Job Discussion Forums

[fox1]

I'm trying to find good worksheets ready-to-go on the net, or near ready. There are thousands of worksheets (including at genkienglish.com) but all of them are incredibly dull and uninspiring. Where are the good ones!!?

[Kootvela]

I use onestopenglish.com and insideout.net but of course I am very selective there as well.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

You have to make them up for yourself based on the interests of the people in your class and the dynamics between the people.

[fox1]

oh really? I only spent half my life last year making handouts that worked for my students. I'm looking to ease the workload a little.. ie. not spending all day and all night every day planning this stuff.

I've checked out those sites. One Stop is marginally better than the dozens of other sites I've seen so far, but still the worksheets are mostly shit! At least for my purposes teaching my kids. I don't know why it's so hard to find compatible stuff. Almost all the stuff I've seen is way over the top of my students' ability (even the young learners stuff) and my kids are high school students! Not only that. Yes, I could modify them but they would still be completely boring sentence fillers, etc. I'm looking for interesting visual stuff.

[fluffyhamster]

If you really spent half your waking life last year making worksheets, you should still have a few floating around, or at least be able to recall a few ideas that worked, no? (Not wanting to get on your case, just saying like GBBB that I also think you can't beat developing your own stuff, stuff that will inspire and motivate you at least, if not your students - a teacher's confidence and interest in the materials should rub off on the students. Certainly, as you yourself have realized, a lot of stuff out there on the net, whilst not exactly unforgivably bad, certainly isn't amazingly good either).

Some stuff I developed for elementary students that dare I say it might get your creative juices flowing again:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=646217#646217

I've probably made a few comments here and there about the lead-in to junior high level, but like you say, often JHS students aren't really as far along as the JTEs at least would like to think.

I try to develop pretty visual stuff for the core of my teaching, anyway, because I think it helps if everyone is 'on the same "page"' (looking at exactly the same thing and therefore hopefully construing things similarly).

(Cor, the way I've been here on Dave's, flogging my fledgling syllabus, you'd think I was making money from it!).

[alexcase]

Unfortunately, it's still probably best to go with photocopiable books rather than the Net. You didn't mention ages, but if it is JHS you should be able to use the higher level worksheets from the (inspired) series Puzzle Time for...

http://www.tefl.net/reviews/puzzle-time-for-starters-movers.htm

mixed with lower level adult worksheets like Elementary Communication Games and Reward Resource Packs. Worked very well for me, although that was as a supplement to textbooks and in eikaiwa JHS level small group and one-to-one classes.


TEFLtastic blog- www.tefl.net/alexcase

[gaijinalways]

I've pulled stuff myself from various textbooks as well as Internet sites. Of course, a lot of what I have I made myself. Often we have to adjust and remake stuff depending on the interests of our students and their levels.

Take a look at a4esl.org (crosswords, etc) as well as some of the stuff on this site. Also look at Englishclub, eslresorcecenter, teflgames, eslgold, linguistic funland, and Englishlounge. I sometimes do google searches and pull stuff up, especially if I am looking for related material to topics or grammar, or particular functional language.

I go through periods where I don't make much, just more modifying. This year I am laminating a certain amount of material in my quest to go relatively copy free, and I have felt a lot less stress. So depending on your classes and how often the content must/will be changed, I would suggest making more permanent materials to avoid some of the stress you feel now.

Oh, forgot to mention one last thing, depending on your class sizes, you may wish to do some general activities that require little or no prep time. You can do Internet searches under that question and pull up material for junior high students fairly easily.

[Kootvela]

http://www.esl-galaxy.com/ has got tons of printable crosswords and wordsearches. At the moment I'm downloading those because they say to be good at being used in summer camps. I will have kids 7-9, 10-12, or 14-16 -that is to be made certain tomorrow- so I'm preparing hard

[Ai]

I like www.handoutsonline.com but you have to pay a membership fee.

[Kootvela]

[fox1]

Thanks. About a4esl.org I don't know how anyone can say that stuff is interesting. Yes, maybe for 17-year-old nerds who are REALLY REALLY keen on English. But I'm in the real world here. My students don't like studying and their uniform falls off them. Inotherwords, they are normal. They would be interested in those quizzes for about 1/100th of a second even if I put pictures all over them. I guess we're just teaching different students, huh?!

and also that englishclub and eslgold as well... , um, my kids (and I to be honest) would rather watch paint dry than use those. I don't see how they're the slightest bit stimulating for typical high-school students in Japan. Those are both great examples of the shit worksheets I'm talking about.

[ripslyme]

[fluffyhamster]

If I were to ever work in Japanese JHSs again, I suspect I'd give up on trying to teach the kids much, and certainly anything that creative - I've rather come to the conclusion that most JTEs prefer to stick with their textbooks, stock of lame sentences and very controlled/prescribed variants of grammar-translation; I'd now prefer to teach at elementary school level, demanding though that can be, for the greater freedom that affords the "A"ET in at least the selection if not the creation of materials and connected methods.

[fox1]

i work in a senior high school and have total freedom with handouts, materials, curriculum.

[fluffyhamster]

That's good to hear! Go get 'em, tiger!