Last week, I was inducting some new teachers into our school: preparing them for their teaching career for the year ahead. We looked at various areas about teaching: classroom management, get to know you activities, games in the classroom, etc. The final area we looked at was about continuing professional development (CPD). We looked at formal and peer observations, attending workshops, contributing to workshops as well as blogging. All teachers with varying years of experience, including a teacher who had just completed her CELTA (or equivalent), had only come across the mainstream websites related to English language teaching (TEFL.com, Dave’s ESL Cafe or Teaching English) yet had not really considered blogging a tool for CPD.
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It is the first time that I have attempted to do a book review via video before and I decided the lucky book would be “50 Activities for the First Day of School” by Walton Burns. Watch the video below to find out more about the book and whether it would be useful for teachers.
Again, please let me know what book reviews I should do in the future. Again, a huge thanks to everyone who has been supporting my YouTube Channel – I now have over 42,000 minutes of watch time and over 12,000 views on my Channel. So a huge thank you to everyone.
Last Friday, I was fortunate enough to observe one of my colleagues teach her Intermediate class with no material what so ever. She told me that she was going to get her students debating in class. I have always had difficulty getting my students to communicate and I thought it would be a great chance to see how another senior teacher encourages learners to communicate and debate naturally. It was the first time that I had been able to take away some ideas for teaching for next time. What made it even more valuable was that I recorded the lesson with my video camera – with her consent.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Mc0rcKb_M&w=560&h=315]
What I really found useful was the fact that the teacher did not use any worksheets or handouts and used all the students in class to elicit possible pros and cons for the debate. Here are the stages for preparing learners to debate and follow a similar lesson structure.
- Elicit possible statements for agreeing and disagreeing
- Board up these statements on one side of the whiteboard
- Choose a topic and divide the class in half
- One half of the class think of positives of the topic and the other half think of negatives
- Pair a student who focuses on positives with a student who focuses on negatives
- Get the learners to use the functional language on the whiteboard
- Monitor for feedback at the end of the lesson and prompt learners to use the functional language
- Stop the debate and then get students to decide who in their group won the debate and why
- Repeat the debate again but with a different topic and pair different students together
- Provide feedback and end the class
This is a great activity for Pre-Intermediate learners and above. Try it out next time and see whether you got your students speaking. A huge thank you to Lisa for allowing me to record her lesson.
Earlier this week, I was teaching a wonderful afternoon class of elementary adult learners who were really enthusiastic and engaged. Their enthusiasm and commitment to communicate made up for their lack of language ability. I decided, for their second lesson, to tell them a story and made a dictogloss activity. The main focus for a dictogloss is for students to listen to the story a number of times and then, in a group, to rewrite the story using any of their notes. I was so pleased with their progress and the amount that they had written from my story.
If you are unsure what dictogloss is, then the video below will help how to incorporate into your future lessons.
Have you ever tried dictogloss before? Do you have any questions? If so, don’t hesitate.
Here’s my latest video looking at five of my favourite websites for TEFL employment.
Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe for more, so you can be the first one to watch it!
Last week, I gave a talk on teaching young learners. Finally, I have managed to upload the video of this workshop and it is available for all my followers. The slides for this workshop is available here and please ‘Like’ it and ‘Subscribe’ for more updates. If you have a question, feel free to leave a comment on the video. Thanks for all the support.
I gave a teacher training session in Brighton earlier today, named “Top Tips for Young Learner Teachers“. The training session was around an hour and a half but there were plenty of things to keep everyone occupied. The training session was aimed for teachers, both experienced or those fresh of a CELTA Course, with relatively limited experience teaching young learners. The slides for this training session can be viewed below.
[scribd id=316423989 key=key-YQh2op2RHBWbz87Fcavi mode=scroll]
What tips do you have for teaching young learners? Do you have a favourite game? How do you like to start your lessons? As ever, leave a comment below.
I jumped at the chance, having been asked to review a new series of eBooks by Nik Peachey, as I have followed his blog (Nik’s Learning Technology Blog) for a while now. Nik’s award winning eBook, “Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers“, is such an invaluable publication for those teachers who wish to develop their technical skills related to video with their language lessons. It has recently won the ELTons 2016 for Innovation in Teacher Resources, so you know you can’t go wrong with this book. Nevertheless, let’s look at the publication in more detail and see what you get for purchasing this eBook.
The first chapter is a short introduction and history to digital video within the language classroom. Within the introduction, Nik highlights the reasons for authoring and the aims of the eBook. After this initial short chapter, there is short contents list of what is included within the following ten chapters as well as a navigation towards particular chapters. For example, if you want to learn a bit more about editing videos the reader is guided towards chapter 3. However, should you want to learn more about getting students to creating video with their mobile phones then the reader is recommended to read chapter 7 to learn more about student created videos and chapter 8 for activity ideas. The second chapter, ‘Video & Task Design’, is focused on selecting video clips to supplement lessons. There are three parts connected to this chapter: Choosing a Task, Task Design and Culture in Video. The first part, Choosing a Task, recommends useful criteria to consider when choosing a video clip such as selecting interesting content, keeping clips short, cultural references or overall quality to name just a few with some reasoning behind this. The second part, Task Design, looks in great detail at in creating some highly engaging tasks related to the video clip. It is incredibly useful for teachers wishing to incorporate and create their own personal lessons with online video clips. The third part, Culture in Video, obviously focuses on video clips and how they can make students more aware of culture.
The next chapter, ‘Video Tutorials‘, focuses on basic tutorials for the reader with seven key parts included. These seven parts include Hosting Video Online, Downloading Video, Embedding Video, Muting Audio, Subtitles and Annotations, Creating QR Codes as well as Video Slideshows. Each tutorial includes a link or QR code – which can be scanned – to a video tutorial. Each of the seven tutorials include a rationale and things to consider. This chapter supports the reader every step of the way and by watching each video tutorial, the reader would feel more confident while dealing with video clips. Chapter 4, ‘Approaches to Learning’, focuses on the integration between technology and video clips and online learning. There are four parts to this chapter and these include Video & Blended Learning, Video & Flipped Learning, Video in Task Based Learning as well as Video in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). There is a substantial focus on Blended Learning with much information for readers to consider. However, with each section, the reader is provided with additional background detail.
The next chapter, ‘Comprehension Activities’, is broken down into 20 different lesson activities which aims to focus on developing listening and viewing comprehension. As with previous chapters, each lesson activity includes a step-by-step procedure which explains to the reader how to stage a selected lesson. Chapter 6, which is called ‘Video as Communication‘, focuses on the use of online video and developing communication with an audience. The chapter looks at the various benefits of online communication, possible challenges faced with online video communication, advice on a good internet connection as well as tips on using a webcam for recording video. These two chapters naturally lends itself to Chapter 7, ‘Creating Video‘. This chapter assists the reader by looking at the stages required to create a video. Nik covers a lot of ground in this chapter to assist in the stage of recording a video such as different camera angles, the use of storyboards, editing the video or getting people (such as the students) to collaborate. At the end of this chapter, Nik offers a selection of topics which could be incorporated into video with students.
With Chapter 8, ‘Creation Activities‘, Nik provides the reader with additional activities to assist teachers getting students to create a video with over twenty lesson ideas. There are so many wonderful ideas for readers to exploit for use in class and each suggested lesson includes the key objectives and rationale, the language focus as well as the stages and procedures of the activity. There are also included with all these lessons, additional links to websites and other resources for the reader to view. The last three chapters, Chapter 9, ‘Cool Tools & Tips‘, Chapter 10, ‘Application Reviews‘ and Chapter 11, ‘Resource Reviews‘ focuses more on websites, tablet or smartphone applications and graded readers for use in the classroom. There is such a wealth of information provided in the final few chapters, almost 250 pages dedicated, that it would take a reader a great deal of time to go through each application and try them out for use in class.
Despite my personal confidence with technology, much of which is self-taught, I have very little confidence with digital video and it is an area which I am currently focusing on developing, with further focus on my YouTube Channel. However, this eBook lends itself very well for both the technological adept as well as those that need just a little bit of support. I have gained so many ideas from this eBook and I cannot wait to incorporate some of them into my future lessons. “Digital Video” is worth that digital space on your digital library and is really suitable for teachers who really want to try out video in their class.
In this video, I look at my favourite 5 grammar books for the Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) course.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaZZcgxoro8&w=560&h=315]
What are your favourite CELTA grammar books? Would you recommend any other grammar books? What grammar books do you refer to when preparing a lesson?
My Top 5 Grammar Books for the CELTA Course:
» Teaching English Grammar: http://amzn.to/1thGm56
» Grammar for English Language Teachers: http://amzn.to/25Sj2th
» Practical English Usage: http://amzn.to/1PkxZL4
» English Grammar Today: http://amzn.to/1YijxdI
» 700 Classroom Activities: http://amzn.to/1PkxIYt
So you have probably been guided to this website as you are interested in becoming an English language teacher or involved in English education. Rather than write a huge post for those wishing to become an English language teacher, I thought I would share a short video.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iQ8ffPGkYM&w=560&h=315]
In future videos, what would you like me to cover? I am seeking some suggestions for another video. Please leave a comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel: ELT Experiences. I am hoping to get a video uploaded once a week based on your suggestions. Thanks for watching and I hope it is useful for those that are thinking about becoming an English language teacher.
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