How to Use Curipod for Interactive ESL Lessons (2025 Guide) - AI for ESL

Here’s the problem with traditional ESL lessons: you ask a question, three students raise their hands, and the other 20 check out. You call on someone, they answer, and you move on - never knowing if anyone else understood.

Sound familiar?

Curipod fixes this. It’s an interactive lesson platform that gets 100% participation by letting every student respond at the same time through polls, drawings, word clouds, and open-ended questions. No more guessing who’s keeping up.

What is Curipod?

Curipod is an AI-powered presentation platform built for active learning. Think Google Slides meets Kahoot, but designed for actual teaching - not just quizzing.

🎯 What Curipod Offers:

✅ AI-generated lesson slides aligned to standards ✅ Interactive elements (polls, drawings, word clouds, open responses) ✅ Real-time student participation tracking ✅ Instant AI-powered feedback on student responses ✅ Bilingual ESL/ELL lesson options with translated slides

The platform works on any device. Students join via a code (no account needed), and you get live data on who understands and who’s struggling.

For ESL teachers specifically, Curipod solves the participation gap. Quiet students who’d never raise their hands will type answers. Visual learners can draw their responses. Everyone engages at their own pace.

Why Curipod Works for ESL Classrooms

I started using Curipod last semester with my intermediate class of 23 students. First lesson: introducing the past continuous tense.

In a traditional lesson, I’d explain the grammar, show examples, ask if everyone understood (they’d nod like bobbleheads), then discover during homework that half the class had no clue what I’d taught.

With Curipod? I taught the same grammar point, then embedded a quick poll: “Which sentence uses past continuous correctly?” Every single student answered within 30 seconds. I could see right there that 12 students got it, 6 were mixing up past continuous and simple past, and 2 had absolutely no idea.

💡 Pro Tip: Use Curipod’s word cloud feature to check vocabulary understanding before diving into a reading passage. Students type in what they think a word means - you instantly see misconceptions to address.

That’s the magic here. Real-time formative assessment. You’re not waiting until the quiz next week to find out students didn’t understand. You’re catching confusion in the moment, while you can still fix it.

5 Ways to Use Curipod for ESL Lessons

Two students looking at phone collaborating on lesson

1. Vocabulary Introduction and Practice

Instead of just showing vocabulary words on slides, make them interactive.

How it works: Create a Curipod lesson with vocabulary you’re teaching. For each word, add an interactive element:

Word cloud: “What do you think this word means?”
Drawing: “Draw a picture that represents this word”
Poll: “Which sentence uses this word correctly?”

Students respond on their devices. You see all responses instantly on your screen.

The Results:

I tried this with “abstract vs concrete nouns” - a concept my students always struggled with. Traditional teaching method: explain the difference, show examples, hope it sticks.

With Curipod: showed examples, then asked students to draw an abstract noun. Got 18 different attempts. Some drew “love” as hearts, others drew “freedom” as broken chains. Three students drew concrete objects like chairs and pencils.

Perfect. Now I knew exactly who needed re-teaching before moving on.

2. Reading Comprehension Checks

Reading passages are standard ESL fare. Making sure students actually understood? That’s the hard part.

Curipod lets you embed comprehension questions directly into your reading lesson:

Open response: “Summarize this paragraph in one sentence”
Poll: Multiple choice comprehension questions
Drawing: “Draw what happened in this scene”

Why this works better than traditional quizzes:

Students answer while the reading is fresh in their minds. You see responses in real time, grouped by correctness. Curipod’s AI even highlights common patterns in wrong answers, showing you exactly where comprehension broke down.

💡 Pro Tip: For longer reading passages, insert interactive checks every 2-3 paragraphs instead of waiting until the end. Catches confusion early before students get completely lost.

3. Grammar Practice with Instant Feedback

Grammar is where Curipod really shines for ESL.

Create slides with grammar concepts, then use polls to test understanding:

“Which sentence is grammatically correct?”
“What verb tense is this?”
“Which word order is correct?”

Students vote. You see results immediately. Curipod’s AI can provide automatic feedback on why answers are correct or incorrect.

Example:

Teaching present perfect vs simple past (the eternal ESL struggle). After explaining the difference, I showed this poll:

A) “I have seen that movie yesterday”
B) “I saw that movie yesterday”
C) “I have seen that movie last week”

Results: 62% chose B (correct). 31% chose A (common mistake - using “have” with specific past time). 7% chose C (same mistake, different time marker).

The pattern was obvious: students understood the concept but didn’t grasp that time markers determine which tense to use. I addressed this immediately instead of discovering it on Friday’s quiz.

4. Speaking Preparation and Brainstorming

Getting ESL students to speak is challenging. Getting them to prepare what they’ll say? Even harder.

Curipod helps with pre-speaking activities:

Word clouds: Brainstorm vocabulary for a discussion topic
Open responses: Students type their main ideas before speaking
Polls: Vote on discussion topics or debate positions

This gives quieter students time to think before being put on the spot.

My workflow:

Before a speaking activity about environmental issues:

Word cloud: “Name environmental problems” (builds vocabulary, shows what they already know)
Poll: “Which issue should we discuss?” (gives students choice, increases buy-in)
Open response: “Type one solution to this problem” (prep time for ideas)
Then we discuss (students have vocabulary and ideas ready)

Participation went from maybe 7 students actively speaking to 20 out of 23. Students who prepared written responses gained confidence to share out loud.

5. Exit Tickets and Lesson Assessment

End-of-class assessment usually means asking “Does everyone understand?” and getting silent nods (which mean absolutely nothing).

Curipod exit tickets give you actual data:

Poll: “How confident do you feel with today’s grammar?”
Open response: “What’s still confusing?”
Drawing: “Show me an example of today’s concept”

You get responses from every student, not just the vocal ones.

The insight this provides:

After teaching conditionals (if clauses), I did an exit ticket poll: “How confident are you with first conditional sentences?”

Very confident: 23%
Somewhat confident: 54%
Not confident: 23%

That 23% “not confident” group? They’d never have raised their hands to say they were lost. But now I knew to review conditionals the next day before moving to second conditional.

Free vs Premium: What ESL Teachers Need

🎯 Free Version:

✅ 5 Curipod lessons per month ✅ Unlimited students ✅ All interactive features (polls, drawings, word clouds) ✅ Real-time participation tracking ✅ Basic AI-generated lessons

For most ESL teachers trying Curipod out, the free plan is enough to test it with a few lessons per month.

🎯 Premium Version ($7.50/month annual):

✅ Unlimited Curipod lessons ✅ Advanced AI lesson generation with standards alignment ✅ Student progress reports and insights ✅ Bilingual ESL/ELL lessons with translated slides ✅ Export and customize lessons more extensively

If you’re using Curipod regularly (2+ lessons per week), Premium makes sense. The bilingual lessons alone are worth it for ESL/ELL contexts.

💡 Teacher Hack: Start with the free plan for one unit. If you find yourself hitting the 5-lesson limit and wanting more, upgrade. If 5 lessons per month is plenty, stick with free.

Getting Started with Curipod

Two women collaborating on laptop reviewing lesson

Week 1: Create Your First Lesson

Go to curipod.com and create a free account (takes 2 minutes)
Click “Create with AI” and describe your lesson (e.g., “Introduce past continuous tense for ESL intermediate learners”)
Curipod generates slides in about 30 seconds
Review and customize - add interactive elements where you want student participation
Present in class using student join code

Week 2: Add More Interaction

Now that you’ve seen the basics, make lessons more interactive:

Replace some text slides with word clouds for vocabulary
Add polls after explaining concepts
Use drawing prompts for visual learners
Insert open response questions for comprehension checks

Week 3: Use the Data

This is where Curipod becomes powerful. Start using the response data to inform your teaching:

Look at poll results to identify common misunderstandings
Review open responses to see who’s grasping concepts vs who’s struggling
Track participation rates to make sure quiet students are engaged
Export student responses for grading or portfolio evidence

Week 4: Iterate and Improve

You’re comfortable with Curipod now. Time to refine:

Build a library of go-to interactive elements you reuse
Share lessons with colleagues (Curipod makes this easy)
Experiment with new question types
Use AI lesson generation for topics outside your usual curriculum

Common Questions

Do students need accounts?

Nope. They join via a simple code you display on screen - no email, no password, no login required. This is huge for younger students or schools with strict account policies.

What if students don’t have devices?

Curipod works on phones, tablets, and computers. For students without devices, pair them up or use a computer lab. I’ve also run Curipod lessons where I projected responses on screen and students used shared classroom devices in groups.

Does it work offline?

No. Curipod requires internet connection for both teacher and students. This is the one limitation if you teach in areas with unreliable connectivity.

Can I use Curipod for asynchronous lessons?

Yes. Students can work through Curipod lessons at their own pace using a share link. Great for flipped classroom models or homework assignments.

The Bottom Line

Curipod won’t replace good teaching. It won’t turn your students fluent overnight. But it will show you - in real time - who understands and who doesn’t.

That’s worth a lot in ESL instruction, where students often nod along even when completely lost. I’ve taught lessons where everyone seemed to follow perfectly, then the next day’s quiz revealed half the class didn’t understand a thing. With Curipod, silence doesn’t equal understanding. You get actual participation data from every student, every lesson.

The AI lesson generation is nice. The interactive elements are engaging. But the real power? Knowing right away when students are confused so you can fix it before they fall behind.

Ready to try it? Head over to Curipod’s tool page to get started. Or browse our complete directory of lesson planning tools to explore other options for creating engaging ESL lessons.

Have you used Curipod in your ESL classroom? I’d love to hear what interactive elements worked best for your students.