Teaching children, especially young children, the English language can be a tricky task. Sure, they might know how to say their first name in English, but what then?
Fortunately, there are plenty of resources online regarding this topic that can supplement any teacher textbook. You can find multiple ESL websites with worksheets for children.
How can we use these ESL websites for kids?
These ESL websites are useful for a number of reasons:
- Used as supplemental lesson material
- Find complete lesson plans
- Face-to-face and online teaching PowerPoints and plans
- Motivating for students with fun games and exercises
- Find ebooks, slides, worksheets, activities
- Focus on a range of skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking, pronunciation, grammar
Let’s take a look at some of the best ESL worksheets for children.
1. ISL Collective
I always recommend ISL Collective because it is like a treasure trove of lessons for English language learners. It has beneficial resources, particularly for beginner to pre-intermediate learners.
Use the search bar to find the topic you are looking for, and there are always multiple sources to choose from.
The worksheets are sorted by most downloaded, so you don’t even spend much time tirelessly searching their library.
ISL Collective is a place where many teachers share, upload, and download teaching materials for free. I regularly use ISL Collective to supplement lessons.
2. Teaching English
Teaching English, a site belonging to the British Council, have some great resources for kids and teens.
The British Council even gives teachers a choice between the face-to-face lesson plans and the online PowerPoint version.
Teachers can browse the selection by level, 1-3 for kids, and choose a suitable lesson that appeals to their learners. The primary level is suitable for children between the ages of 5-12 years old.
Teaching English also has secondary level and adult lesson plans that are definitely worth checking out!
3. Oxford Owl
Oxford Owl takes a little bit of searching, but you can find free ebooks on the site that you can use for teaching young learners. You can enjoy reading about the adventures of Biff and Chip, among many other tales!
Teachers can browse the ebooks by reading level, and find one most suitable for the children. The only downside is that some ebooks can be quite short at times and may require the teacher to think of comprehension questions and additional activities that they can incorporate into the lesson.
These are fun, interesting tales that will help the students improve their reading skills. They also have PDF worksheets available for download.
5. StoryWeaver
StoryWeaver provides children with thousands of illustrated, open-licensed books.
Stories help children learn about new ideas and enhance the imagination. The stories are available in PDF A4 print-ready, and digital ePub format.
Teachers can actually create their own stories too. StoryWeaver allows you to pick your own illustrations, narrative and publish your own story. The story can also be translated.
All content on StoryWeaver is licensed under the Creative Commons 4.0 license, meaning that users can edit and share the stories.
6. ESL Kids Stuff
ESL Kids stuff has lesson plans suitable for children between the ages of 3-12.
They have some free samples to check the quality of their material. You can find free lesson plans and worksheets on their website, and teachers can access their entire library for an annual subscription fee.
7. ESL Games Plus
Looking for games suitable for kids?
ESL Games Plus features a wide array of games to choose from, covering vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure, phonics, spelling, and more.
They also offer resources to practice for exams like IELTS, TOEFL and SAT.
8. International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL)
Children can find free books to read on this site. Teachers can use this site for independent or group reading.
As families move abroad for better opportunities, books published in their native language are often left behind. The families don’t have access to books and stories published in their native tongue in their new homeland. Children grow up without knowledge of their heritage and first language.
According to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), denying access to information in one’s mother tongue is the same as denying a human right.
ICDL represents every culture and language with collections of free books accessible by families no matter where they are located.
Paid Resource: Raz Kids
Raz Kids allow teachers to take a step back while students complete the interactive activities and exercises on the web.
This may be suitable for teachers who have many children or teach classes with various literacy levels.
Teachers can print books, create their own or create tests. The digital monitoring and assessment saves valuable teaching time and keeps the teacher in control.
Raz Kids offers a free trial if your school wants to try it out.
In Conclusion
I hope you find this list of resources helpful. If you are willing to pay for your lesson plans, you can find useful resources on sites like ESL Library and Linguahouse.
Lesson plans can be copied and printed for in-class use or adapted to PowerPoint if teachers want to present them on screen or online.
