ESOL Queen

Wow, the world of teaching has changed dramatically since I first started this blog during Covid-19 in 2020. Back then, I would spend hours creating and designing teaching materials from scratch.  Now, in 2026, AI tools have completely transformed the way I plan lessons. Over the past year, I’ve been exploring different AI tools that help me: save time on lesson preparation create targeted ESOL resources set clear SMART targets and lesson aims In this post, I’m sharing some of the tools I’ve found most useful in my own teaching practice. My Favourite AI Tools for Teaching Materials 1) Chalkie Chalkie is a great tool for quickly creating lesson PowerPoints and worksheets. I’ve only used it a few times, but one thing I learned quickly is that you need to be very specific with your instructions to get the best results. Why it’s useful: Fast lesson creation Simple to use Free and paid options available Best for: Teachers who want quick, ready-made lesson content. 👉 I’d definitely rec...

 Hi everyone, After receiving many requests, I have now managed to update my Easter and Ramadan/ Eid phonics resources. These resources no longer have the dates included, so they can be used each year. These resources have been designed to be used with low literacy students at Pre-Entry (Pre-beginner level). They can also be used with students at Entry 1 (beginner) level. I hope you find them useful. 😃 Here are my Ramadan/ Eid resources: PowerPoint:  Worksheet:  Easter PowerPoint:  Easter Worksheet: 

Hi everyone, I have finally found some time to upload onto my blog again! I have recently been using Chat GPT to make some resources for my Level 1 and 2 Functional Skills English students. This technology is great for providing me with relevant texts at the appropriate English level for my students and for giving me Functional Skills style questions based on the texts. I had a lot of fun typing into Chat GPT tasks like, "Give me a biased text on online banking in the UK" and "Give me an instructional text on how Easter is celebrated in the UK". Check out the results in these worksheets below: Banking and Financial Literacy Functional Skills Level 1 and 2 Easter Level 1 and 2 Functional Skills Reading Culture Level 1 and 2 Functional Skills Reading Do you teach Level 1 and 2 Functional Skills? What resources do you use for teaching reading? Let me know in the comments below 😃

Hi everyone, Thank you so much to everyone who has visited my blog, shared my resources and spread the word about my blog! What started as a small lockdown project in 2020 with just a few views each month has now expanded to over a 1000 visits per month, which is really exciting! I often receive many requests to edit my resources. Unfortunately, with the restrictions on Bloggler I can only upload resources via Google Docs, which makes access to 'edit' documents a bit tricky, as it would mean everyone could edit at the same time. If anyone knows a solution to this, I would be really grateful for ideas 😀  Whilst, I will do my best to respond to you, I currently do not have a lot of time to answer all the requests due to my current work commitments.  However, you can find the majority of my resources on the website ISLcollective under the name of Squeen , with the options to download and edit as you wish.  You can access my materials here: English ESL worksheets, activities...

I've been spending the last few weeks encouraging my Pre-Entry low literacy students to do self-study with a focus on phonics- particularly looking at initial sound patterns and CVC words. My students all have access to Microsoft Teams and after a lot of practice they can now log on and click on their class Team independently. When they have logged on they can click on the websites I post and access them on their mobiles. This has been really useful in enabling my learners to practice at home. If you want to know more about using Microsoft Teams with a low literacy class, let me know in the comments box below and I will post more information about it when I have time. Here are my best self-study phonics websites and videos: Citizen Literacy – Reading and Writing for Everyone  This is an excellent app for reviewing basic literacy and phonic skills. Learn to Read with Phonics | Starfall Education e Word Machine (starfall.com)   Phonics - KS1 English - BBC Bitesize phonics – Sha...

It's that time of year again when my students are frantically preparing for their Entry 1 ESOL and Functional Skills exams in a few weeks time.  The vast majority of my learners find writing in English extremely challenging, particularly if they come from low literacy backgrounds or their first language has a different alphabet like Arabic or Kurdish. I have tried to create activities that focus on "practical" situations that my students may face (e.g. writing a text message to their teacher). However as the exam topics are not always that relevant my students everyday lives (sending a postcard is a very Western concept!) some of the worksheets have been created specifically to help my learners prepare for activities they may come across in ESOL and FS Entry 1 writing exams. Each of the worksheets follow the same pattern. There is an example text, questions to answer, a "think of" / "choose" section where students need to use their own ideas, a templa...

 Over the last few weeks I have been introducing my very low (zero) literacy ESOL students to body parts, health problems and medical treatment vocabulary. One of the main reasons for this is to encourage my students to be confident should they or their family need medical help. Another reason is to help them see that certain words like "children" and "expiry date" can be found on medication labels, enabling them to gain some practical skills for word recognition.  My PowerPoints can be used for both Zoom and face-to-face teaching. They include slow typing motion to show students how the words are formed (with colour-coded vowels). They also include matching activities, simple sentences to practice reading and a few have "fill in the missing letter" activities (see below). Today, I asked my colleagues to bring in their old "over the counter" medical packaging and I was able to create a mini pharmacy in my classroom. My students were able to look ...

After 3 months of online teaching due to lockdown, I am rather pleased to be back to face-to-face teaching again! It has been so lovely to see students in flesh rather than on a screen and everyone seems so happy to be back :) One of the things I've been keen to establish with my very low/ zero literacy Pre-Entry students is how much their literacy and language skills have developed over the last few months and where I will need to 'pitch' my class over the next few weeks. I will also have some new learners starting, so it will be useful to know how much to 'repeat' what we did online and which words and phonic patterns we can move onto next. Therefore, I've created a 'Pre-Entry Literacy Progression Test', which covers basic phonic activities such as initial letter recognition, CVC and CVCC words and simple sentences. I have also included activities to review personal information and basic vocabulary (e.g. colours, clothes and house objects etc.).  To do...

 I can't believe it's nearly Easter already. This term has gone so quickly teaching online, but I can't wait to go back to face-to-face lessons after the Easter holidays.  Here are two of my latest PowerPoints for zero/ low literacy Pre-Entry ESOL learners looking at Easter and Ramadan. This year in the UK Easter is on Sunday 4th April 2021 and Ramadan is roughly between Monday 12th April and Wednesday 15th May (depending on the moon).  My students come from very mixed backgrounds (mainly Middle Eastern and European) and they love finding out about each other's cultures. These PowerPoints are designed to give students the language to describe the festivals they might be familiar with and to share how they celebrate them.  Each PowerPoint consists of vocabulary colour coded to show the phonic patterns, videos, matching activities and spelling activities. Each PowerPoint should last about 2 hours on Zoom, depending on your class. I hope you enjoy using them, just click...