Top sites to find free EFL lesson plans

Our favorite sites to find EFL lesson plans for our private lessons.

Over the past 20 years we (founders of off2class) have been teaching lessons around the world. For the past five years we’ve focused on private EFL lessons (both online and offline). Our students have ranged from elderly housewives to preschool aged children and everything in between.
As many of you have likely experienced, it is challenging to find high quality lesson plan content online. Many sites are user generated and carry too much breadth with too little organization. User generated sites have created so much content that it can be difficult to narrow in on just what it is you’re looking for. Although, it can be challenging, there are some great sites out there to find EFL lesson plans for your own private lessons. This is a list (in no particular order) of our favorite sites:

 ReadWriteThink.org

ReadWriteThink is an entirely free service with a mission to provide educators and parents with quality learning materials. The vast majority of the site is dedicated to materials for the traditional classroom, but most materials can be adapted for private lessons. There’s a consistent level of quality across most materials and they are organized with a powerful taxonomy.

OneStopEnglish

OneStopEnglish is a great potential source of EFL lesson plans. If you are teaching students with an exam goal in mind, they have categories including IELTS, TOEFL and many others. They also cover topical areas such as Law and HR. Quite a bit of the content is available for free, and a full license costs only $68 per year. Again, most of the content is geared towards the traditional classroom but it can be adapted.

Dave’s ESL Cafe

Although the resources are a bit unorganized, there is a wide variety of content supplied by teachers from all over the world. The best part are the forums. They are extremely active and the users are very helpful. Signup for an account, post a request and you’ll be surprised how many teachers out there are willing to help and supply their own content.

Lessonstream.org

This site was started by and is curated by Jamie Keddie. There are lesson plans covering a large range of topics. Most of the lesson plans are delivered as printables and are intended for the traditional classroom but they are adaptable as private EFL lessons plans. Over the years this site has generated thousands if not hundreds of thousands of downloads and the best part is, it’s free. Since most of the content is generated by one teacher, there is also a consistent style across lesson plans.
Of course, we couldn’t finish off this list without mentioning our own site. If you’re a teacher running private EFL lessons, we’ve made a product specifically for you. Ready-to-teach EFL lesson plans on a simple to use web platform. Get in touch with us through the contact form on our homepage to get invited to our free private beta.

We hope this list is useful in your never ending search for content. Please let us know your favorite sites to find EFL lesson plans.