[JayEdie]

As I have never taught ESL before, I would like assistance in finding a good starting point and also with materials.

Classes start on September 13th and I have been given no materials.

Does any one know where I could get an inexpensive, or better yet free, start up kit?

Thanks,

Jay

[Mikepass]

Hi Jay

You probably need to be a little more specific with your request. What country are you in? What age and experience level are you teaching? How big are your classes? And anymore info that may help people help you.

[ICAL_Pete]

There is so much to learn, you simply can't make a good job of it by reading a couple of pages online unfortunately.

I would recommend that first you start off on a TEFL course to get some good basic ideas down. This will make your teaching more effective and give the students what they have paid for (if you're working already you can take an online one).

Until you get start that, here's some ideas.

1) If you are in a school the chances are that you'll have a coursebook. Is that right? If so, read it carefully before each lesson so you know what you'll be teaching and you will have a chance to prepare the grammar which comes up.

2) If you don't have a coursebook, do a needs analysis to find out what you class needs to learn.

3) Seek advice off your DoS!

[English-coach]

Hi Jay Edie,

If you don't have a course book provided for you, my advice would be to choose one that you like and work from it. It will make your classes easier to prepare and it will take some pressure off you in the beginning.

I agree though, we need more information if we are going to be able to help you better.

[alawton]

You can do it! The internet has many resources. You can also go to a half price books or any book store and get some cheap ESL workbooks. What level are you teaching?


Andrew

[JB]

Jay I am in the same boat. Registration for classes finish today, and class starts in 2 weeks. I'm in NM, USA. I have another teacher helping me the first class, but Id like to be prepared on my own. I have no experience teaching ESL. Would you be open to trading intro lesson plans?

[yekdeli]

It is amazing to me that so many people seem to be in the same boat. I was there last year too...and continue to "do it all" this year, with even more students.

My school did not have an E.L.L program in place, and no real idea of what the job should consist.

It is all fine and good for someone to suggest a TEFL course, but the reality is that many times, you need to hit the ground running and just "make it work".

I got a lot of great ideas online. Here are a few sites:
Easy Things for Beginners (Interesting Things for ESL Students)
http://www.manythings.org/e/easy.
ESL Teacher Handouts, Grammar Worksheets and Printables - UsingEnglish.com
English Grammar, Vocabulary, Pronunciation Exercises for ESL Teachers and Students

All of these have some free worksheets, tests and games available.

In addition, if your school does NOT have a current set of texts to work from, or a curriculum to follow...you may have to wing it...and set this up yourself.

I recommend the books from Pearson/Longman "Cornerstones" if you are teaching k-5. If you are doing middle school, their "Keys to Learning" is very good too. I don't work for them...I just found these books to be life savers. If your district has ELL money, have them purchase books.

I don't know what age you are working with. I taught high school Social Studies for 13 years before the move to ELL, and now teach kids in grades from Kindergarten to 7th grade. It is very different teaching K and teaching 7th graders.

There are also a lot of great high interest "reading" books from Oxford and Cambridge Press. "People, Places and Things" from Oxford and "Connect" from Cambridge are great.

Follow my advice and try alibris.com for buying books, they often have textbooks for LESS than half price, used. Or abebooks.com.

You have to be resourceful and pick people's brains. Best of luck!

T.Flannery

[JB]

T.Flannery, Yekdeli- thank you for your email and post. Those sites are great. Unfortunately, my class doesn't appear internet savvy, but I may create a site for them to use some of those games. It may be the push some of them need to get comfortable with the computer. That said, I couldnt find a worksheet or guide to English numbers 1-1bil./tril. printable offline. Anyone have such a sheet?

Just finished registration last night, class starts monday. All of my adult students, with the exception of 2 from Guatemala, are Mexican natives. I have a book called "Side by Side 3rd Edition" by Stephen J. Molinsky and Bill Bliss. It is more geared toward children in esl. That said, it has some great activities.

I am thinking after introductions, I will start with the alphabet, and then finish with numbers. Assigning the class to purchase index cards for vocab building, I expect we will use them every week. With them, I can have them build the cards in class each week for 10min with words I put on the board, and we can have a different game using those words in the consecutive class. Thoughts?

[JayEdie]

Thanks for All the Great suggestions!!

However, I must not have been descriptive enough with my original post.

I will be teaching Adults in a "Free to Student" GED / ESL program offered by my church.

I will not need any certifications to do this. I just need materials, lesson plans, etc.

When I agreed to teach in the program, I assumed I would be teaching GED Prep, but the director decided he needed me more in ESL.

This creates an issue as I do not even speak a second language remotely near fluency and have no prior experience teaching non-English speaking students.

I do not want to, and really can't, back out now, so I guess I will stumble my way through for a while.

[JB]

Jay, mine is a volunteer situation as well. I may get paid $25 a class, but I'm not counting on it, and am not doing this for money. Maybe you and I should start a John/Jay thread that talks about our classes and shares mutual lesson plans. I can help you with translations if the bulk of your class is Spanish speaking. Are you in the US?

Feel free to email me and we can exchange numbers

[JB]

Hi all,

Just had our first class last night. It went really well, and I had more students show then had registered originally.

I did an intro that explained my experience learning a second language. I set the expectations, and materials that they would need. A stack of index cards, a pen, and a dictionary. I let them know that our plan was to be able to defend ourselves in English. Know how to communicate in an emergency, understand how to negociate with numbers, and have the ability to shop and do parent/teacher conferences. These would be the basics for the first semester.

We went over basic phrases to have a simple exchange. Ask and answer the following questions.
What is your name?
How are you?
Where are you from?
What is your favorite food?
What is your favorite music/artist?

Next, we went over the alphabet and numbers 1-1,000

Using this material, we played bingo with letters and numbers. I gave away prizes of small cookie packs.

What I found is that while many recognized the letters and numbers in english, the biggest problem was phonetic pronunciation.

Anyone have a good template or worksheet for basic pronunciation?

Thanks, jb

[MeNut]

You don't need to set up a website. Make an ESL folder in Favorites and bookmark the pages you want your students to do. That way thay can just click on the page in your folder and it will take them right to it.

For my advanced students, I have a folder with verb pages in it and another folder with vacabulary, etc.

[JB]

Menut- your absolutely right, I was overbuilding my lesson plan. I set up a favorites folder for ESL on each of our computer lab's pcs. Thanks for the common sense heads up-jb