Hi all,
I wanted to add in a few ideas to the discussion about resources that
took place before Thanksgiving (it's late, but hopefully still useful!).
When I was teaching low and high beginning ESL in Arlington, Virginia, I
often used these resources in a variety of ways. My students always
seemed to enjoy them and apply what they were practicing with these
activities to their language learning.
 
1) Verb Bingo card set, published by Language in Play International
(www.languageinplay.com). I bought this set at TESOL a few years ago and
have used them over and over again. The set includes 30 student playing
cards (16 verb pictures on each card), 8x11 flashcards of each verb,
verb conjugation and infinitives sheet and transparencies, and a guide
for teachers to do different activities with the materials. While my
students did enjoy playing various versions of bingo with the materials,
we  more often used the pictures for speaking and writing prompts,
practice with pronouns, and practice with different grammatical
structures.
 
2) Leveled readers from Reading A-Z (www.readinga-z.com). I discovered
this website when working with K-12 educators - however, I got a lot of
use out of it with my adult learners. With a paid membership, you can
download and print thousands of short books to share with students (you
fold and staple them after printing to form books). Many of the titles
were too childish, but I found many that were appropriate and
interesting to my learners. In our community unit, titles like "Places
People Live" (174 words), "City Places" (118 words), and "Signs are
Everywhere" (157 words) were popular. In our work unit, "Tools" (77
words) and "Simple Machines" (379 words) were read. In one class I
taught, we did free reading for the first 20 minutes of class once a
week. Students kept track of the books they read, and if they wanted to
take one home, they could. It was a very low-stakes encounter with print
for the students, and the simple black and white pictures, photographs,
and diagrams in the books helped scaffold their understanding. The major
disadvantages are that they are not "authentic" texts; you have to buy a
membership and then take the time to print and assemble the books; and
you have to really choose the titles carefully to not insult the
students with childish topics or readers that are too easy or too
difficult. However, there are hundreds of feasible options, and it is a
fairly renewable resource -- as long as you have a printer and/or
photocopier.
 
3) "Match It! A collection of index card games for learners of English"
(published by Pro Lingua, www.prolinguaassociates.com). I picked this up
at TESOL as well, and I think it is a favorite with many people. You can
photocopy a variety of sets of index cards in topics/areas such as
common vocabulary, numbers, measurements, days, times, verbs, facts
about language/people/cities/geography, prefixes, compounds and
collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms and proverbs. Once I made the index
cards, I mostly used them for warm-ups when waiting for students to
arrive, learning stations, or for a quick practice when we needed to
review something specific. It's nice because each set gives you ideas
for other activities to do with the index cards to get the students to
actually practice the language structure that the cards create, rather
than just matching cards together. 
 
Thanks,
Sarah Young
Adult ESL Specialist
Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)
Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA)
4646 40th St. NW
Washington, DC 20016
 
Phone: (202) 362-0700 ext. 529
Web: www.cal.org <http://www.cal.org/>  
Email: syoung at cal.org
CAL: "Improving communication through better understanding of language
and culture"
 
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