Here is a selection of fun starters/ activities using a grid. Only one needs any preparation; you can just go with the others. Adaptable to most subject matter.

30 slides with brain teasers, hidden words, quiz activities.... things you may find useful for tutor period or as lesson starters to get those brains in gear. I have created some of these slides and adapted others from the net. Many of the puzzles are all time classics. On slides where the animations don't come in, answers are on the notes section at the bottom of the slide.

There are forty sentences here, with 90 mistakes to find and correct. A full key is provided. This will make a good starting point for some SPAG activities, or provide a nice little filler activity. ** Note**: it looks a bit strange on the preview, but it’s fine when downloaded.

Six witches, each with an exercise. After completing the exercises, they can cut them up, jumble them, then match the right passage to the picture before sticking in their books. Just a bit of fun!

This is a list of ten great ESL websites with descriptions of what they offer.

Mats in various formats for teachers who have EAL students in their class. Some of these I have uploaded previously - on here they are updated. The infographic could be used as staff training: what does each image mean? There is a sentence generator and a mat for teaching new items of vocabulary which I have seen elsewhere in various forms. Hope these are useful!

I have made this for an EAL student at beginner level. I have used images from the 2009 movie (starring Jim Carrey). Hope it will be useful for some of you!

This is designed for EAL learners, but is useful as a prompt for debate in the mainstream classroom. The arguments and counter arguments are presented as exercises: match-up, replace the words and re-arrange the words. There is also a powerful image to describe - my thanks to Rich the vegansidekick for permission to use it. A full key is included.

A reading comprehension, with questions and language activities. Jack and Kelsey brave the journey only to find that the school is closed.

A passage about a boy making new year resolutions, with exercises. Can be used as a preliminary before students think up new year's resolutions for themselves. The template is by Baiba.

This is a grid with question openers and tasks going through Bloom's taxonomy. It avoids modals (would, could, should, might) and compound tenses and uses simple language structures that students at an early level of English language acquisition can access.

This is a heart warming, short ghost story with exercises: a true/false, match-up activity and comprehension questions.

All about trees. Where do we find trees? What lives in trees? What can they do? An activity that you can do off the cuff.

There are 25 statements, some true, some false. The students have to correct the false statements. Ask them to shade the true statements and there is a hidden letter N, so you can check if they got it right. Then, ask them to read out or discuss their corrections in pairs and this leads to whole class discussion.

This is a short passage in the past simple about a nervous teacher's first lesson. Cloze and match up exercises provided.

The students decide which comment refers to which character. You could develop this by asking them to back up their decisions/give examples.

This is a powerpoint of 52 slides. I uploaded it previously to test the waters as I was going to charge for it. From 23 views, it got 21 downloads! I was pleased. Since then, I have done nothing to make it sale-worthy, like checking image derivation and one or 2 layouts that are not really mine. However, I have faffed about with fancy borders and stuff to make it look presentable. Time to let this go live! So - there are youtube clips with exercises, match-ups, comprehensions, picture description, making inferences, games… All sorts! I hope you can use it and I hope to get a few reviews:-)

Take a basic plot and build it up into an outstanding lesson, with your students producing a piece of writing at the end. No resources are needed. Of course, you can produce resources to complement the lessons if you want. I have provided one differentiated question sheet which would be useful for EAL students. This is based on an idea by 'Lauriane'. I would love to meet her.

Short story based on five images with a twist in the tale. A good model for third person narrative controlled assessment practice, (audience young readers). I get my students to mind map the images first. Some exercises provided.

There are two lists, one taking a positive view of a Trump action, and the other, a negative take. The students match these up, then describe what the images represent. Finally, they weigh up their own opinions about Trump’s policies. This sheet could be used in a debate about Trump. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list, but hopefully it will encourage them to find out more. Actually, I have put quite a bit of effort into this, so I hope it will be useful!