E V O L V E S C H O O L: TeachingEnglish newsletter 16 January 2019

TeachingEnglish newsletter

16 January 2019

Welcome to the TeachingEnglish newsletter!

We've selected a range of practical resources to help you in the classroom and ideas to help you with your professional development, which we hope you find useful.

And don't forget our first webinar of 2019, Talking to teenagers in the English language classroom, takes place on Thursday 17 January at 17.00 UK time.

The TeachingEnglish team

Blue / Red / Blue (And Black): Word order issues in the EFL classroom

For many learners of English, particularly those with non-Indo-European language backgrounds, English syntax can often be a nightmare. Even for speakers of Romance or Germanic languages, unmarked word order can be a challenge in English. With this simple colour system, you can encourage low-level learners to self-correct word-order errors and you can raise awareness of marked and unmarked sentences with higher-level learners. Read Gabriel Clark's latest post to find out more.

CLIL: Healthy eating

This activity aims to develop primary pupils' understanding of healthy, balanced eating and provides practice of basic food vocabulary and the present simple tense. It also has cross-curricular links to PE.

CLIL: Healthy living follows on from the Healthy eating activity and encourages pupils to think about how to live healthily, while giving speaking practice to practise adverbs of frequency.

Mastermind session: lesson in the new format

There is a widespread illusion that modern teenagers are less sociable and more egotistical. They would rather go online than hang around with friends. But from the vantage point of the XXI century, this behavioural pattern is just normal. To teach our students to take even more advantage of networking, Natalia Moiseeva suggests introducing them to the format of Mastermind sessions - widely used by professionals and experts to share and exchange their experience and expertise. Get some tips on how to organise and run a mastermind session here.

Changing lives

On the theme of downshifting and the difference between rural and urban lifestyles, this lesson for teenagers at B1-B2 level consists of two case studies based on real-life stories of people living n the UK today. The stories deal with their decision to give up an apparently successful and fast-paced lifestyle for a rural life in the Peak District. The topic encourages students to talk about their own lifestyles and priorities.

Checking answers

When checking the answers to an exercise or activity, teachers often revert to a more traditional role whereby from the front of the room they ask students for their answers and tell them whether they are right. However, in the student-centred classroom, this important stage in the learning process could be better exploited so as to be more engaging, interactive and empowering for our learners. Find out more about how to exploit this stage.

Social and emotional approaches to teaching with technology

Recorded in January 2014, this webinar by Sylvia Guinan looked at helping teachers to think for themselves about creative applications of technology. It was a very practical session with examples, as well as being a kind of open-ended exploration, brainstorming and thought-provoking presentation. Find out more and watch a recording of this webinar.