TeachingEnglish newsletter 27 February 2019

TeachingEnglish newsletter 27 February 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. The TeachingEnglish team Teaching English: How to plan a great lesson Develop your English language teaching skills and learn how to plan and deliver effective English lessons with this online course. You will learn to understand your students and build a rapport with them. You will explore the key factors to remember when planning lessons and courses, including using resources like technology and flashcards. You will also learn how to manage the lesson and keep your students engaged with your teaching methods. Start date: 4 March 2019 - sign up for free. Destination - Wales Mark St David's Day on 1 March with this lesson plan about Wales for teachers of teenagers and adults at intermediate level. Students will build their knowledge of Wales and develop their reading skills. They will have the chance to read about Wales and find out a little about its people, culture and icons. Alternatively, if you would like learners to practise their vocabulary and listening skills, try this plan: Getting to know Wales. Video in language teacher education This report details and evaluates the range of video-based practices currently being used in language teacher education. The project, Video in language teacher education (ViLTE), was funded by the British Council ELT Research Partnership Awards Scheme and undertaken at the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick. The project also sought to build a community of practice among practitioners in order to share good practice. Read more and download a free copy. Rain This lesson plan for teachers of primary students aged 7 to 8 years old at level A1 explores the theme of the rain cycle in the African savanna. Students will make an African animal booklet and give a presentation of the story. The materials form part of the 'Promoting diversity through children’s literature' series, produced by the British Council Teaching Centre in Paris, and you can download materials for ten sessions.  Using drama texts in the classroom Our featured article this week focuses on the professional practice 'Managing resources'. Henry Robinson defines what is meant by language learning through drama/theatre texts, outlines some of the benefits it can bring to the language learning classroom and some of the differing methods and approaches that can be utilised to fully exploit the potential of drama and theatre texts.  Language and culture in an EFL classroom This is a great topic for discussion because although we teachers are busy teaching our students English, we cannot forget that teaching a language is as much a cultural exchange as it is anything else. Sometimes we may be so immersed in getting the task of English done that we miss important opportunities to connect with our learners on cultural levels, levels that can enhance students' learning. This short blog post discusses the benefits of incorporating students’ native language (L1) and culture in the class. ‌ Visit our website STAY CONNECTED ‌ ‌

British Council | 10 Spring Gardens, London, SW1A 2BN United Kingdom Unsubscribe evolve.school@gmail.com Update Profile | About our service provider Sent by teachingenglish@britishcouncil.org in collaboration with Try it free today

TeachingEnglish newsletter 19 February 2019

TeachingEnglish newsletter 19 February 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 to join us on 26 February 2019 at 10.00 a.m. UK time for a webinar with ELTons winners Dr Susan Russak and Dr Richard K Wong - An innovative way to teach ESL children phonics. The TeachingEnglish team ELTons Innovation Awards: Outstanding Achievement Award The ELTons are now in full swing, with 150 applications received from 45 countries across the continents. We would like to hear from you, our colleagues across the English language teaching (ELT) community, with your suggested nominations for the ELTons Outstanding Achievement Award. The award (until now known as the Lifetime Achievement Award) recognises those who have had outstanding achievement in shaping and making a great impact on English language education around the world. Submit your suggestions by midnight on Thursday 21 February. Are you planning to develop a project? Why not? A project is a set of activities that involve many competences, not only cognitive but also non-cognitive ones, as well as soft skills. Those activities are developed with a common objective related to a specific theme. Apart from that, they involve different intelligences and learning styles, that is, they are varied in their approach, in order to respond to diversity. If using projects seems a bit daunting, read Ingrid Mosquera's post, which outlines some simple steps to get you started on a small project of your own.  Featured blog of the month for January 2019  Our featured blog of the month award for January 2019 goes to Breakout English and their post 'How to teach Cambridge exam classes'. This post provides an excellent overview of how to prepare students for Cambridge English exams: PET, KET, FCE or CAE. Our shortlisted posts this month feature helping teenagers develop their speaking skills, useful advice on teaching negative inversion, a look at developing learners' fluency and an idea for a 'delayed dictation'. Homes and furniture In this lesson, learners will be introduced to or review vocabulary for homes, rooms and furniture. They will sing a song and either invent an 'animal house' or design a poster of various animal homes. Then they will watch a grammar video and play games to focus on prepositions of place and items of furniture. Finally they will do a project, inventing their ideal room or creating a class house! Classroom assessment: the development of teachers' cognitions This 'ELT Research Paper' project by Susan Sheehan and Sonia Munro investigated teacher cognitions and assessment. What they found was that the participant teachers did not, on the whole, replicate the assessment practices they had experienced themselves as language learners. Rather, they made a conscious decision to use more learner-centred approaches to assessment. The teachers were focused on learners and ensuring that they were making as much progress as possible. Read more and download this publication for free. Having fun with dialogues Many teenage and adult learners need controlled speaking practice. They can gain confidence in speaking through using scripted dialogues. Sometimes these tasks can be repetitive in a main textbook, so here are a few fun things to do with dialogues that encourage students to experiment with the language they know and create their own too.  ‌ Visit our website STAY CONNECTED ‌ ‌

British Council | 10 Spring Gardens, London, SW1A 2BN United Kingdom Unsubscribe evolve.school@gmail.com Update Profile | About our service provider Sent by teachingenglish@britishcouncil.org in collaboration with Try it free today

TeachingEnglish newsletter 13 February 2019

TeachingEnglish newsletter 13 February 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 to check out our half-price self-study modules for February: Understanding lesson management 1 and Understanding early literacy for primary! The TeachingEnglish team An innovative way to teach ESL children phonics Join us on 26 February 2019 at 10.00 a.m. UK time for a webinar with ELTons winners Dr Susan Russak and Dr Richard KS Wong. In this webinar, Dr Susan Russak and Dr Richard KS Wong highlight how the Get Set, Go! Phonics programme, recipient of the 2018 ELTons Award in the category of Excellence in Course innovation, has transformed the literacy experience of 3- to 6-year-old ESL kindergarteners. Find out more and register for the event. Projects: setting students up for success Projects are a great way to develop language and other essential skills. However, we need to give students a bit more than an 'Off we go ...' to ensure that quality learning is taking place. This informative post will give you lots of ideas for engaging projects and how to set them up effectively. Read more. Fruit and vegetables Food is a popular topic in any primary course and has a lot of potential for cross-curricular work with nutrition. Learners practise pair interaction with a short dialogue, and there are also some activities that encourage support at home to help parents become involved in the English their child is learning. Find out more. Managing the lesson: self-study booklet In this freely downloadable self-study guide, teachers will find some useful theory and practice on managing lessons effectively, including short case studies and professional development activities to do individually and with colleagues. Teacher educators can also use the materials with developing teachers to help assess and address their learning needs. Don't forget why you became a teacher in the first place 'Sometimes teaching hurts. Sometimes it is difficult and nonsense. But in your heart you know that it is not always like that, it is just a temporary feeling. Just try to remember why you became a teacher.' In this positive and encouraging post, Ingrid Mosquera describes some of the ups and downs of teaching, and reminds us why we became teachers in the first place. ‌ Visit our website STAY CONNECTED ‌ ‌

British Council | 10 Spring Gardens, London, SW1A 2BN United Kingdom Unsubscribe evolve.school@gmail.com Update Profile | About our service provider Sent by teachingenglish@britishcouncil.org in collaboration with Try it free today