics are up to date, being really appealing for the English learners. Moreover, the activities are very dissimilar, and they allow stimulating the peripheral learning, that is learning while enjoying.

What you disliked the most: activities are organized by topic instead of by level, so that it can be a little bit messy to find a suitable level activity for your students.

Activities for ESL/EFL Students

Name of the resource: Activities for ESL/EFL Students

URL: http://a4esl.org/q/f/

Brief description: This is a website which contains grammar and vocabulary quizzes, tests, exercises, and crossword puzzles, all according to level (easy, medium, and difficult).  There are also writing and reading comprehension quizzes, and general knowledge quizzes on culture, sports, holidays, trivia, places, history, etc.

What it is useful for: It can be used as an extra resource both inside and outside of the classroom.

What you liked the most: Both students and teachers can befenit from using this resource.  It is easy to use and can be a useful and fun tool for students.

What you disliked the most: For some multiple choice questions, only one choice or option is given, and in some crosswords when you click on a certain square for a letter to show up, a letter pops up in a different square.

The Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers

• Name of the resource: The Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers
• URL:  http://caslt.org/resources/english-sl/classroom-resource-links-music_en.php
• Brief description: It is a website that contains useful resources for second language teachers (of English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese…). The resource that I provide, however, is centered in teaching language through music, and then, it is focused on musical resources for teaching English.  
• What it is useful for: Using music has always been a very good strategy for language teaching. I consider this resource useful because it provides several different activities (from gap filling to focused on pronunciation activities), all of them related with the use of music and songs in the classroom.   
• What you liked the most:  There are activities for all the levels, from children to teenagers and adults.
• What you disliked the most: There are a lot of resources, and for this reason, you may spend a lot of time exploring the different websites it provides!  

VisiESLand (ICT)

• Name of the resource: VisiESLand (ICT Special)
• URL:  http://www.visi.es/ict/ict_teachers_create.htm
• Brief description: VisiESLand is a website which collects loads of resources related with ICT and language learning. It is focused on English learning. It contains links to another websites in which you can create games, flashcards, worksheets, puzzles, crosswords, quizzes, etc.
• What it is useful for: It provides a lot of interesting websites that teachers can use as resources since some of the websites include activities uploaded by other teachers. It is also useful because you can create your own games and ‘digital’ activities and exercises.
• What you liked the most: The variety of activities and type of exercises that it contains. Also, that most of them are free.  
• What you disliked the most: In some websites you need to register in order to be able to create the activities. 

Rubistar for teachers

Name of the resource: Rubistar for teachers (Assessment)
URL : www.rubistar4teachers.org
Brief description: A website with instructions and tools to help teachers to create assessment sheets.
What it is useful for : It is specially useful for students' self- assessment.
What you liked the most: It is free and the assessment sheets can be stored on line for a month.
What you disliked the most: It does not offer examples of rubrics for all skills or subjects.

TES resources

Name of the resource: TES Resources
URL: www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources/
Brief description: Interesting webpage for those who work with CLILL or cross-curricular contents.
What it is useful for: It is quite useful for English teachers who specially work with Science in CLILL methodology.
What you liked the most: Most of the resources use appropriate language and lessons are related to current events.
What you disliked the most: The webpage does not seem to offer a great variety of activities for adult ESL students.

A blog with creative ideas.

Name of the resource:
 If the ship sinks, we have the survival kit!

URL http://iftheshipsinks.blogspot.com/

Brief description:
This blog contains a nice amount of creative activities to be carried out in our classes. Most of them are adaptable to any level and they are intended to cheer up English lessons.

What it is useful for:
It is useful to find warm-up activities, fill-in activities or ideas to practice in class one of those days things doesn't seem to work out, maybe because students are tired maybe because it's one of those odd days

What you liked the most:
It is well organized and activities are simple and clearly explained. It allows you to find ideas quickly. It is up to date.

What you disliked the most:
I really think it's a good activity resource blog, but don't go looking for very elaborated activities in it.

BBC Learning English

- Name of the resource: BBC Learning English

- URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish

- Brief description: This webpage contains authentic material to use in class focused on grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.

- What it is useful for: It is useful for teachers and also for those who want to improve their English in an autonomous way.

- What you liked the most: There are a lot of videos to work with.

- What you disliked the most: There are a lot of resources but sometimes it is difficult to find them.