Finding graded reading material on the internet.

Find it difficult to find authentic online reading material at the right level for your students? Here's Twurdy to your rescue - a search machine that grades the results of your search according to reading difficulty.

BeeOasis is also good source of graded reading material - it's a site that offers stories, news, and comments about the arts and sciences -some of which come with video and sound. At the moment BeeOasis offers 30 days free access to material.

What does it mean to know a word?

A presentation from Karenne Sylvester to help you and your students with vocabulary building.

Teaching English: It isn't rocket science

Bet you knew that already :) In this blog post of the same title, Jason Renshaw comes up with 7 tips that will help to maintain your sanity.

How to improve your students' reading skills

This blog post by Marisa Constantinides is timely reading for all of us who are thinking of taking up Beatrice's excellent Reading Challenge. Marisa digs down to reveal what the reading experience consists of and then provides practical steps we can take to help our students improve their skills. Recommended!

55 ways to support writing in the classroom

This Google presentation is really a must read for all teachers - a goldmine of tips and great resources that will help get your students writing. It compiles the ideas of many teachers and while it covers all ages and levels of students, it is particularly good on reading and writing resources for very young learners.

Another site providing lesson plans based on film clips

Looking for short film clips to liven up your class? Then Film English might be your answer. It provides regular topical lesson plans using a good choice of short film clips. Check it out!

just a note on reducing very large images using Paint

If you use Paint to edit images here, then you´ll have noticed that the zoom of the version we have is restricted to 100% plus which isn´t helpful for managing vast images. To get around that: select the rectangle on the left, right click on the image, chose Stretch and Skew, and reduce the image by percentage (note you'll lose some resolution).