What are some of the best resources for learning about the culture of your ESL students?

An additional point to note here is that by teaching vocabulary for describing cultural phenomena (food, festival, customs and manners, etc), you give students tools to speak about their own country: a fertile topic of conversation both to an EFL student welcoming visitors from abroad and to an ESOL student sharing their cultural background with their neighbours.

Language isn’t used in a vacuum; it’s a social tool used among people with diverse cultural backgrounds. Teaching culture prepares students for real-world language use and it encourages them to appreciate diversity and to think about global issues from multiple perspectives.

Considera ver documentales y películas en plataformas como Netflix y YouTube 🌍. Leer novelas y libros de historia sobre sus países de origen 📚 puede proporcionar una visión profunda. Consultar periódicos y revistas locales en línea 📰 también es muy útil. Escuchar música y podcasts en sus idiomas nativos 🎧 te ayudará a entender mejor sus perspectivas. Aprender a cocinar platos tradicionales de sus culturas 🍲 es una forma divertida de sumergirte en sus tradiciones. Además, tener conversaciones directas con tus estudiantes y sus familias 🗣️ enriquecerá tu comprensión. Participar en festivales culturales y exposiciones de arte 🎨 te permitirá experimentar sus celebraciones y creatividad de primera mano. 🌟

I would advocate caution in 'teaching culture': this can too easily lead to superficial and inaccurate stereotypes. Exhibit A is the plethora of St. Patrick's Day resources to teach about leprechauns, pots of gold and the venerable Celtic tradition of wearing green all day. Students will learn nothing about modern-day Ireland and its culture from any of this, and it's fair to say a lot of "Paddy's Day" traditions were invented in North America anyway. I recommend using culturally-diverse materials to teach language, with a side-helping of cultural awareness. Use authentic materials in which a person from another part of the world is speaking, but find ways to relate these materials to your students and to build empathy.

Create Virutal Tours: give students a virtual tour of places that are culturally significant to the language they are learning. Virtual tours of the Louvre Museum for French learners or the streets of London for English learners can provide a rich, immersive experience.

Continuing my previous comment about resources for St Patrick's Day, I have created a lesson based on a documentary film about a lady in northwest Ireland who chooses to live in a traditional house without electricity, running water or an oven. The focus of the lesson is not on the difference of her lifestyle but on the language she uses to describe her day-to-day activities. For instance, when she says "I've been reared to go down to the well for a bucket of water", students are asked "What have you been reared to do?" Thus, culture is used as a background for students to speak about their own lives. You can find this lesson, and much more, at my site Englishin3d.net.

With so much technology available today, it's much easier to create an innovative learning experience. Some awesome resources were mentioned in the question, but I think much can be created through experiences such as Cultural Exchanges with other students learning the same language. You can set up a partnership with a school in an English-speaking country to create an exchange program through video calls, emails, or a collaborative blog. Students can share their own cultural experiences and learn about their peers' lives, festivities, and everyday language use. This direct interaction fosters authentic communication and cultural understanding.

I like the idea of cultural humility and the promotion of reflection when learning about other cultures. It's the perfect occasion to foster self-awareness, biases, and interactions that might have challenged their viewpoints.