Free resources
Everything on this site you can use for free
Ten things, grouped by what they cost you. Four need nothing at all. Two need an email address. The other four come with a free account, which holds three students and doesn’t ask for a card.
I’m David. I teach 70 to 100 online English classes a week, and I built most of this because I needed it first. Take what’s useful and ignore the rest.
Tools you can open right now
No account, no email, no trial that runs out. Open them in a tab and use them between classes.
The Level Finder
An adaptive CEFR test that places a new student in about eight minutes. Pre-A1 to C1. You get a level you can actually teach to, and so does the student.
Take the test →The tutoring business name generator
Ten names at a time, filtered by subject and tone, built from a list of a thousand real tutoring business names. Copy the ones you like and check the domain.
Generate some names →The Break Room
A free course on teaching English, published one lesson at a time, three times a week. Six minutes of reading and one technique you can use in your next class.
Read lesson one →The Global Classroom Podcast
Conversations with people who teach for a living. Free, wherever you get podcasts.
Listen →Downloads
Both of these are things I made for my own teaching before they were anything else. You give me an email, I send the file, and you can unsubscribe from the first message.
The 13-Slide Blueprint
The shape I build every lesson on, and the timing behind it. Thirteen slides, same order every time, with what each one is for and what to cut when you’re running behind.
Get the blueprint →The Tutor Planner
The Google Sheet I ran my own tutoring on for years. Students, classes, packages, a financial goal tracker, and a scheduler that posts your classes to Google Calendar.
Get the planner →Free inside the app
The free plan holds three students, doesn’t expire, and needs no card. These come with it.
Sixteen coaching lessons
Two video courses, one on getting started and one on teaching method. Free on every plan, including the free one.
See the courses →Dozens of free lessons
A slice of the lesson library, ready to teach, from the same curriculum as the paid plans. Kids, teens and adults tracks.
See what’s inside →The placement test
Longer than the Level Finder and across five skill areas, with a report you can send the parent.
How it works →The session log
Log a class across eight skill areas in under two minutes, and get a progress trend you can show rather than claim.
Start free →Worth reading if you teach online
The posts people come back to, rather than everything we’ve ever published.
- 75 ESL icebreakers for online one-to-one lessons
Sorted by age group and CEFR level, and every one works with a single student on a screen. - 100+ free ESL worksheets, and how to use them
Where to find printable material that isn’t padding, and what to do with it in a one-to-one class. - ESL vs ELL: what’s the difference?
ELL is the student, ESL is the program. Plus EFL, ESOL and the terms a parent might quote at you. - Outschool alternatives for online teachers
Twelve platforms sorted by who sets your rate and who finds the student, and what going independent actually costs. - 20 online ESL class ideas
Activities that work on a screen, which is a shorter list than activities that work in a room. - Teaching idioms to ESL students
How to introduce them without turning the lesson into a vocabulary list. - How to find online students
The part nobody prepares you for. I went years without a way to replace students who aged out, and it cost me. - Flipped classroom advantages and disadvantages
Including the cases where flipping makes a one-to-one class worse.
The free plan is the rest of this list
Three students, no card, and it doesn’t expire into anything. Hundreds of lessons from Pre-A1 to B2, a placement test with a parent report, session logs across eight skill areas, and your students, schedule and earnings in one place.