Hi, my dear educators!
Alice here with something quite unusual. This list of websites allows you to create things with your students in class. I consider them no prep, as you can learn something new, like mixing a song, creating a book, making a small comic, or doing something similar with your student. The listed websites are from low to intermediate tech skills, so even if you don’t know how to use them, it will take one class with your student to learn.
Low-prep – Make creative things with your students in your class – the only prep is learning to explore the tool a bit, but you can do that too with your students!
- Meme Generator – Meme Generator is my absolute fave. This one is amazing, even for low-level students, because they can express themselves visually. Pick a template, make a joke, and enjoy some creative time in your ESL classroom.
- IncrediBox – IncrediBox allows you to become a music producer in a minute! Select a genre, mix a song with your student in class, and work on creative skills, listening, and speaking simultaneously.
- Blockly – Blockly Games is a series of educational games that teach programming. It is designed for children who have not had prior experience with computer programming. By the end of these games, one is ready to use conventional text-based languages.
- Scratch – Scratch is a block coding platform that offers easily accessible block coding game creation with teacher tutorials you can follow in your class. Why not develop some engineering skills while you do English as well?
- Storyjumper – Storyjumper is a website where you can read digital books created by other children! They usually also illustrate them. You can use it for reading, and you can also make an account and create books with your students there. The only prep you need is to explore the website, but the book design itself is fairly easy to do, and you can learn on the spot with your first student.
- Make Belief Comix – Make Belief Comix is another teacher staple. If you are a new teacher, you might want to make a comic book with your class, so we decided to share it anyway.
- Pixton – Pixton is a leveled-up comic creator because, with this one, you can also design your avatars to add to the comic books. It requires more skills from students, but talk about personalization!
- Little Alchemy – Little Alchemy is a website where you create objects and do magical things from the 4 elements. You can combine the elements to create different things, boost creative thinking, and have some out-of-the-box speaking time in your ESL classroom.
- Super Teacher Worksheets Generator – The Super Teacher Worksheets Generator can generate quick word searches, cryptograms, crosswords, missing letters, and more. You can take a screenshot and paste it into your whiteboard or a ppt with a white background, so you don’t even need to download a PDF. Making an activity with students is extremely fun, and they will always enjoy it! You can give it to them or have them do an activity for another student.
- Kahoot – Kahoot is added here because one of my colleagues has shared a BRILLIANT idea – she said her students enjoy making Kahoots more now than just playing them, so they make sets for the other groups. If you teach 1v1, you can swap sets with different students.
- Pobble – Pobble – Inspire young writers – Access a free, ready-made writing prompt every day to engage and motivate your class
- Letterboxd – Letterboxd allows you to make an account, collect all the movies and animated movies your students watched, rate them, explain why, and give a written review! Connected to real life and useful for English!
BONUS: Record a mini-podcast – Depending on where you are teaching, you can do an interview and pretend you are in a real podcast or a YouTube video – this one is for your older young learners. It’s open for all kinds of adaptations.
To conclude
These websites should help you quickly create things with your students, and don’t forget – it’s absolutely OK for a teacher not to know how to use these tools before class. We are also learning with our students every day!
We hope they help you with some creative activities for your classes! Are there any MUST-HAVE websites you use that are not on the list? Let us know, and link them down in the comments below this post!
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