Updated April 14th, 2023 (Free Online teaching tools)
The best websites to make teaching English online even easier
Free teaching resources are what we all want because we’ve all had to do our fair share of lessons plans and we’ve all had those days where we couldn’t find the right worksheet, grammar lesson, warm-up song, or game to play with the students. Here, you can find all the free teaching resources that you need to make your online classes easier. Throughout the pages, you’ll find: free lesson plans, worksheets, activities, grammar lessons, games, songs, listening exercises. It’s the whole package for online teachers who want to find free teaching materials.
Getting the right lesson plan for your students (Free online teaching tools)
All students have a different way of learning and have different levels of English. That’s why it’s important to keep your online teaching tools for lesson planning wide and abundant. If you keep a plethora of useful ESL websites to bounce between with your students, you can guarantee that you will always have something ready for any situation in the classroom. Get free online teaching tools down below.
ESL students can need a wide variety of material for their personal learning needs. This can range between, worksheets, games, grammar lessons, English songs for young learners, topic discussions, quizzes, videos for visual engagement, reading assignments, pronunciation, vocabulary, business English, listening exercises, speaking exercises, flashcards and, of course, powerpoints (PPTS). And teachers need free online teaching tools to help them easily prepare for classes.
The websites below will have everything you need to fulfill any student’s needs for the class whether it be online or in person.
If you know good websites with free online teaching tools for specific niches, please let me know in the comments so that I can add them to the list of free online teaching tools.
Best Websites For ESL Teachers (Free online teaching tools)
(Lesson plans)
This website is great for free lesson plans. They have free resources for children and adults. It’s an easy-to-navigate website and provides loads of interesting materials for your students regardless of age.
(Vocabulary, worksheets, printables, ideas for teachers)
Linguapress has great resources for teachers. The best part is that they have resources for almost all ages. Easy, intermediate, advanced. This website is an absolute goldmine for online materials to make your class run more smoothly.
(Business English, Conversation, Vocabulary, Writing, Resources)
This website has a great collection of lessons and materials for your classes. You can find business English lessons, writing exercises, reading comprehension worksheets, and so much more. I would say this is a great source for adult learners or students looking to study abroad in an English-speaking country.
*Free* Online Teaching Tools
(Lesson Plans and Worksheets)
This website is great for finding a short, quick plan for classes based on the level of the student. It’s categorized very nicely and has everything in pdf format so you can download it easily for classes. You’ll find loads of games, worksheets, and exercises for every level.
(Project-based learning)
This is an amazing website to use for your classes. It works especially well with intermediate-level students. There are worksheets, lesson plans, and tons of games. The truly cool part of the website is the project-based learning. You can have students create their own restaurant menus and music magazines. It’s a great way to keep your students engaged and excited.
Free online teaching tools
PracticeEnglishWithNews
(Discussion/Reading)
Practice English with news is a great resource for news stories and current events. The articles are written in a similar style to actual news, but at an easy-to-understand level.
The Practice English with News website even offers some effective lesson activities to do with news stories. The best part is, the lesson ideas don’t need preparation. One suggested activity is sharing highlighted vocabulary from the story with students and asking them to speculate what the story might be about.
LiveWorkSheets
With Liveworksheets you can transform your regular printable worksheets (doc, pdf, jpg…) into interactive online exercises with self-correction. They refer to this on the page as “interactive worksheets”.
Students have the ability to do the worksheets online and directly send their answers to the teacher.
This saves time for the teachers and it’s motivating for the students. It’s also great for the environment. No more wasting paper.
The interactive worksheets implement new technologies applied to education: they can include sounds, videos, drag and drop exercises, join with arrows, multiple choice… and even speaking exercises, which the students must do using the microphone.
TEFL LESSONS
(Lesson Plans and worksheets)
Free content includes lesson plans and worksheets focusing on grammar, vocabulary, phrasal verbs, idioms, speaking, reading, and more. Each plan comes with a teacher copy (including answer keys and pronunciation guides). We also have classroom posters and many study aids and charts available to download.
There are over 100+ FREE downloadable materials, catering to all levels. You just need to register for a free account and start downloading.
(Quizzes, Games, Flashcards, Songs, Grammar)
This page is loaded with ways to learn English from films as well as the more conventional ways to learn. They have flashcards, videos, songs, grammar lessons, business English, and all sorts of other fun and free ways to spice up your classes.
(Free Lesson Plan downloads, Free Teaching resources)
This website is packed with free downloadable lesson plans for your English classes. It has everything from extensive grammar lessons, to basic vocabulary practice. It’s a great site to pull some quick lesson plans for your class when you are running short on time.
(worksheets, books, games, lesson plans)
This website was recommended by the actual website owner. I had a look and it was pretty solid so I added it to the list. There are free resources for videos, books, lesson plans, worksheets, and all sorts of cool other materials. It’s great for improving the material you need for your online classes. Give it a try.
(Everything esl)
This is another crackin’ good website for free online resources. They have it all! Games, vocabulary, writing, listening, you name it. It’s all there and it’s free. They also have it laid out nicely making it easy to find suitable lessons for your students according to their level of English.
(Lessons)
ESLFriend has loads of lesson plans and resources for so many things. It goes from test prep all the way to business English on this page. A wide variety of subject material for your classes. Great website with great online teaching tools.
(Worksheets)
islcollective has loads of worksheets, video lessons, grammar practice, and easy navigation for the site. They include a search bar at the top so you can easily search for what you want to incorporate into your day’s lesson plan.
(Worksheets/vocab)
Englishwsheets is a game-changer for vocabulary. Especially for topic-based vocab. They include pictures with all the vocab words making it easy for the student to understand the word with a visual representation. You can also find grammar lessons and reading comprehension on the left-hand side of the page as well.
(Everything)
bogglesworldesl will say “LanternFish” at the top of the page when you arrive. Don’t worry, you’re in the right place.
This place is another gold mine for ESL material. They have everything from flashcards to business ESL on their page. This page is incredible if your students have all sorts of different levels and abilities.
You can find songs for young learners, seasonal English lessons, writer’s workshops, crossword puzzles, and even science. This website makes it easy to grab content and quickly bring it to class as your lesson. It has EVERYTHING! A spectacular place for free online teaching tools.
(Reading/activities)
Breakingnewsenglish is a website made for students who are skilled with reading. This page gives you updated articles about all sorts of interesting news from across the world. It’s a crackin’ good place to screen share the content with your student and have them read it before discussing it afterward.
You can also assign them an article to read for homework and the warmup for your next day’s lesson can be the discussion of the article. You can ask them for their opinion on the article as well as what they found to be most interesting in the material.
(Reading/discussing)
ESLdiscussions is another website that offers a wide range of topics to read about with your students that you can later discuss to work on expressing opinions and comprehending detailed information.
This website has over 700 topics to discuss that range from everyday life to controversial subject matter. It’s a great resource for online teaching tools.
iteslj
(Topic discussion)
iteslj is probably one of the best sites for conversational English. I’ve come across many private students that are simply looking to learn how to have a conversation in English. If that’s the case with your student(s), this is the place to go.
They have loads of topics and each topic has a detailed conversation to practice with the student which can help them become more knowledgeable in their understanding of how conversations flow in English and common questions and answers for English speakers.
(Games)
Baamboozle has so many games to play with the kids. It would take you years to play all of the games even if you were using this site every single day. I didn’t notice that it uses a lot of energy on your laptop so if you have a zoom meeting, plus this page open, you better have a good internet speed.
I would suggest watching a youtube video for the best games to use from this site in your classroom simply because you could spend hours searching through this site trying to find one. However, they do have a search bar that allows you to look for specific games or specific topics for games.
(Games)
Wordwall is a great website for creating your own content for your classes with ease. On Wordwall you can simply create activities for your classroom as well as quizzes, matchups, word games, and so much more.
Everything can be used interactively or used as a printout for your class.
(Games)
GamestolearnEnglish is a super simple website with games that are perfect for building vocabulary and practicing important aspects of English such as tenses, time, and spelling.
This website is laid out in a very simple manner that allows you to find each game by topic. It’s a perfect website for any class whether it’s online or in person. It’s interactive and is a perfect way to let the student have a little fun with their lesson. Another wonderful choice for free online teaching tools.
(Reading/Games)
FunBrain is one of the best places to find free reading material for your students. A lot of kids want to read books with pictures or popular series. This website is perfect for that. It has loads of reading material including Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
Not only does it have an incredible list of choices for reading material, but it also has a decent selection of games you can play with your student in between your reading sessions.
(Songs/Games)
SuperSimple is a great website to help you teach young learners. First and foremost, this is probably one of the best places to get all your easy English songs for children. If you’re tired of going to the same ones over and over on youtube, jump over to SupersSimple and start rolling through the giant list of songs there.
They also have games, printouts for the kids, crafts, and activities. If you’re teaching the little munchkins, this page will be your new best friend.
(Songs)
DreamEnglish has a song for almost everything. I saw this guy’s videos played all over China when I was teaching there. He’s a little weird but he has a way of making songs that are perfect for the kids. I even find those songs stuck in my head from time to time.
He also has great videos made for each song. If there is important vocabulary in the tune, you can bet he has incorporated that prominently into the video. This is a great place to find helpful songs to keep those kids learning English.
(Videos/Quizzes)
ESLvideo some of the best learning videos for ESL students. You can find videos for beginner, intermediate, and advanced. A lot of the videos include quizzes as well to help with engagement for the student, so they aren’t idly watching videos with no sense of direction.
The page is laid out nicely with easy access and easy accessibility for finding the perfect material for your student no matter what his/her level is.
(Listening)
ELLLO is the perfect site for helping your students practice their listening. Maybe you’re sick and your voice is raspy, or maybe you just want to give your students a change of pace with the voices and material. This is a perfect online teaching tool to help add some variety.
ELLLO offers loads of listening material with quizzes and scripts attached so that your student can follow up on the comprehension part of the lesson after the listening is finished.
(Listening)
ESL-Lab is yet another great online teaching tool for introducing your students to listening practice for their English classes. It has material for all levels and appealing content that will hopefully keep your student’s attention.
They have listening lessons in a broad range of categories stemming from easy to academic. They also include quizzes and other fun practices like useful idioms and culture videos.
(Lesson plans/Worksheets)
ESLflow is a website for teachers that specializes in adding grammar lessons to every aspect of learning. Speaking with correct grammar, listening for adverbs, etc. They have it all.
Most of the lessons have audio added and they have an exercise for just about every topic you can think of. Lesson plans and worksheets are also available on the website.
TeachingEnglish
(Lesson Plans/Worksheets)
TeachingEnglish is a crafty website for teachers brought to you by the British Council. On this site, you will find a wide arrange of handy resources that you can use in the classroom. They have grammar lessons, lesson plans, activities, songs, stories, and teaching tools.
The material on the website can be used by children up to adults. There is a little bit for every kind of English learner on this website.
(Everything)*
EnglishClub is another one of those hidden gems that seem to have everything imaginable for English lessons. The most unique lesson I found on the page was the pronunciation lessons. Maybe teachers overlook this step in the learning process but on EnglishClub, you can find great ways to implement it into you lesson.
It doesn’t stop there. They have reading, vocab, listening, games, lesson plans, quizzes, writing exercises, and basically everything else you can need or imagine for your class. I highly recommend this one for your free online teaching tools.
(Grammar)
EnglishGrammar is a website that lives up to its name. It’s dedicated to providing teachers all the necessary material to teach proper grammar to their ESL students.
Grammar is never fun, let’s be honest. However, it is a necessity when it comes to learning a language. You can find all the lessons you need for grammar here with practice quizzes to check the progress of your student’s understanding of the material.
(Everything)
The TEFL LAB
(lesson plans)
They have lots of free PDF materials and some interactive lessons that you can access just by creating a free account!
Emoji Lessons
(Worksheets/Lessons)
This website has lots of creative ideas for incorporating emojis into your lessons to make the class a little more fun and relevant for the times we live in. It can be a fun way to get your students excited and learn from something they use/see every day. (THANK YOU TO OLIVIA INGRAM’S STUDENTS)
You’ve missed out Linguapress.com
Great site with loads of free resources
Good call! I will update that to the list!
What about Twinkl? They have plenty of ESL specific stuff https://www.twinkl.com/resources/esl-resources
Good Call! I will add them to the list. Thanks for that!
Hey Bradly, I really like all the info and links you have set up here and would like to post them on my website page for ESL resources. I will gladly give you credit and put some of your advertising images with it too.
That would be wonderful. I would be happy to have you share it. Thank you so much, Kim! 🙂
Hi, this is a great list, but please could you add:
https://purlandtraining.com
We have thousands of free printable resources for teachers and students of English – plus they are all in the public domain, so anybody can reuse them – even commercially.
Thank you! 😀
Alright Matt, I have added it to the updated list. 😉
Hello! Neorpad is great too
It would be awesome if you could repost or give a shoutout 🙂
This is the best page I’ve found for free teaching resources! Thanks so much!
I’m so happy it helped!! 🙂
I’ve reposted this dozens of times. I’m new to online teaching and this was an absolute life saver. Merci beaucoup 😀
I’m glad it helped! I’ll keep updating the list each time I find another good resource.
This page is bookmarked and always ready for my online classes haha. Thanks a lot for this one. This has saved me so much time and energy. I have a clever student who always wants to learn new things from around the world and I found (breaking news English) on this list and my student is obsessed with it now. It also has cool comprehension questions and vocab questions under each article when you scroll down. Super dope!
You’ve missed two great websites:
All things grammar and
All things topics
Teach-this has some free worksheets too!
Thanks so much for letting me know! Do you have the links by chance? I can add them.
Hi Bradley. Could you possibly add us to the list? We have 350+ resources including 100 free items, and growing every day.
https://www.tefllessons.com/
Would you be willing to share this article on your page or social media? We can promote each other.
Yes, absolutely. Add us to the list and we’ll share on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram 🙂
Please send me an email at eslwild@outlook.com with your website and info and we can arrange it 🙂
This is freaking amazing!!!!! Thank you so much! I knew of a couple of these websites before but this is exactly what I needed. I can finally find and make lessons for my online students so much easier. Brilliant
Looks like you’ve updated the list. It just keeps getting better and better
This is now my go-to for pretty much every lesson I do online. Honestly the best list I’ve found so far. Even searching through google i couldn’t find one like this. It’s a nice hidden gem 🙂
I have been looking for a page like this forever. Everything I find on google always cost money. I get it, some teachers do work hard and want money for the lessons they make but I don’t have the extra money to pay for lesson plans and materials so pages like this help so so so much. I’m saving this page forever. Thank you very much for helping out and providing free materials for those of us who don’t have extra money to buy materials for class. I’m subscribing to this page for sure. 🙏
No worries! Free is always better haha
I’ve observed that in the world the present moment, video games are the latest craze with kids of all ages. Often times it may be not possible to drag your son or daughter away from the games. If you want the very best of both worlds, there are plenty of educational games for kids. Great post.
Thanks for helping me with all this material that make my job easier and fun.
No problem at all! I’m always happy to help fellow teachers! 🙂
This is hands down the best list i’ve come across for free teaching materials. Thanks bro!
Hi Bradley,
Could you please add my site https://eslvault.com to the list?
It’s a constantly growing archive of materials that is completely free with no sign up required.
Sure thing. Let me check it out first
Thanks!
This is hands down the best list of free teaching resources i’ve come across. Cheers!
Hi Bradley – great list! So many excellent resources I hadn’t heard of before, I’ll definitely be using them in my upcoming classes 🙂
Just wanted to suggest you add Abridge Academy (abridgeacademy.com/curriculum) – we’re very new but have resources designed specifically for online ESL teachers, particularly those teaching beginners or more niche intermediate-advanced classes (e.g. STEM, reading, writing, etc). We have a new “free tier” which includes access to a growing number of lessons across various levels and topics. Would love to invite your readers to check it out!
Thanks! Katie
Hi Bradley, thanks so much for sharing this list, it’s very useful for teachers with a lot of great resources.
I’m the creator of Fluentize.com, and we offer a bunch of free ESL lesson plans as well. Our lesson plans are designed for adult learners at A2, B1, B2, or C1 levels, and the lessons all based on real world videos (educational videos, news reports, short cinematic stories, short documentaries, interviews, performances, instructional videos, travel guides, etc.). Each video comes equipped with comprehensive lesson plans with a range of in-depth speaking, listening, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, writing, and other language-building activities based on the video, including parts of speech, prepositions, phrasal verbs, prefixes, etc. The worksheets are also made interactive for lessons that take place online. While most of our lessons are paid, as I said, there are a handful of free ones and we do offer users limited time freebie lessons every month.
I wanted to ask if you may be willing to add Fluentize and a link to it as a resource to your list for this article — I’d of course be willing to share this article on Fluentize’s social media page as well.
Thanks so much and kind regards,
Jake Young
Hi Bradley, thank you for this unbelievable list.
The only thing I can suggest could be lengusa.com.
I mostly use it to play interactive games in the class and suggest my students as a high quality sentence repository (when they need to check usage). We also play a guessing game with the compare functions.
Just take a look.
Hello. Nearpod is great too!
You should add TheTEFLLab.com — they have lots of free PDF materials and some interactive lessons that you can access just by creating a free accout!
I will check it out now and add it to the list if it’s suitable. Thank you, Rachel!