As I shared last month (see Beginning A New “Best” Series Of Interest To ELL Teachers), I’m beginning to create an updated series of “Best” lists for Beginning English Language Learners. They will ultimately replace the resources I have on my outdated website.

I began with:

The Best Resources For Helping ELLs Learn About Sports & Other Fun Activities

The Best Resources For Helping ELLs Learn About U.S. Money

The Best Resources For Helping Beginner ELLs Learn About Space & Planets

The Best Resources For Helping Beginner ELLs Learn About “Feelings”

The Best Resources For Helping Beginner ELLs Learn About Jobs

I already have a The Best Sites For Learning About Animals, but many of those resources are not accessible to ELL Beginners (at the bottom of this post – bold – I have links to lesson plans about animals that I use with Beginners).

Many of the links are the still-active ones I copied-and-pasted from my website. Please let me know if you have additional suggestions of sites to add:

Language Guide:
Farm Animals
Pets
Insects
Birds
Mammals
Reptiles & Amphibians
African Animals
Sea Animals

Who Pooped?

Animal Games

More Animal Games

Animal Matching Game

The Greedy Dog

The Lion and the Mouse

Pet Activities

Proud Peacock

Penguins

Gumbie Cat

Insects

At The Zoo

Living Things

Dolphins

Polar Bears

Bats

Insect World Records

More Bats

Even More Bats

Snow Monkeys

Butterflies

Metamorphosis

Animal Families

Insects

Bugs

Farm Animals

Farm Animal Quiz

I Spy Animal Game

The Sea

Kids San Diego Zoo offers the most accessible information about different animals.

Creature Features from National Geographic offers good, but less accessible explanations.

Animals and Plants from the Denver Zoo also offers good, but less accessible explanations.

For Teachers:

Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “My Storybook” includes hand-outs and links for another animal-related lesson plan.

One of my New York Times Learning Network interactive for English Language Learners is on parrots and pets. Students have to choose correct word definitions and a summary, and then write about their favorite pets.

 

This would be a very good video to show Beginning English Language Learners while teaching them about animals. Students could watch it and then retell what happened, while at the same time learning the types of the animals in the film.

You’ll want to watch it until the end.