Starting your first teaching job can be a nerve wracking experience for any newly qualified
teacher. With any luck you will find yourself working in a well equipped school with a set
curriculum and all the resources you’ll need readily available. Unfortunately, this is not
always the case and some schools may not even have a chalkboard for you to use let alone
the latest IWB hooked up to the students’ iPads. In this case it is important for a teacher to
know where to look for appropriate materials for their classes, whether it is to supplement
those resources already provided or to start a course from scratch.
If you know that you are headed to a school with limited resources before you leave home,
and this could be the case for anyone volunteering in the poorer regions of the world, a
good idea is to buy yourself a set of course books appropriate for using with your students.
Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press both publish excellent course books
and other resources to suit a range of abilities and ages. OUP’s Headway series is great for
older learners and Cambridge’s Essential Grammar in Use books are an invaluable resource
for any teacher. Individual resource books or packs are a great source of games and
activities; they usually cover one area such as grammar games or communication activities
and have pages to photocopy for use in your classroom.
The internet is one big resource library for English teachers, if you have access to it of
course. There are hundreds if not thousands of sites aimed at providing ideas and materials
for English teachers mostly run by working teachers themselves, and as long as you have
access to the internet and a printer you can find almost anything you could need for your
classes.
You should also consider asking your colleagues if they have anything you could use, most of
them will either be in the same position as you or will have already been there so may well
have something to share. You can also make your own materials, enabling you to build up
your own extensive library of teaching resources for use throughout your career.
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