It has been an incredibly interesting year, although it has passed by so quick. Last year as part of Adam Simpson’s blog challenge (funnily he is continuing the blog challenge of 12 from ’12), I thought I would repost this challenge with my 12 favourite or most thought provoking posts of 2012. I would like continue this tradition with my most important blog posts. So here we go.
1. Old Wife’s Tales
The first blog post of 2012, I decided to share a lesson plan related to cultural traditions and ideas suitable for the classroom. It developed from ‘fan death’ in South Korea with a wonderful video …
2. The New Job
After graduating from the University of Sussex, I decided to take a job with the British Council in Bucharest. I was so pleased to be offered employment and arrived with a spring in my step …
3. Dogme Lesson: Sea Creatures to Question Tags
I was preparing for my talk at the IATEFL Conference in Glasgow earlier this year, photocopying handouts and preparing presentation slides. When I was covering a YL class, it contained an element of Dogme …
4. What’s The Best Approach?
After a few months of teaching in Bucharest, I received my first complaint from a student. It was very puzzling with requests for more grammar, speaking and listening. I am still stumped to this day and wonder whether the student actually knew what he wanted …
5. The Final TYLEC Observation
This year, I decided to focus on a Young Learner extension course during my short time at the British Council in Bucharest. It was a wonderful course and it was such a relief to finish off the TYLEC. In this blog post I reflect on my final lesson observation with some wonderful feedback from the trainer …
6. Olympics Lesson Plan
This summer saw the Olympics in London. I decided to develop a lesson plan associated with one of the greatest sporting events for my summer class. There are various presentation files available to download and some ideas to consider …
7. A Day in the Life of the Queen Lesson Plan
As a continuation of the Olympics lesson plan (above), I decided to develop a lesson plan associated with the Queen for my British Culture class in the UK. There are some sources of video, presentation, and lesson ideas to incorporate in the classroom …
8. Drilling and Repetition Workshop
During my last few weeks in Bucharest with the British Council, I decided to attend the annual ELT Conference at a hotel with some colleagues. The first talk which I attended was one by Jeremy Harmer. His interactional talk during the session highlighted some interesting ideas to develop for future lessons …
9. Using Dictionaries During Classes: Lesson Ideas
The ninth favourite blog post is about the use of dictionaries within the classroom. I decided to develop some ideas after never really exploiting the biggest book in the teachers’ room. Have a read to get ten ideas for using dictionaries during the lesson and with your classroom …
10. Using Smartphones During Classes: Lesson Ideas
The tenth blog post in this list is related to the one above. I wrote up a blog post in reaction to many of my learners (not just young learners) using their smartphones during the lesson. I thought how to use this and developed some practical lesson ideas …
11. BELTE 2012 Summary
The eleventh blog post that I thought would be worthy of a mention was one about a conference that I attend on a regular basis. As usual, I attended the BELTE Conference in Brighton, took some pictures and blogged about the event. It was great (as always) and attended some wonderful talks …
12. Teaching in ESOL: Encouraging Talk
The final blog post in this list which I feel is worthy of a mention is associated with ESOL and the encouragement of talk/conversation. I liked Carol Goodey’s blog post about talk and prompting this during lessons. I felt some sense of agreement and understanding with Carol’s post, as I work within ESOL and I also enjoyed the similarity with Dogme ELT …
So these are my 12 blogs of the year. It has been quite tough trying to decide which postings were worthy but I feel that the blogs above are related to personal experiences, ideas and musings I had in relation to particular lessons as well as the conferences that I managed to attend during the year. I shall now leave it up to my readers now to share their 12 personal favourite blog posts of 2012. So what are you waiting for? Are you up for the challenge?
Please leave a link so I can read up on contribution to the challenge and Merry Christmas everyone.
There are a few posts there that I missed and will check them out now – Thank you for this overview. I am definitely up for it but I think I've only written about 12 so all of them would have to be in Top12 🙂
Merry Christmas!
L