ESL Teaching Materials to Bring Overseas
Suggestions for Useful English Lesson Resources to Take Abroad
When you travel to another country to teach English, there won't be enough room in your luggage for a bunch of language textbooks or other bulky lesson materials. Here are a few great lesson resources that don't take up much space and can be incredibly useful in providing a basis for a lesson plan or for stimulating a classroom discussion.
Print Materials and Publications to Bring Overseas
There are plenty of publications sitting around in your home that can be great conversation starters in English lessons:
- High school yearbook, college yearbook: And you thought you'd almost never look at it again! Though a yearbook will add some extra weight to your suitcase, it won't take up much space and will be a lot of fun to show students. It can also be useful in learning academic, athletic, and activity-related vocabulary.
- Magazines: Cater to the students' age group. For example, if you are going to be working with teenagers, bring magazines like Seventeen, Sports Illustrated, and Time. Cut out a few discussion-worthy pictures, too, and have students describe the scene in the picture.
- Newspapers: The local newspaper, high school or college newspaper, or a national or major urban newspaper can contain articles that are relevant to lesson topics, in particular if you would like to do a unit on current events. Newspapers can be used in a lesson on writing, too.
- Comic strips: These are a fun way to help students understand humor in English. Plus the pictures provide visual interest and something different from magazine articles or short texts. And for a fun activity, have students make their own comic strip.
Personal photos are also a good resource because they are easy to pass around a classroom and use for small discussion group work. Digital photos, if you are bringing your laptop along, are another space-saving option.
Digital Lesson Materials to Bring Along
Bring a USB stick (or CD) with photos on it (no need to lug a large photo album along unless you've put together a great scrapbook that will be fun to share with your students).
DVDs can be great for lessons, but be careful: Most DVDs have a region (i.e. the United States & Canada are Region 1, Europe is Region 2) so your movies may not work on the DVD player in another country. Don't bring videotapes unless they are highly relevant to the lessons you will be teaching, as they are bulkier.
The best solution, if you are concerned about DVD region and you hope to show film clips or full-length movies in class, is to use your laptop. To save space, take DVDs out of their original cases and put them in small CD carrying cases instead.
All of the above materials can prove quite useful when you are looking for new ESL lesson material, or even just for an icebreaker or some sort of filler activity at the end of class. Best of all, these items do not take up much room in the limited suitcase space that you will have when packing for an extended period of time teaching English overseas.
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