ESL Pals Q&A: ESL Curriculum for Kids and Adults

06 September 2022 Guest posts

1. What is ESL Pals?

ESL Pals is a website independently run by two ESL teachers. The purpose is to provide fellow teachers with lesson plans that they can use within their own classes. Planning is the most time consuming task as an ESL teacher. If you have a subscription on ESL Pals, you don’t have to worry about planning as you can use our 100s of ESL lesson plans for kids and adults. The website offers a full ESL curriculum for kids and adults. Furthermore, new lessons are added every week to ensure that you can always get your hands on fresh and interesting content!

2. Why did you start ESL Pals?

Being ESL teachers ourselves, we understand the pain of sifting through lesson material to find fun, engaging and useful lesson plans. Therefore, we thought it a good idea to consolidate our ESL lesson plans into a user-friendly platform that teachers can use to make their lives easier. Creating ESL Pals, we wanted to help teachers move away from long hours of lesson planning, so that they can spend their time on teaching, promoting their classes and ultimately - earning more money. We plan, you teach!

3. What’s the story with the llama in your logo?

You can call ESL Pals our lockdown mascot. Stuck in one of the strictest lockdowns in the world in Arequipa, Peru. We thought it a perfect time to put our ideas together and work hard to get ESL Pals off the ground. And so, the little llama was born. He kept us motivated during trying times - and we hope he does the same for our members!

4. What do you get when you sign up?

When you sign up to ESL Pals, you are granted access to our full library of lesson plans. We provide lesson plans for both adults and kids. At ESL Pals, kids lessons include fun games and speaking activities to ensure children are engaged during the lesson. For adults, we like to introduce videos and articles about interesting topics so that students want to contribute in class. Please note that our adult lessons are available in both general and business topics.

In addition to full lesson plans, we also offer independent grammar lesson plans that can be used in class or as additional homework tasks. Our newest addition to the website is our conversation classes! These provide students with multiple speaking prompts so that they can practice their free speech. New lessons are added weekly so you will never get bored or run out at ESL Pals!

5. How often do you add new content?

Weekly! We add to our online library on a weekly basis. We alternate between kids and adult lesson plans. But conversation and grammar lessons are also added weekly to ensure that you always have access to fresh content. As an ESL Pals member, you can request lesson topics and levels and we will add it to our lesson rota to upload to the website! Whenever a lesson is added, it is also slotted into our ESL curriculum for kids and adults to ensure you can easily navigate our lesson plans and use it with multiple students.

5. Tell us more about your kids lessons.

Our ESL kids lesson plans are structured in units of three lesson plans. For kids, we like to stick to one topic for multiple lessons to ensure that kids can revise and progress. These lesson plans are in the format of presentation slides so that the teacher can share their screen with kids and engage with them through platforms like Skype and Zoom. The lesson plans include pictures, games, reading and multiple speaking games. All kids lessons can be downloaded as PDF files. These lesson units are available in levels 1, 2, and 3. We are sure that you and your students will love it!

7. Tell us more about your adult lessons.

The adult lesson plans at ESL Pals are in a document format. Teachers receive a student version with all the questions and exercises (SV) and teacher version (TV) with the answers. From experience, we have found that adults respond best to interesting topics introduced through articles and videos. Therefore we use this for all our adult lessons. plans. This way students can practice their speaking, reading and listening skills all in one lesson. We have lesson plans available for both general and business lesson topics. General English is available in all levels (A1-C2) and Business lessons are available from intermediate upward (B1-C2) Homework is included in all our adult lesson plans. Our latest edition is our conversation lessons. These lesson plans can be used in between full lesson plans to ensure that students always get enough opportunities to speak and practice their free talk! All ESL adults lesson plans can be downloaded as PDF files.

8. Tell us more about your grammar lessons.

If you are in need to teach specific grammar topics or a student requests a grammar point that they are struggling with - you can easily browse ESL Pals to find a plan that suits your needs! We use our grammar lessons in class or send them home with students to complete as extra homework. These lesson plans can be used with both kids and adults. All ESL grammar lesson plans can be downloaded as PDF files so that they can easily be shared with students to practice with and complete.

9. What can we expect from ESL Pals in the future?

Stay tuned, we are always thinking of new ideas and additions that will make our website better. At the moment, we are planning to create a level 0 for our kids section. These units will be very basic so that they can be used with kids that have no exposure to English. If you have any suggestions or recommendations that you would like to see on the site - don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at contact@eslpals.com.

10. Where can people follow ESL Pals?

You can find us on Facebook and Instagram. We also have a group that teachers can join to see regular updates about lessons, ask questions and share ideas. You can become part of our group here.