Websites & Blogs

A collection of websites and blogs useful for Australasian English language teachers

All Down Under – cool site with all things traditionally Aussie. Look in the ‘Uniquely Australian‘ section to find resources on events, slang, food, and style. Quizzes and history also available.

Open Sauce English Resources – also from Jason Renshaw
‘Open Sauce’ (or Open Source) collection of lesson building materials designed to help you mix and match activity ingredients to create different kinds of classroom learning recipes…
These resources come with screencast tutorials suggesting and demonstrating different ways to choose and apply your ingredients, along with worksheet templates you can download and adapt as you please.

Brisbanism – another good site… (@elkysmith)
There’s also a Melbournism and Sydneyism… (please let us know if you hear about any others)

Tiny Texts: Read, listen & learn a little English – interesting news items with reading texts and audio, plus a gap fill worksheet, and usually an accompanying video and links to related articles. Building a nice collection of texts from Australia and New Zealand…
- Australian stories (with audio with Australian accents):
- New Zealand stories (with audio with NZ accents):
  - Royals get Crash Course in all things Kiwi
- … And you might notice a few #AusELT folk have recorded the audio for these, plus some other stories on this site.

Refugee Stories – Researchers for Asylum Seekers
a celebration of refugees positive contributions to Australia. Read and or listen to the stories of a group of refugees who have all made a big impact on some sector of Australian society. Inspiration for this page came from Karen MacNamara, and Mike Smith from Brisbane.

Many Stories – One Australia – Harmony Day e-book with stories by Navitas English AMEP Distance Learning students (migrants and refugees).

Australia Plus
“Produced by the ABC, AustraliaPlus.com shares stories that reveal the culture, life and society of Australia to inform, inspire and include the diverse audiences of Australia and our region.”

Australia Plus Learn English
“Everyday English lessons using Australian examples, along with daily news from the ABC.”
Aussie English, grammar, vocabulary, including phrasal verbs, pronunciation, and more. Some are live video lessons, some are simple text explanations
Also Australia Plus Learn English Facebook page

Celebrate the Australian Year – for the Australian teacher-librarian, teacher or parent who wants to add some more celebrations to children’s lives.-
- Website: http://www.celebratetheyear.weebly.com
- Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Celebrate-the-Australian-Year/485490261559807
Classroom Canberra – using the Canberra region as your classroom for authentic learning.
- Website http://www.classroomcanberra.com
- Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomCanberra

The Australian Audio Guide
Looking for good audio content for listening activities, or to recommend to your advanced students for self-study? The Australian Audio Guide would be a good place to start. Browse podcasts and radio programs by theme:
(Note: This link only gets you to the podcast home page – you would need to browse/search there for specific separate episodes.)

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