The number of new tools and features that Ellii has pumped out recently has been extensive and pretty impressive (if we do say so ourselves 😉)!

All types of English teachers and tutors rely on Ellii to run their classes, so our goal has always been to make sure that we're consistently releasing new and relevant content and that we’re designing and developing features that will be useful and intuitive for everyone. 

Let's take a look at our top five platform tools and features! Here's what we recommend using to keep things fun, simple, and effective while teaching with Ellii.
 

1. Lesson Planner

With the release of our Lesson Planner in 2023, Ellii made a huge improvement to how teachers can plan, prepare, and administer their classes.

The Lesson Planner is a sleek, simple Kanban board that allows teachers to drag lessons and resources to one of three organizational lanes: Prepping, Teaching, and Taught. This gives teachers a visual overview of what content they’re preparing to teach in their upcoming classes, what is currently assigned to their students to work on, and what their students have already finished.

This amazing organizational feature has teachers raving! Check out our video to learn more about Ellii’s built-in Lesson Planner and its many uses.

2. Grade Feed

Grading is often a task that teachers find time-consuming and tedious, so we made it our mission to develop a feature that addresses both of these concerns. The result? Grade Feed!

Grade Feed is an easy-to-use grading tool with one convenient inbox where you can find all of your students’ completed assignments that require your attention. 

Easily read or listen to a student's submission and then assign a score and star rating, leave a comment or correction, or even record an audio message. Quickly send off your feedback to the student and move on to the next one!

Working your way through your inbox of assignments to grade is now fun and satisfying to do. Learn more about the Grade Feed feature in our handy tutorial video.

3. Folders

Folders have long allowed teachers to save lessons into personalized collections on Ellii. But now Folders are so much more than just an organizational tool for great lesson content.

Finally, you can save lessons, resources, videos, and flashcard sets to a folder; curate your desired teaching order; pin your folder to your class; and import your lesson content into your Lesson Planner. Done and dusted!

Watch our featured video on how to create and pin custom folders to a class.

4. Ellii Polls

Ellii Polls were unveiled at the start of 2024, and they were a hit with both teachers and students right off the bat!

This highly engaging feature allows teachers to launch a variety of interactive poll questions in class or online that students can answer in real time with their own personal devices. Yup, you read that correctly. It’s that cool.

Simply choose an Ellii Poll from our ever-growing list and get your students talking! They will be able access the student interface on their smartphones, tablets, or laptops with a QR code. From there, you have control of the poll questions that are sent out to students to respond to and are able to close the poll at any time and display the class’s answers. Use Ellii Polls to spark lively discussions and facilitate spontaneous debates on fun and relevant topics your students will love!

Check out our demo video to learn more about Ellii Polls. Even your quietest students won’t be able to resist speaking up with these enticing conversation starters! 

5. Student Picks

As language teachers, we know that it’s MUCH easier to keep our students engaged when they’re learning English within the context of a topic that interests them.

That’s why we created Student Picks—a feature that allows students to show their teachers which lessons they’re most interested in studying next!

Teachers are able to select lesson categories from within Ellii’s content library to include in Student Picks and filter by level to determine which lessons are displayed to their students. Students can browse through lesson titles and let their teacher know which ones they’d like to study by leaving hearts and essentially casting their vote. 

Student Picks is a great way to make sure you’re still achieving your teaching objectives while giving your students agency in what they want to learn! Watch our featured video to learn more.

All five of these features can help you run a more organized, enjoyable, and purposeful class.

These features were built with your teaching needs in mind and aim to provide you with the tools you need to offer your students the very best learning experience. 

We hope you (and your students) love them as much as we do.

Happy teaching!