TeachingEnglish newsletter 28 June 2017

TeachingEnglish - the global home for teachers 28 June 2017 Welcome to the TeachingEnglish newsletter This week we are pleased to announce the winners of the 15th British Council ELTons Innovations Awards, which were held on 14 June in London. For the classroom we feature a special set of resources from Bloomsbury for kids who love Harry Potter. We also have two integrated skills lessons suitable for teens and adults on the themes of school holidays, and success and fame. And for those of you who are looking for professional development opportunities, take a look at our free course 'Teaching for Success: the Classroom and the World'. And finally, our featured blog post this week takes a look at lessons learned from assessing creative projects. We hope you find these resources useful. Deb TeachingEnglish team Teaching kids Do your learners love Harry Potter? Monday 26 June 2017 marked 20 years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was first published. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has sold over 450 million copies and inspired children around the world in 79 countries. Why not mark the 20th anniversary of its publication? Bloomsbury have developed a special Harry Potter Anniversary Party Pack, full of exciting activities to help you and your learners enjoy the anniversary.  Find out more Teaching teens This is a lesson that can be used as you near the end of term and everyone is looking forward to a long break from school. Students will look back at the academic year that is ending, brainstorm vocabulary connected to holidays and do a class survey. They will also look at holiday jobs and read about holiday trends in the UK. Finally, students will plan their ideal school holiday in groups. Go to the lesson plan Teaching adults This lesson plan for teachers of teenagers and adults at intermediate level explores the theme of success and fame and helps to develop students' speaking skills and fluency. Planning a series of different activities on a single theme helps move a class from short, idea-building conversations to more involved discussion or debate in which they have more freedom to express themselves and build their spoken confidence. It also helps break the topic down into more manageable sections. Go to the lesson plan Development 'Teaching for Success: the Classroom and the World' is one of our free English language teaching professional development courses, which explores the topics: Promoting 21st-century skills; Integrating ICT; Understanding educational policies and practice; and Using multilingual approaches. Register now to express your interest. Find out more Events The English language teaching sector recently received the red carpet treatment at its annual gala, the ELTons Innovation Awards ceremony. Among the range of products and ideas that won awards were promoting sustainable development, peace, harnessing technology, online language analysis and talking pens. Find out who won a British Council ELTon award for innovation in English language teaching products and services this year. Read more Magazine Have you ever been given a project to assess but couldn't? Have you ever created a rubric to assess the unassessable? Read Fatima Taha's reflection on her experience of assessing a project that relied heavily on creativity, and what lessons she learned from it, in her latest blog post 'The creativity I regretted!' Read more You have received this newsletter because you registered on our website or previously showed interest in British Council news. If you wish to opt out of future newsletters, please unsubscribe here.

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TeachingEnglish newsletter 21 June 2017

TeachingEnglish - the global home for teachers 21 June 2017 Welcome to the TeachingEnglish newsletter For the classroom this week we have a brand new lesson plan for kids about creatures under the sea. For teens, we have a lesson plan on the theme of water shortage. And for adults we have 'Speed job interviews' to practise question forms and job-related vocabulary. We also have information about The International Festival of Teacher-research in ELT 2017, which is a range of face-to-face and online events promoting teacher-research. Our featured blog post of the week is Loli Iglesias's 'Fostering and assessing cooperation and creativity'. And finally, this week's featured professional practice is 'Knowing the subject'. Find out what this practice involves and a range of resources to help you develop in this area. We hope you find these resources useful. Deb TeachingEnglish team Teaching kids 'My sea creature' is a lesson for primary students all about creatures under the sea. Students are introduced to different sea animals through flashcard games, and the teacher describes sea animals for children to guess. Pupils then invent their own sea creatures, which they present to their classmates. They end the lesson by listening to the fun song 'Everything beneath the sea' from our LearnEnglish Kids website. Go to the lesson plan Teaching teens 'Save water' is a lesson plan for teachers of teenage and adult students at level A2 and above, and is based on the theme of water shortage. Students will look at the causes of water shortages locally and internationally, discuss the use of water and produce a poster giving advice on saving water in the home or in the school. Go to the lesson plan Teaching adults 'Speed job interviews' is a lesson plan suitable for pre-intermediate students and above. It provides practice of vocabulary related to jobs and question forms. Students create job adverts and then do speed interviews to try and find a job/employee. Go to the lesson plan Development Among other things, 'Knowing the subject' means selecting appropriate methodology and resources for introducing and practising specific areas of the target language and language skills. If you would like to develop in this professional practice, then you can find useful articles, webinars, blog posts, publications and teaching tips to help you on our CPD pages.  Find out more Events From April to October this year, The International Festival of Teacher-research in ELT 2017 is holding a range of face-to-face and online events promoting teacher-research. A key aim of the festival is to help more individual teachers engage in teacher-research. The festival also aims to engage and support more Teacher Associations in teacher-research by showcasing models of mentoring schemes and existing research projects to encourage and support associations with projects in their own context. Find out more Magazine Helping our students to acquire 21st-century skills is a true challenge. These 21st-century skills include collaboration, cooperation, critical thinking and creativity. There is wide agreement that a focus on these skills is needed to prepare students for the future. In her latest post, 'Fostering and assessing cooperation and creativity', Loli Iglesias gives some hints and activities to develop and assess collaboration and creativity skills. Read more You have received this newsletter because you registered on our website or previously showed interest in British Council news. If you wish to opt out of future newsletters, please unsubscribe here.

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TeachingEnglish newsletter 14 June 2017

TeachingEnglish - the global home for teachers 14 June 2017 Welcome to the TeachingEnglish newsletter This week we are pleased to announce the live stream of the 15th British Council ELTons Innovations Awards, to be held on 14 June from 17.30 UK time. Find out how you can take part. For the classroom, we have a poetry-based lesson for kids based on describing colours. We also have a lesson for all students aged 10+ on the topic of cycling, and an interesting lesson for older teens and adults from the Collecting Europe project, which explores the possibility of romantic relationships between humans and robots. And for those of you who teach teens, we have a webinar on 20 June with James Taylor - 'What I've learned from teaching teenagers'. And finally, our featured blog post this week takes a look at the benefits, challenges and uses of technology in the classroom. We hope you find these resources useful. Deb TeachingEnglish team Teaching kids This is a primary tip that helps you exploit the lesson plan 'Colours - What is pink?', inspired by the famous poem 'What is Pink?' by Christina Rossetti. Aims include using poetry as a means to teach English, using English as a means to appreciate poetry at primary level, providing a model for children to create their own poems in English and expanding general vocabulary. Go to the lesson plan Teaching teens 'Cycling' is a lesson suitable for all students aged 10 and over. Students practise listening skills with a simple drawing dictation to introduce the topic. They then do a cycling survey of their classmates and have a discussion. There is also a role play task set in a bike shop, where students have to sell/buy a bike, and finally there is a group task where students design a poster for a 'Get on your Bike' campaign. Go to the lesson plan Teaching adults This lesson, 'Robot relationships', takes the Collecting Europe project as a starting point for an exploration of whether a romantic relationship between a human and a robot is possible. Students will discuss this and related questions as they work with the trailer for the film Her and a reading text on the subject. After a focus on useful language from the reading text, students are invited to debate the topic in more depth. Go to the lesson plan Development Just over a year ago, James Taylor started a new job - teaching groups of teenagers for the first time. Up to this point, he had only taught adults, with a few teens in among the older students, but now he would have groups of exclusively teens. Needless to say, it was an intense and rewarding opportunity. Join us for this free webinar on 20 June at 13.00 UK time to find out what James has learned about English teaching through this new experience in his career. Register for the webinar Events Watch the live stream of the 15th British Council ELTons Innovations Awards on 14 June from 17.30 UK time. The ELTons are the only international awards that recognise and celebrate excellence in innovation in English language teaching. This year, from a highly competitive international field of 115 submissions across five categories, 29 finalists have been selected independently, individually and behind closed doors by the ELTons Innovations Awards' expert judging panel. The winners will be announced at the highly anticipated evening awards ceremony on 14 June.  Find out more Magazine Using technology in the 21st-century classroom is, I think, a sine qua non. Students are digital natives. They are born in technology, they use technology daily and different devices are part of their everyday lives. But what are the benefits and challenges? Read our latest blog, 'Do you use E.T?', to find out more about using educational technology. Read more You have received this newsletter because you registered on our website or previously showed interest in British Council news. If you wish to opt out of future newsletters, please unsubscribe here.

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