E V O L V E S C H O O L: TeachingEnglish newsletter 22 January 2020

TeachingEnglish newsletter

22 January 2020

Welcome to this special edition of the TeachingEnglish newsletter.

In addition to news of events, resources and development opportunities, in this issue we also feature resources of particular relevance to South Asia. If you are interested in becoming part of a teacher network in South Asia, you can find a list of associations and networks here .

And to mark International Day of Education on 24 January, please join us for a special webinar, Storytelling for diverse voices, with David Heathfield and Alla Göksu.

We hope you find these resources useful.

The TeachingEnglish team

Special announcement – EnglishAgenda and TeachingEnglish to unite to become one global website!

From 1 February 2020, EnglishAgenda and TeachingEnglish will join forces to provide a single British Council online home for teachers and teacher educators. The new, unique site is an opportunity to help you develop a career path by ensuring that there is a single online space to support you in every step of your professional journey. As of 31 January 2020, EnglishAgenda will be retired, and users will automatically be redirected to the relevant section on TeachingEnglish. Read on to find out where the new content will be.

Education in focus: South Asia podcast series

Over nine episodes, we aim to promote a better understanding of relevant research, key challenges and innovations related to improving teaching and learning across the South Asia region. Episodes 1–3 (Features of successful education systems; Raising student learning outcomes; and Inclusive education) are available to listen to now. Find out more.

9th BELTA International Conference, 13-15 March, Dhaka

The theme for the 9th BELTA conference is 'English language education for sustainable development' and

the keynote speaker is Richard Smith, University of Warwick. The conference will take place at the United

International University and more details can be found here.

Teaching in the low-resource classroom

Throughout the world, English is often taught in ‘low-resource’ classrooms, but there are few training materials which are derived from and which reflect this reality. The materials presented here feature teachers from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan and are intended to help fill this gap.

Adapting the rhythm of your lessons to whatever may happen

Sometimes your students, due to mysterious reasons, finish activities faster than you thought they would. That's great! It is because you have explained that grammatical topic incredibly well, of course; it's all your merit. But the problem is that you may not have any other activity prepared – you know, we are only human! Read Ingrid Mosquera's post to find out more about different ways of squeezing an activity out to the last drop.

Making good materials for everyone, everywhere, no matter how much money they have – webinar

The next IATEFL 'MaWSIG meets ...' webinar – 25 January 2020 at 13.30 UK time – welcomes Linda Ruas and Margarita Kosior of the Global Issues SIG. They will be discussing the topic of ‘Making good materials for everyone, everywhere, no matter how much money they have’. Both Linda and Margarita have been involved in projects teaching English learners and training teachers, or making materials for use in areas with limited resources, be it financial or technological, and will share ideas for creating learning materials under these constraints. You can join the webinar here, and there is no need to register.

Burns Night and Scotland

Robert Burns (1759–96), also known as Rabbie Burns, is famous for the poetry he wrote in the Scots language. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide on Burns Night (25 January). Find out more about Burns and Scotland here and encourage your teenage students to discover more about how Burns Night is celebrated here.

Free online course – English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development

How do very young children best learn English as an additional language while they're still learning their mother tongue? How and why do children learn best through play? What can parents and practitioners do to enable children to get the most out of a learning experience? Discover how very young children learn English as an additional language and how you can help them progress with this free online course that starts 10 February 2020.

Developing expertise through experience

In December, British Council Chennai organised a panel discussion on the topic ‘How teachers become experts: Stories of continuing professional development’. Speakers reflected on the career trajectories of ELT practitioners and experts and gathered insights into the influence of personal stories in the professional development of a teacher.

The event also introduced the British Council publication Developing expertise through experience, edited by Alan Maley, and accompanying e-file Developing expertise through experience: Ideas for continuing professional development .