For students and teachers

If your school or library subscribes to the OED, learn about remote access here. If your school or library does not subscribe, many of the resources below allow free access to the relevant OED entries, and you can also request a free 30-day trial.

New resources

Posters

Lesson plans

New resources

Guidance on the English language

Key skills

Do you know your past participles from your personal pronouns? Brush up on your grammar.

Can you spell your favourite word using IPA? Learn about the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Caribbean beach aerial view

English around the world

Visit the OED’s Varieties of English page to find information on World Englishes, and learn about the history, grammar, and pronunciation of Australian English, Hong Kong English, South African English, and more.

The OED and how to use it

Image of the volumes of the OED's Second Edition

How to use the OED

How do dictionaries work?

Danica Salazar

What do dictionary editors do?

Lesson plans and worksheets for Key Stage 3 (US grades 6-8)

The scheme of work below has been prepared by David Bunting, St. Peter’s School, Bournemouth, UK


External resources

Tes: resources using the OED 

Tes is a global online community of educators, offering blog posts, industry news, and a variety of free and paid-for teaching resources.

Free resources from Tes (created by Oxford University Press):

Lesson plans and worksheets for GCSE (US grades 9-10)

Lesson plans and worksheets for A-Level (US grades 11-12)

World Englishes

The language of climate change

External resources

Teachit: resources using the OED

Teachit English is a resource website for teachers, with over 23,465 pages of classroom worksheets, PowerPoint presentations and activities, written by and edited by professional secondary English teachers. Free members to the site can access thousands of PDFs, while subscribers can adapt the resources and download 25 teaching packs. Teachit English is part of AQA Education.

Key Stage 5 (Free PDF)

Resources for university students


  • Writing the OED
    This is an overview of the process of writing dictionary entries, covering: drafting new entries, the revision process, evidence used (including databases and corpora), dictionary software, and user engagement and feedback.
    This is a virtual talk originally delivered by Eleanor Maier, OED Executive Editor to the English and Digital Linguistics class at the Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. The useful links mentioned on the talk are available here’.

    You may also like to explore the OED’s ‘The OED and research‘ page, to learn more about OED prototype tools which you may helpful in your research.

Videos

Video guides: how to use the OED

We’ve created a series of videos to help you get the most out of the OED. Choose from the selections below to learn more about how to use some of the OED’s features.

Videos: about the OED

– Overview of the work of an OED editor

– How OED editors find new words

– The OED revision process

– User input in OED entries

Do you want to know more about the revision process? View our video about the revision of ‘bear, n.1’ below, and view the accompanying blog post to learn why the video contains images of helicopters, caterpillars, anteaters, and doughnuts.

Videos: World Englishes

Excerpts from Language prejudice and the documentation of minoritized varieties of English – virtual talk and panel discussion.

The opinions and other information hereby presented do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University Press.

Quizzes

  • Quizzes: hone your skills using the OED Online
  • Mythbusting quiz: take the mythbusting quiz to see how well you know the OED

End of term resources

Image of birthday cake to illustrate the OED's 'birthday words' eature

  • What is your birthday word? Find out which words originated during your birth year. You can also download our birthday words card in two different designs to print out and use in the classroom. Click here for design one, and here for design two.
  • We’d like to hear about the unique expressions used by children and young people. Can you submit a word to the OED?
  • Can you create a book spine poem just like writer and editor Stan Carey?
  • What is your favourite food word? Learn about the lexical history of your favourite food, and have a go at baking it just like food writer Kate Young here.

Notes from children's authors

An illustration of a rutabaga and a pumpkin by children's illustrator, Nick Sharratt

What do dictionary editors do?

  • Illustrator Nick Sharratt shares his favourite
  • word here and an illustration to go with it in this interview
  • Author Frances Hardinge shares her five
  • favourite words
  • In this interview, Geraldine McCaughrean tells us about favourite words, the naming of heroines, tackling similes and metaphors, and more
  • Did you know that J. R. R. Tolkien once worked as an OED editor? Find out more
  • Winnie the Pooh may have been bothered by long words, but plenty of words from A. A. Milne’s books have made their way into the OED. Learn more in this blog post
  • Our children’s dictionary team have some
  • wonderful resources on their Roald Dahl dictionary available

External resources


OUP: free dictionary resources for children: download a variety of free activities and worksheets to be used alongside the OED, or Oxford children’s dictionaries

Tes: resources using the OED 

Tes is a global online community of educators, offering blog posts, industry news, and a variety of free and paid-for teaching resources.

Free resources from Tes (created by Oxford University Press):

Teachit: resources using the OED

Teachit English is a resource website for teachers, with over 23,465 pages of classroom worksheets, PowerPoint presentations and activities, written by and edited by professional secondary English teachers. Free members to the site can access thousands of PDFs, while subscribers can adapt the resources and download 25 teaching packs. Teachit English is part of AQA Education.

Key Stage 5 (Free PDF)

Suggest resources that would be useful to you

Use the submissions form below to suggest a new lesson plan, poster, worksheet, or other teaching resource related to the OED, or to share your experiences of using the OED in lessons:

Resources for students and teachers

If you have a new teaching resource you would like to request, or a comment on any of our existing resources, get in touch with the OED team here.
  • Please provide as much detail as possible below.