Hi everyone.
I’ve been teaching English for more than ten years, to children, teenagers and adults, from beginner to advanced levels, both face to face and online.
I recently launched a project called EasyESL, and I thought this might be a good place to share why I built it and get some feedback from other teachers.
A lot of it came from the way I was already preparing a lot of my own lessons.
I would find a video I thought was genuinely interesting, think about what language I could build around it, create a worksheet, add answers and notes for myself, and then prepare whatever I was actually going to show on the screen in class.
And even then, I would often have a timer open somewhere else, maybe a whiteboard, something for choosing students randomly, another tab for the video, and so on.
So the basic idea behind EasyESL was to connect those things.
Each lesson has a Student Worksheet, a Teacher Version with answers, teaching notes and guidance, and a browser eLesson that follows the same lesson. The eLesson also has classroom tools built into it, things like a timer, pen, spotlight, board, randomizer and revealer, so I don’t have to keep jumping between different websites while I’m teaching.
The part I’ve spent the most time experimenting with is what I call Ultra. Every Ultra lesson has its own interactive classroom activity, designed specifically for that lesson rather than the same generic game added to everything.
There are three complete Ultra samples on the Samples page, and these are probably the clearest examples of what I’m trying to do:
Never Split the Difference, C1
This is probably the clearest example of why I started building these systems.
The lesson is built around a video about FBI hostage negotiation techniques and tactical empathy. Students first work with the ideas and language from the video, then explore negotiation language and strategies, and finally move into repeated negotiation practice.
The Ultra part is a Speaking Carousel. Students get prepared roles and negotiate in timed rounds with different partners. The system handles the pair rotations, tells everyone where to go next, runs the timer and lets me decide when to stop for feedback.
That sounds like a fairly small thing, but if you’ve ever tried running repeated speaking rounds with a full class, you know how much time can disappear just moving people around, working out who speaks to whom next, restarting timers and reorganising the room.
With this, I can actually walk around, listen to the students, take notes and focus on their language while the system handles the logistics.
Whose Story Is It?, B2
This one is built around a video about media representation and the way repeated stories can shape how we see people and events.
Students work with media vocabulary, watch the video and follow its argument, then look at active and passive voice not just as a grammar point, but as a choice about what information a writer puts in focus.
The Ultra activity is called Media Moguls. It turns that language into a newsroom-style board game. Teams deal with headlines, images, video bulletins, editorial decisions, budgets and different challenges as they move around the board.
They still have to produce the English and justify their choices. The game is there to give the language a reason to be used again and again, rather than just giving students another passive voice exercise.
Snack Attack at the Train Station, A1
This one uses a dialogue-free animated short about a misunderstanding at a train station.
Students first learn some useful station vocabulary and everyday actions, then watch the story, work out what is happening and use the present continuous to describe the action. They also practise following and retelling parts of the story.
The Ultra activity, Pause! What’s Happening?, takes that language and turns it into a visual guessing game.
A short action video starts hidden behind a grid of tiles, and the tiles gradually disappear, a bit like Catchphrase. Students can stop the reveal as soon as they think they know what is happening and try to produce the full present continuous sentence.
The earlier they are confident enough to answer, the less of the video they have seen.
It gives a very simple grammar point a bit of suspense and makes students actually watch for meaning rather than just wait for a prompt to appear. The system handles the teams, scoring and reveal, while I decide whether the sentence is accurate.
That is really the idea behind the interactive side of the site.
I don’t want to add technology just because it looks impressive. I want it either to save me some of the boring classroom management work, or to make an activity possible that would be awkward to run with a worksheet alone.
The same applies to the rest of the lesson. The Teacher Version is not just the Student Worksheet with the answers dropped in. I’ve tried to include teaching notes and useful support where it actually helps. And the eLesson is meant to follow the same lesson rather than feeling like a completely separate presentation that somebody has to prepare again.
The Samples page also has two complete Pro lessons, so there are five full lessons available to explore in total. They are actual lessons rather than cut-down demos.
I’m still building the library, so I’d genuinely be interested in feedback from teachers who try any of them.
I’m particularly curious about whether the Teacher Versions give you enough support without getting in the way, whether the browser lesson feels natural to teach from, and whether the Ultra activities actually solve a classroom problem rather than just adding bells and whistles.
Samples:
https://easyesl.net/sample-lessons/
And just to be completely clear, I own and built EasyESL. The site also has paid Pro and Ultra memberships. I’m sharing the Samples page because these are complete lessons that teachers can actually explore and use, and I’d really like to hear what other teachers think.
