ESL Pals Review: 1,000+ PDF Lesson Plans and Step-by-Step Curriculum

ESL Pals is a subscription-based ESL lesson-plan library built around a single idea: save teachers thousands of hours of planning. The site's tagline is "We plan, you teach," and the homepage leans into it hard.

The library covers four strands:

• General English (A0-C2) — adult lesson plans from absolute beginner to advanced
• Business English (B1-C2) — workplace-focused plans at three levels
• Kids (Level 0-3) — young-learner plans built around games and activities, packaged in units of three
• Grammar (A1-C2) — grammar-focused plans split into four bands

Every adult lesson is built around a video or article that introduces a topic. You get a teacher version, a student version, and a homework sheet — all printable PDFs. New lessons are added weekly.

Interactive ESL tests are included for every level so you can quickly assess a learner. Curricula come packaged as PDFs too, so you can map a term's worth of planning in one download.

ESL Pals works best for these specific teaching situations:

• Lesson-plan emergencies: Tuesday morning, nothing planned, group of B1 adults. Pull a PDF, print it, run the lesson. That's the core use case.
• Curriculum mapping: download the full A1 or B2 curriculum as one PDF and use it to plan a term without piecing things together manually.
• Video-driven classes: if your teaching style is built around authentic video content, every adult lesson here already has the video embedded with the activity.
• Kids' ESL groups: the Level 0-3 curricula come with detailed game-based plans. Useful if you teach young learners weekly.
• Business English one-offs: B1-B2 business plans for short-term corporate contracts where you need workplace-relevant material fast.
• Substitute teachers or first-year teachers: the plans are detailed enough that a less experienced teacher can run them with minimal prep.

Yes — for teachers who want downloadable PDFs with full teacher notes and embedded video, ESL Pals delivers on its promise. The 6-month plan at $49 (~$8.20/month) and the 12-month plan at $79 (~$6.50/month) are reasonable compared to buying individual textbooks. The weekly update cadence is also a real differentiator — the library grows.

The honest caveat: this is a content library, not a platform. There is no integrated gradebook, no student portal, no auto-grading. If your school's workflow depends on Google Classroom integration or learning analytics, pair ESL Pals with a separate LMS. The plans themselves are the product, and they're solid.

Honest recommendation: if your school can expense a year of ESL Pals (~$79), it's a worthwhile investment for any teacher who runs adult or kids classes regularly. Try the free sample lessons first to confirm the lesson style fits how you actually teach before you commit.