Lesson Planning Resources

You might be wondering about the actual teaching in international schools. Is it different from your home country? In my experience, no. I have found that children are children the world over, the thing that’s different is small cultural differences which influence the way the children are, but the way they learn is the same.

International schools run pretty much the same as schools in your own country. You may find you have better perks and the savings potential is greater (that’s why we do it!) but you still work as hard.

Here are some resources to help you plan lessons for your curriculum and also for ESOL students. This might be especially useful if you find yourself teaching an age group or a curriculum that you’ve not taught before. It will be a relief to be able to hit the ground running!

Teaching materials from Twinkle

If your school doesn’t have a Twinkl account, either ask if the school can have one or get one individually. You can’t share individual accounts because Twinkl know straight away if you log in at the same time! It’s full of excellent downloadable resources for all ages, especially early years. They also have bilingual resources, they cater for SEND, ESOL and specific curriculums.

Using Off2Class for lesson preparation

Off2Class is a site specifically for ESOL lesson planning. It’s paid and you’ll need to log in to your own account. Once you’ve done this, there is a huge selection of lesson plans and resources, saving your time. I think this is especially useful if you are an independent online ESOL teacher.

Tips from Teacher Toolkit

This site started out as a blog by Ross Morrison McGill and has grown into one of the most widely read sites for teaching tips and resources. Many of the resources are paid. Check out his 5 minute lesson plan! Follow @teachertoolkit on social media as it has a big presence.

SparkleBox resources

Sparklebox has thousands of teaching resources for young children and they’re all free! I really like their banners and signs. There’s an excellent selection of literacy and numeracy resources and for the whole curriculum in fantastic bright colours.

TES – a library of teaching ideas

Create an account for TES and go to the resources section. There you can search for a wide range of resources and lesson plans for all ages that other teachers have uploaded. Some are free and some are paid. There’s not much in the way of quality control although teachers can leave feedback to give others an idea of the quality of the resource.

Find lesson plans at Primary Resources

Again, here’s a site full of free lesson plans and activities for the primary age group. Because the site is British, it caters to the British National Curriculum although the resources could be used by anyone.

Teachers Pay Teachers

This site is American, but is now being used by people globally. It’s a marketplace where teachers upload resources they’ve made, to be bought by others and some resources are free. There’s a huge library of items so whatever you’re looking for, will be there.

BBC Bitesize

This website also caters to the British National Curriculum. This carries games and videos for all ages on various learning topics across the curriculum. It’s fun and engaging. There is a lot for GCSE revision as well as for the youngest children.

Whether you’re teaching nursery, primary or secondary, or which curriculum, most of these sites can be used by anyone. Because the resources have been used so many times, they’re approved by teachers for teachers. Using sites such as these can reduce your lesson planning time significantly and we all want that work-life balance. Also, children love fun, colourful learning tools to make it less like learning. I’m not condoning the use of worksheets or videos all of the time, but I think children should have access to all types of learning, as they learn in different ways. Explore these sites and try out some of the free resources first, and maybe your school could buy a paid membership to the ones with paywalls.