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Online Sites You Might Like for Your Class

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A collage of four images: an illustration of a woman with a child outdoors, a person talking on a phone in a kitchen, a word puzzle game on a screen, and hands planting seeds in soil.
Smiling person with glasses and brown hair in a bun, wearing a black top and a colorful pink and white scarf, outdoors with a blurred natural background.

by Val Baggaley
ESL Instructor at Bow Valley College

Val Baggaley has been teaching ESL at Bow Valley College in Calgary for 20 years. Fifteen years ago, she fell in love with literacy and has stayed there as much as possible ever since. She currently teaches a CLB 3L class but her real passion is teaching the very beginners. 

There are lots of websites out there, but I thought I’d highlight a few less familiar ones. Although not perfect, the materials I am going to talk about do allow the learner some repetition of already learned concepts. For beginners and learners without much formal education, I believe that online learning is more about reinforcing and maintaining the learners’ existing language skills.

One of my favourite sites that CLB1L to 3L can use independently (once they’ve been shown it a few times) is Games to Learn English. Each game has several different vocabulary themes within each game type. This allows repetition for the student so that they become familiar with how to play each game. Other games on this site are word order games. The games range from quite easy (below) to longer scrambled sentences.

An educational game screen showing images of cabbage, carrots, and ice cubes with matching labels "Cabbage," "Carrots," and "Ice" below. Score and progress indicators are at the bottom.
Games to Learn English: Fast Vocab
A cartoon woman with a ponytail drinks from a bottle. Below are three answer options in boxes: "She," "He," and "They." A score of zero is displayed on the right.
Games to Learn English: Fast Phrases

Recently, I came across two video series I hadn’t used before: Sound Grammar and ESL Video. The characters are adults and they talk in natural language but are perhaps too fast for anyone below a CLB2L class. If you are looking at it together with the class, there are simple self-correcting quizzes under each video.

Cartoon office scene with several people working at desks with computers. A man wearing a headset talks to a woman standing beside him. Other employees work in the background. Large windows show a cityscape outside.
Sound Grammar
Close-up of fresh organic cilantro with a purple label on the left, and a man with short hair wearing a dark jacket driving a car on the right.
ESL Video

Finally, Storybooks Canada is a really lovely reading site. I suggest using the site for in class together as it takes scrolling or pushing complicated buttons, but the stories are so lovely that I think they are worth it. The stories feature characters from different African countries.

Two children stand facing each other, holding a large brown pot with a green leafy plant growing from it. One child wears a purple shirt and orange shorts; the other wears a gray shirt and purple shorts.
Storybooks Canada: “Children of Wax”
A smiling woman in a yellow blouse gestures and talks to others outdoors, while children and another woman listen. A thought bubble above her shows people farming together in a green field.
https://www.storybookscanada.ca/stories/en/0027/Storybooks Canada: “Decision”

I hope some of these sites are useful to you and your class. Which sites are your go-tos during COVID-19 times?

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