Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Thousands of Teacher-reviewed Resources!

Resources for English Language Learners

In honor of English Language Day (April 23rd), we are sharing a special collection of resources for ENL (English as a New Language) students. Use these tools with emerging readers and anyone practicing speaking and reading the English language. 

Grades K-12

Headliner Voices

Have your students try this text-to-voice app that uses the voices and likeness of celebrities like Mark Zuckerburg and Ellen DeGeneres. Type in up to 300 characters of text and choose a celebrity. This is a great way to hear spoken English.

Grades K-12

Immersive Reader

Engage your ENL students (or other students with reading challenges) using Immersive Reader. Students can click on any word in the reading material to listen to the pronunciation. This tool offers many features: playback speed, highlight text, and more.

Grades 4-12

LyricsTraining

Learn a language using your favorite music videos with the extensive collection this site offers. Select a language to narrow down choices and choose from four different levels—the hardest requires you to fill in all the words of the song!

Grades K-12

Classroomscreen

Take advantage of this background utility for use with interactive whiteboards or screens during remote or traditional learning. Choose to add features, including a random name picker, text, timer, and clock. There is also a multi-language feature.

Grades 6-12

Listenwise

Treat your ENL/ESL learners to this collection of podcasts and public radio broadcasts to help advance literacy and learning skills. Choose any resource to listen to the story—most topics are less than 10 minutes and all include comprehension questions.

Grades 1-12

pechaflickr

Use this delightful tool to flip through 20 Flickr images and challenge ENL students to create sentences (orally or in writing) to go with the photos. Each photo displays for 20 seconds, however, you can adjust the time and the number of images.

Grades 4-12

Add Text

Add text to an image or photo using a web browser and share it, no registration required. Choose images from one of seven categories or upload your own. Use this to label images to help ENL/ESL students learn vocabulary or have students create their own.

Grades K-12

Learn English with Jokes and Riddles

Jokes and riddles offer a fabulous way for your younger students and ENL/ESL students to learn new vocabulary words. At this site, find ten categories to choose from and more than 300 jokes and riddles—all free to use (and appropriate for all ages).

This Week at TeachersFirst

Join us this Tuesday for the next session in our spring series of free virtual workshops. We also encourage you to take a look at our Infusing Technology blog, chock full of great ideas about technology integration, pedagogy, tech tools, and more. Finally, we kindly ask for your input in our weekly poll.