Intermediate & Advanced
Lesson Materials

A continuum of activity ideas, from "supported use" to "independent use" of a new skill - see details here

Comprehensive lesson materials on 10 topics - an Open Educational Resource

Activities for engaging students with texts & videos - 

• from ESL Library & the Washington Post

• from the NY Times

• Create a place where students can share their thoughts: padlet.com/

Lesson plans from the British Council on Teaching English (theme-based plans & resources)

Stories about immigrant and refugee women's inner journeys, by Shara Noori

• A Journey of Strength 

• Finding Peace in a New Place

News

• ESOL News Oregon 

• breakingnewsenglish.com/ (leveled news)

• www.newsinlevels.com/ (leveled news)

• learningenglish.voanews.com/  (some videos too)

Civil Rights & unions

• MLK and the Civil Rights movement - great lesson resources!

• Cesar Chavez (article)

Constitution & elections - here

Culture & cultural differences - here. 

Personality, learning, & parenting styles

• Personality - presentation format (what's yours? Zodiac, Myers-Briggs, mini-debates) 

• Personality quiz - Lesson plan, the questions, and the analysis/scoresheet

• Zodiac - brief descriptions in a word doc, presentation

• Myers-Briggs (with videos) On-line Myers-Briggs test

• Holland's 6 personality types

• Parenting styles - descriptions to use for discussion, vocabulary 

• What's your learning style?  

  • 3 learning styles (with activity)

  • 7 learning styles described

• Personality - teaching ideas & materials

• Nature vs nurture 

  • Triplets discover one another (nurture v nature)

  • learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/nature-or-nurture/ 

  • explorable.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate 

  • examples.yourdictionary.com/nature-vs-nurture-examples.html 

  • encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/na/Nature_versus_nurture 

• 8 Types of People You'll See at the Book Store

• Birth order

• Personality adjectives crossword

Fraud and scams

• A lot of great curriculum - lesson plans & materials - created by some MA TESOL students at PSU for BLC. 

Count & non-count nouns 

• Teaching presentation

• Count & non-count nouns in food / recipes / cooking

• Advanced activity  (can be adapted for beginners)

Be a candy tester! 

• Level 5 version, level 3 version, level 1 version

Writing

• An integrated grammar and composition book for intermediate students, from Tim Krause

Email pragmatics

• Lesson plan

• Sample emails (for students to analyze) and "answers"

• "Grid of formality": Formal / neutral / informal wording

• Do's and don'ts for writing emails

• Embedded questions (for politeness) - Cheat sheet, board game 

• Netflix email scam article

• Customer service on-line forms (to show that they're similar to email)

Sleep and Dreams - 

• Why do we dream? 

• Sleep & dreams - lesson plan & materials

• Why do we sleepwalk? (video)

Famous American paintings. Adapted from https://learnodo-newtonic.com/famous-american-paintings 

• Paintings (including some parodies)

• Discussion questions

• Blurbs about each painting, simplified from the web page, with underlined vocabulary

Portland & Oregon - 

• lesson plan ideas

• Places around the state, Oregon trivia

• TimK's "Seven Wonders of Oregon" - ESL e-book with exercises

Conduct Us - a fun, wordless video for teaching adverbs

• Lesson plan with links

Cars, driving, accidents 

• Distracted driving - Get a speaker to come to your class to discuss it - free! (I have not tried this)

• What should you do if you see sirens behind you?

• Defensive driving in the US vs other countries 

• What to do if you're in an accident (same material for a jigsaw activity)

• Rollover accident - reading passage with comprehension questions

• Driving vocabulary matching

• Road sign matching and answer key

• Renting a car - dialogues, listening from Randall's ESL

• Car parts & reading passages

• Cars - crossword puzzle

Advanced English verb tenses 

• Explained in Russian

See also:

• Resource list to share with students

• Listening page

• Healthcare page

• Activities page

• Culture and cultural differences page

• Constitution & Elections