Article use varies widely among the languages of the world. Some languages, such as French, have six articles while others have none—Japanese, for example. English has three main articles, and they tend to cause a lot of problems for English language learners! Our new Articles lesson aims to simplify English article usage by providing charts and examples that make it easy for your students to tell the difference between a, an, and the. (more…)

Find our updated Spotlight lesson for 2016 here: http://blog.sproutenglish.com/st-patricks-day-materials/

With the drawing activities in our Project Depot, your young learners will be having so much fun that they won’t even realize they’re developing their listening and/or reading skills! This week, we’re featuring our House Listen and Draw/Read and Draw activity. (more…)

Students of all levels and ages need some basic vocabulary to describe where they live. Our new Word Bank lesson, My House, is the perfect place to start!

The My House lesson includes a colorful picture dictionary, matchup, word choice, word search, word scramble, and spelling bee. Your learners will learn if swing set, flower box, front yard, and backyard are one or two words. (more…)

The /th/ sound (/θ/ for the voiceless sound and /ð/ for the voiced sound, written phonetically) is not common in many other languages, so English language learners usually struggle with this sound. I’ve found that encouraging students (both children and adults) to “stick out their tongues” (put their tongues between their teeth) is a fun way to get them to practice making this sound. Our phonics lesson on “th” words will have your students pronouncing and spelling words like month, thanks, these, and father in no time! (more…)

Please see our updated post for Feb 14, 2016: Valentine’s Day Collection.

Young learners will feel more confident in their English abilities when they learn how to introduce themselves properly. Our Spotlight lesson this week, Valentine – Simple Present Reading, provides a good example of how to introduce yourself in English.
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Are you a chocoloholic? Chocolate is now for sale in many stores in countries that celebrate Valentine’s Day. Your young learners will enjoy learning about where chocolate comes from and how hot chocolate became a popular drink!

Our Chocolate lesson in the Discovery Center includes discussion questions, pre-reading vocabulary, a short reading full of interesting facts, and comprehension questions. There are also engaging vocabulary review tasks in the form of a crossword puzzle, a word search, and a word maze!

Our Discovery Center has other fun food lessons too. We have lessons on cheese, ice cream, pizza, popcorn, and food allergies.

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Most young learners groan at the mention of a writing task. Don’t worry—we have ways of making writing easier and more interesting for your students! First, teach your young learners our tips on how to write a paragraph. Next, try our writing activity, The Party, which guides students by starting the story for them. Soon your students will look forward to writing!

How will you correct their writing? Use our handy, free correction key to make your job easier. Our key has common codes to indicate spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Students can then try to correct their mistakes themselves—they seem to remember better this way. Students can also use this key for peer correction. (more…)

What time is it? Telling time is an important skill, and our new Word Bank lesson makes it easy to learn!

Our Telling Time lesson includes a picture dictionary with 13 common clock settings, a matchup, a word choice, and a spelling bee. We’ve made sure that this lesson includes the different, common ways of saying and writing the time (in numerical and alphabetical forms—e.g., 4:10, four ten, or ten after four). The variety and repetition of these exercises will ensure your young learners get plenty of practice without getting bored! Discussion questions at the end allow your students to practice talking about clock time in context. (more…)