Short News Article Finder
Having trouble finding news articles that are just the right length? The Short News Article Finder allows you to search news sites for brief articles which are under a specific word count. The main search can be a little slow, so please be patient. The dedicated site search options are faster. If your results contain a lot of repeat articles, try being more specific with your search term.
ESL Wordle
Play an ESL friendly version of the word game which has taken over the country: word.rodeo! is a version of Wordle which allows you to choose your own words and also the length of the word. It's a really fun warmer.
PlayPhrase.me
PlayPhrase.me is a useful tool for practicing listening and pronunciation using real movie and TV clips. Just enter a phrase or word, and the site will play a series of short video snippets containing that phrase spoken naturally in different contexts. It's particularly useful for reinforcing word stress, intonation, and natural usage. I often use it to demonstrate how certain phrases are pronounced in connected speech.
Scattergories
Play the categories game [eslgames.com] online at scattergoriesonline.net
Geoguessing
Random Street View is a fun activity using Google Maps. You are transported to a random place on the globe. Have learners navigate you around the surroundings and finally make a guess as to where they think the location is.
Sporcle Quizzes
Sporcle is the home of many online interactive quizzes. There's a mountain of them available and some of them are very suitable for online ESL classes. They're great as a warm up or finale.
Semantris
Semantris is actually two clever and addictive word association games using Google's AI. Students must suggest words connected to a target word in order to connect blocks or remove the target word from an ever growing stack.
Hangman
Hangman is a fun way to review the alphabet or resurface the odd bit of vocabulary. This handy hangman webpage allows you to input your own vocabulary to create a fun, five minute filler.
Wheel Randomizer
This is a handy tool for picking random participants, topics, categories, etc.
Quizlet
Quizlet is a user-friendly, flashcard-based, quiz maker which you can use for reviewing vocabulary. Simply enter the target word and Quizlet generates pictures and translations which you can use for a variety of activities.
Mind Maps
There are lots of tools for creating online Mind Maps. I like to use Mind Meister because it has a relatively simple interface which is more than enough for creating word maps. The free version only allows you to create three maps, but that works fine for me as I don't need to store them. Instead, I take a screenshot at the end to share with the participants.
Mad Libs
This is a humorous activity which I sometimes do at the end of a class if there is a bit of time left over. The idea of Mad Libs is that someone holds a text with some words removed. This person asks other members of the class to offer random words to complete the text. The rest of the class has no idea as to what the text is about. Finally, the text is read out in full and it's usually quite amusing.
Mad Takes is a nice, user friendly interface to hundreds of gapped texts which you can use. Just send a link to one of the participants and let them run the activity themselves.
Online Crosswords
Crosswords can be useful for recapping language. For example, I like to use them for testing recall of different verb forms. Crossword Labs has a great tool for easily creating online crosswords. Once complete, learners can complete them as a collaborative task with one person in charge of entering answers or you can assign them as homework tasks.
Skribbl.io (Pictionary)
Skribbl is a multiplayer, online Pictionary style game. You can create private rooms and import your own word lists. I tend to use this activity as an end of term/step treat.
Disposable Chat
Sometimes I like to put pairs of students into a chat room for tasks like simulating a customer support experience. Disposablechat.com lets you quickly set up simple, temporary chat rooms which require only a link to join.