Thiings: a visual resource for the classroom

Thiings is a collection of more than 10,000 free AI-generated 3D icons covering a wide range of everyday objects, animals, food, people and other visual elements. The collection has a consistent and attractive style, making it easy to find images that can be used in presentations, worksheets, digital activities and other teaching materials.

From an educational perspective, Thiings can be particularly useful for creating more visual and accessible learning materials. Teachers can use the images to introduce vocabulary in language lessons, create flashcards and games, support classroom instructions, illustrate stories or dialogues, and design activities based on describing, classifying or comparing objects. The visual nature of the icons can also provide useful support for learners who benefit from clear visual references.

The collection can also become a starting point for creative classroom activities. Students could choose several images and use them to create a story, describe the objects in a foreign language, organise them into categories or incorporate them into a digital presentation or project. In this way, a simple collection of images can support vocabulary development, communication, creativity and digital competence.

Find it here:

https://www.thiings.co/things

Lesson planning with #AI

How can artificial intelligence help teachers prepare better lessons while saving time? This resource from Ditch that Textbook offers a practical introduction to using AI as a teaching assistant during the planning process. Rather than presenting AI as a magic solution, the webpage encourages teachers to use it as a starting point: a tool for generating ideas, exploring possibilities, creating activities and receiving feedback, while the teacher remains responsible for making the final decisions.

The resource is divided into two main areas. The first explores ways of using AI to improve lessons that already exist. Teachers can ask an AI assistant to suggest a lesson plan, create analogies to explain difficult concepts, identify common misconceptions, generate discussion or reflection questions, develop real-world examples, create dialogues or even design interactive stories connected to the subject being taught. AI image generators can also be used to create an unexpected visual “hook” to introduce a topic and stimulate students’ curiosity. The page also suggests using AI to help with assessment, differentiation and the alignment of lessons with curriculum standards.

The second part focuses on planning new lessons with AI. The process begins with the big picture and gradually moves towards individual activities. Teachers can start with a unit or a set of learning objectives, introduce the relevant curriculum standards, and then ask AI to suggest activities, resources and assessment strategies. An important message throughout the resource is that AI-generated material should always be evaluated and adapted. AI can produce many ideas very quickly, but teachers are the ones who know their students, their classroom context and what will actually work.

https://ditchthattextbook.com/ai-lesson-planning/

Library of Congress. Free to Use and Reuse sets

Free to Use is a section of the Library of Congress that brings together images, photographs, maps, manuscripts, posters, illustrations and other materials from its digital collections that can be freely reused. It offers an excellent opportunity to explore historical and cultural documents while discovering how libraries and archives can become valuable sources of authentic educational material.

One of the most interesting features of the resource is its visual richness. Instead of working only with written explanations about history, society or culture, students can examine original photographs, historical maps, advertisements, drawings and other documents. These materials can be used to investigate the past, identify changes over time and ask questions about the people, places and events represented in them.

For teachers, the collection offers many possibilities for project-based and inquiry-based learning. A photograph can become the starting point for a historical investigation; a map can be used to study geographical change; an old advertisement can lead to an analysis of consumer culture and stereotypes; and a historical poster can be examined to understand propaganda, political messages or the social values of a particular period. Students can also compare historical images with contemporary ones and discuss how societies represent themselves.

The resource is particularly valuable for the English classroom because it provides authentic materials from an English-speaking cultural context. Students can describe images, reconstruct the stories behind them, write captions, create short narratives, investigate unfamiliar vocabulary or prepare presentations based on primary sources. It can also encourage students to move beyond the textbook and use English as a tool for exploring history and culture.

https://www.loc.gov/free-to-use/

ESL Worksheets and Lesson Plans for English Teachers

Linguahouse is an online platform offering a large collection of teaching materials for teachers of English as a foreign or second language. Its ESL Lesson Plans section brings together lesson plans and worksheets that can be searched and filtered according to different criteria, making it easier for teachers to find activities suited to their students and teaching context. The platform includes resources for general English, English for teenagers and other more specific areas, as well as materials based on different types of language and media.

One of its main advantages is its practical approach. Instead of simply providing isolated exercises, the platform offers materials that can be incorporated into complete lessons, with topics and activities designed to encourage students to use English in meaningful contexts. Some resources also include audio or video, which can help teachers develop listening skills and introduce more varied and engaging classroom activities.

For secondary-school English teachers, Linguahouse can therefore be a useful source of inspiration when planning lessons, looking for activities on particular topics or adding variety to the textbook. Materials can be adapted to different levels and classroom situations and can provide opportunities to practise vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening and speaking while discussing contemporary and engaging topics.

The website also distinguishes between free and subscription-based materials, so teachers can explore the available resources and choose those that best fit their needs. Its subscription plans provide broader access to the platform's EFL/ESL resources and include lesson and course plans, among other materials.

https://www.linguahouse.com/esl-lesson-plans

Hooking students on classical mythology via The Odyssey

With Christopher Nolan's epic film adaptation of The Odyssey capturing audiences, ancient Greek mythology is having a major cultural moment in classrooms. While a cinematic spectacle is a great way to spark curiosity, students still need accessible text resources to help them process Homer’s complex narrative structure, non-linear timeline, and vast cast of characters.

The BBC Bitesize guide to Geraldine McCaughrean’s adaptation of The Odyssey offers an ideal bridge between Hollywood hype and classroom literacy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/ztsj2v4#zp4pf82

Research Animations for Educators by Edutopia

Edutopia brings academic research to life through a dedicated series of animated videos that explore how learning actually happens. By gathering these visual breakdowns in one place, the platform translates scientific findings into clear, bite-sized insights, helping educators refine their teaching practices and empowering students with proven strategies to improve their own learning habits.

https://www.edutopia.org/package/research-animations-for-educators

Football Welcomes Refugees

This educational resource pack published by Amnesty International UK, primarily for students aged 7 to 14, serves as a teaching tool to spark meaningful classroom discussions about human rights, asylum, and migration by using football as a familiar and engaging entry point. 

The core of the material explores the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically focusing on the rights to life, to seek asylum from persecution, and to enjoy rest and leisure. To make these abstract concepts tangible for young learners, the pack features real-life case studies of professional footballers and community clubs with refugee backgrounds. 

Alongside these inspiring stories, the resource provides a series of reflective discussion prompts and structured curriculum activities ranging from creative drama and geography mapping to research-based journalism projects.

For an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, this resource is a highly effective asset for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), allowing students to develop authentic language skills while engaging with a significant global topic. Teachers can utilize the biographical texts for jigsaw reading tasks, where students read different profiles and practice their speaking and listening skills by summarizing their assigned player's life history to their peers. The topic introduces a rich set of vocabulary related to migration, community integration, and emotional resilience. The built-in discussion questions, which ask students to imagine what they would pack if they had to suddenly leave home, serve as an excellent communicative tool to practice conditional structures and build empathy in a highly interactive way. The project-based prompts can be adapted into creative writing assessments, such as formatting a short newspaper report or designing a school welcome poster, which encourages students to synthesize new vocabulary into meaningful, real-world output.

https://media.amnesty.org.uk/documents/HRE20Football20welcomes202022.pdf

Advancing Digital Education for Every Learner

If you are looking for fresh, exciting ways to bring technology into your teaching, you will want to check out Advancing Digital Education for Every Learner - Innovative Practices from the EU.

This is the fourth report from the European Digital Education Hub (EDEH), and it is packed with great ideas. The team looked closely at schools across all 27 EU countries and picked out two brilliant, real-life examples from each nation to show how digital learning is growing and changing at every level of education.

To make it easy to explore, the report groups these ideas into three major areas that matter most to modern teachers:

- Digital competences: Clever ways to help students build essential tech skills.

- The future classroom: Inspiring ideas on how to redesign and update our daily learning environments.

- Digital well-being: Practices that help students find a healthy, safe balance with technology.

To find these examples, the Hub sent out surveys to its community of educators, inviting them to share the amazing, innovative work they are doing in their own classrooms. They also did lots of extra research to make sure every country was represented fairly. To pick the absolute best projects, they used a strict, fair rubric system to evaluate each one.

The best part about this report? It is meant to be shared! These ideas are highly adaptable, meaning you can take what worked for a school in another country and tweak it to fit your own classroom, school, or national curriculum. It is a fantastic tool to get inspired and find new ways to help your students thrive in the digital age.

https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/efa878de-6ea9-11f1-ae88-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

Climate Visualized by CartoGuophy

The "Climate Visualized" webpage by CartoGuophy is an interactive, data-driven digital mapping tool designed by Atlas Guo that allows users to explore and analyze global climate patterns. 

By clicking on an interactive map or searching for specific cities and regions, users can instantly access real-time visual charts and graphs detailing a location's overall temperature fluctuations, monthly precipitation levels, and its Köppen Climate Classification. The map employs innovative visual glyphs that cleanly represent climate characteristics directly onto the geographic interface, making complex meteorological data easy to comprehend at a glance.

For teachers in an ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom, this webpage serves as a powerful utility for Task-Based Language Learning (TBLL) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). 

Because the platform presents data through highly accessible, universal visual mediums like bar graphs, scatter plots, and line charts, it reduces the initial cognitive and text-heavy load for language learners, allowing them to focus on acquiring target vocabulary. Teachers can utilize the map to facilitate authentic communication and vocabulary building around specialized topics such as weather, geography, seasons, and environment-related adjectives like arid, humid, temperate, or frigid. For instance, instructors can set up jigsaw activities or comparative speaking tasks where students search for their home countries or dream travel destinations, read the resulting graphs, and practice comparative structures by presenting their findings to the class (e.g., "Tokyo is much wetter in June than Madrid"). 

Additionally, the ability to export charts and maps directly from the site provides teachers with excellent, customized visual prompts for English writing exercises, prompting students to practice descriptive writing and data analysis by translating isual metrics into cohesive English paragraphs.

https://cartoguophy.com/climate-visualized/

World Cup for Kids. Activityvillage.co.uk

Get ready to kick off the ultimate football adventure! The Activity Village World Cup for Kids webpage is a golden ticket to turning the massive excitement of the FIFA World Cup into an unforgettable, creative, and educational celebration for children.

Whether you are a parent looking to channel your child's high energy during the matches, or a teacher wanting to bring the global magic of the tournament straight into the classroom, this page is packed with inspiration!

Here is an energetic breakdown of the incredible resources waiting for you:

Ignite creativity with arts and crafts:

Massive colouring collections: Dive into a stadium full of brand-new World Cup and soccer-themed colouring pages! Kids can even step into the shoes of a fashion mogul and design their very own football kits.

Hands-on soccer crafts: From making a mini "blow football" game to crafting stadium bunting, these projects are perfect for rainy afternoons or setting the scene for a thrilling World Cup party.

Brain-boosting puzzles and worksheets:

Action-packed puzzles: Keep young minds sharp between matches with word searches, grid copies, scrambles, and logic puzzles that celebrate the beautiful game.

Themed worksheets: Transform math practice into a game with soccer-themed addition and subtraction sheets. There are even specialized biography pages about famous footballers to inspire reluctant readers and writers.

A Global education adventure:

The tournament features 48 teams spanning the globe, opening up a world of discovery!

Country resources: Explore fascinating facts, gorgeous photos, and country-specific projects for the historic co-hosts—the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Flag printables & bunting: Print out vibrant national flags to help kids decorate rooms, track tournament progress, and learn about the diverse nations competing on the world stage.

Mascot madness: Introduce children to the official tournament mascots—Maple the Moose (Canada), Zayu the Jaguar (Mexico), and Clutch the Bald Eagle (USA)—and let them flex their creative muscles with "Design a Mascot" worksheets!

Fun and interactive games:

Printable board games: Bring the competitive spirit home! Gather the family, small groups, or classmates to face off in printable soccer board games and multiplication math challenges.

Head over to the page, grab your printable resources, and let the games begin!

https://www.activityvillage.co.uk/world-cup-for-kids

Globe of History

The Globe of History is an innovative 3D interactive mapping tool designed to transform how students and educators engage with the vast timeline of human civilization. Spanning over 6,000 years of global history, the platform functions as a "digital time machine" that allows users to navigate the world through a temporal slider, revealing how civilizations, conflicts, and cultures have shifted across the planet. Unlike static maps, this resource uses a custom AI-driven "data factory" to synthesize information from various historical databases, presenting it as structured, readable narratives pinned to specific geographic coordinates. For educators, the benefits of the Globe of History are particularly significant in fostering spatial and temporal literacy. By visually anchoring historical events to their actual locations, it helps students overcome the common struggle of disconnecting "when" something happened from "where" it occurred. 

The tool provides several key pedagogical advantages: 

- Contextualization and comparison: Teachers can use the filtering system to isolate specific themes—such as battles, inventions, or the roles of famous women—allowing classes to analyze patterns and correlations across different eras and continents simultaneously. 

- Active inquiry: The platform serves as a powerful "questioning medium." Educators can prompt students to investigate why certain regions become hotspots for innovation or conflict during specific decades, encouraging them to think like historians by exploring the "why" behind the data points. 

- High student engagement: The immersive 3D interface and the inclusion of multimedia links (such as Wikipedia and YouTube) for each entry provide a "trigger" for deeper research. It is an ideal resource for the beginning of a lesson to hook students' interest or for mini-survey activities where small groups verify and expand upon a specific event found on the globe. 

- Critical thinking: By showing the interconnectedness of global cultures, the tool challenges the Eurocentric or isolated views often found in traditional textbooks, helping students develop a more holistic and global understanding of history.

https://www.globeofhistory.com/

The Learning Corner. Learn about the European Union

The Learning Corner is an educational platform created by the European Commission to help children, teenagers, and teachers learn about the European Union in an interactive and engaging way. The website offers free educational materials in all 24 official EU languages, making it accessible to schools across Europe.

The platform is organised by age groups and topics, allowing users to explore subjects such as EU history, climate and environment, culture, European institutions, citizenship, and digital safety. It includes quizzes, games, competitions, videos, activity books, timelines, and teaching resources designed both for classroom use and independent learning at home.

One of its main goals is to make learning about the European Union more accessible and enjoyable. Instead of presenting information only through traditional texts, the site uses interactive activities and multimedia content to encourage participation and curiosity. Students can test their knowledge through games and quizzes, while teachers can access ready-to-use lesson materials and ideas for classroom activities.

The Learning Corner is also especially useful for teachers because it provides educational resources for different educational levels, from primary school to upper secondary education. In addition, it helps schools connect with other teachers and institutions across Europe, promoting collaboration and international projects.

https://learning-corner.learning.europa.eu/index_en

A brief history of melancholy

The TED-Ed lesson A brief history of melancholy, created by Courtney Stephens and directed by Sharon Colman Graham, explores how the idea of sadness and melancholy has changed throughout history. Through an animated and accessible format, the lesson explains that melancholy has been understood in many different ways over time: as a medical condition, a philosophical state, a creative force, or simply part of the human experience.

The resource examines historical beliefs such as the ancient theory of the “four humors,” where melancholy was linked to an excess of black bile, and later cultural ideas that connected sadness with wisdom, creativity, or artistic sensitivity. It also reflects on modern views of depression and emotional well-being, encouraging viewers to think critically about how societies interpret emotions.

One of the main strengths of this resource is that it combines history, psychology, philosophy, and culture in a short and engaging lesson. The TED-Ed format also includes discussion questions and additional materials, making it especially useful for educational contexts. Teachers can use it to promote conversations about emotions, mental health, and the historical evolution of ideas related to sadness and human behaviour.

https://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-brief-history-of-melancholy-courtney-stephens

Earth Hub #EarthDay

Earth Hub is a comprehensive digital platform designed to inspire people, especially young learners, to understand environmental issues and take action. It brings together a wide range of educational resources such as quizzes, toolkits, fact sheets, petitions, and news stories, all focused on key global challenges like climate change, plastic pollution, biodiversity loss, and sustainable living.

At its core, Earth Hub is built on the idea that knowledge leads to action. The platform offers interactive quizzes that help users test their understanding of environmental topics, as well as practical toolkits that suggest concrete actions individuals and communities can take. It also includes fact sheets that explain complex issues in a simple and accessible way, making it easier for users to understand how environmental problems affect both the planet and human life.

From an educational perspective, Earth Hub is a highly useful tool for the classroom. It provides authentic, up-to-date content in English, which can support language learning while also raising awareness about environmental issues. Teachers can use the quizzes as engaging warm-up activities, the fact sheets for reading comprehension tasks, and the toolkits for project-based learning, encouraging students to move from theory to real-world action.

Moreover, the platform promotes critical thinking and global citizenship. By exploring real environmental problems and possible solutions, students are encouraged to reflect on their own habits and responsibilities. This makes Earth Hub particularly suitable for celebrating Earth Day in schools, as it helps transform the event from a symbolic date into a meaningful learning experience.

This type of resource is especially valuable in the context of Earth Day, a global initiative that encourages people around the world to reflect on environmental challenges and take steps to protect the planet, celebrated every year on April 22. 

Visit Earth Hub:

https://www.earthday.org/earth-hub/

Pedestrians First

Pedestrians First is an interactive online tool designed to help people understand and measure how walkable a city is. It has been developed by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP. New York) and focuses especially on the needs of babies, young children, and their caregivers, using them as a reference to design better cities for everyone.

The site offers several tools that allow users to explore and analyse cities at different levels. For example, you can see maps and data about how close people live to services like schools or public transport, evaluate whether a neighbourhood is easy to walk around, or even assess a specific street using a checklist of features such as sidewalks, crossings, safety, or shade. These tools are based on indicators like access to services, population density, or the quality of pedestrian infrastructure, helping users understand what makes a city more or less walkable.

The main idea behind the project is that walkable cities are healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable. When cities are designed so that even the most vulnerable people can move safely on foot, they become better places for everyone to live.

This website can be very useful in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. First, it provides authentic, real-world content in English, which helps students develop reading and vocabulary skills related to topics like cities, environment, and transport. Second, it can be used for interactive activities, such as analysing a city, comparing different places, or discussing how to improve urban life. These tasks encourage speaking and critical thinking.

https://pedestriansfirst.itdp.org/

Amnesty International Supporting Human Rights Education

This document is a resource catalogue created by Amnesty International for teachers and educators. It is like a guidebook that shows all the teaching materials available to help students learn about human rights.

Inside the catalogue, you can find:

- Lesson plans and classroom activities

- Educational materials for different ages (from young children to older students)

- Ideas to teach topics like freedom, justice, equality, and global issues

- Resources for both classroom use and independent learning at home

The main purpose of this catalogue is to help teachers teach human rights in a practical and engaging way. It encourages students to understand other people’s experiences, think critically, and become active, responsible citizens.

It also explains how to access these materials (most of them are free online) and offers extra support, such as training courses for teachers.

https://media.amnesty.org.uk/documents/Resource20Catalogue202025.pdf

The School Year in Europe: Recommended compulsory instruction time and holidays

Online tool that shows how the school year is organized in different European countries. It provides visual information about the start and end dates of the school year, the timing of school holidays, and the length of different breaks for students in primary and secondary education. The information is presented through interactive charts and calendars that allow users to compare school schedules across Europe.

The resource collects official data from national education authorities and includes information from many countries that participate in European education programmes. By exploring the visuals, users can see when school usually begins in each country, how long the summer holidays last, and when other breaks—such as autumn, Christmas, winter, or Easter holidays—take place. This makes it easier to understand the differences and similarities between education systems across Europe.

Overall, the tool is designed to help teachers, researchers, policymakers, and the general public better understand how school time is structured in Europe. By presenting the data in a clear and visual way, it supports comparisons between countries and provides useful insights into how education systems organise the academic year.

https://eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu/data-and-visuals/school-year-eu-time-holidays

Our World in Data

Our World in Data is a website that helps people understand how the world is changing by using reliable data, research, and visual information. The platform collects statistics from many trusted sources and presents them through clear charts, maps, and short explanations so that complex global topics are easier to understand. Instead of reading long academic reports, users can explore interactive graphs that show trends over time and compare information between countries.

The website covers many important global issues, such as poverty, health, education, climate change, food production, energy, and technology. By looking at the data and visualizations, people can see how different aspects of the world have improved or changed over the years. For example, the site can show how life expectancy has increased in many countries, how extreme poverty has declined globally, or how carbon dioxide emissions differ around the world.

The goal of the project is to make scientific research and global data accessible to everyone, including students, teachers, journalists, and the general public. By presenting information in a clear and visual way, the platform helps people better understand the biggest challenges facing humanity and the progress that has been made to solve them. The project was created by researcher Max Roser and is connected to the University of Oxford. Overall, it is an educational resource designed to help people learn about the world through data and evidence.

https://ourworldindata.org/

Resources for virtual instruction and online learning

Resources for Virtual Instruction and Online Learning from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is a curated collection designed to support teachers who are working in online or blended learning environments. Rather than being a single tool or platform, it is an organized hub of materials and ideas to help educators teach effectively in digital spaces.

The page brings together a wide range of resources, including professional books published by NCTE on writing instruction and virtual teaching practices, blog posts with practical classroom suggestions, articles from educational journals about integrating digital tools into literacy instruction, and ready-to-use activities from platforms such as ReadWriteThink. These materials aim to strengthen reading and writing instruction in online settings while offering thoughtful guidance grounded in research and professional experience.

The content is organized so that teachers can easily find what they need, whether they are looking for strategies for different grade levels, practical lesson ideas, or broader pedagogical approaches to remote learning. It also includes contributions from partner educational organizations, expanding the range of perspectives and tools available to support virtual instruction.

https://ncte.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Resources-for-Virtual-Instruction-and-Online-Learning.pdf

Freerice (@Freerice)

Freerice.com is a free online website where you can learn and help others at the same time. It works like a simple quiz: you answer questions in different subjects, such as English vocabulary, math, geography, science, languages and more, and for every correct answer, the site donates grains of rice through the World Food Programme to help fight global hunger. This means that as you practice your skills and challenge your brain, your correct answers turn into real-world help for people who need food.

The idea behind Freerice is both educational and charitable. The questions become easier or harder depending on how well you’re doing, so the game adapts to your level and keeps you engaged. You don’t need to sign up or pay anything, simply start answering questions and earning rice. The rice that is “donated” online isn’t literal rice being shipped from your device, but the value of your correct answers is funded by sponsors, so the World Food Programme can provide actual food assistance to communities around the world.

Freerice is especially great for classrooms and learners of all ages because it turns learning into a purpose-driven activity.

https://freerice.com/