E V O L V E S C H O O L: TeachingEnglish newsletter 24 June 2020

TeachingEnglish newsletter

24 June 2020

Welcome to the latest edition of the TeachingEnglish newsletter!

The British Council is committed to supporting teachers and teacher educators during the Covid-19 crisis. To this end, this week we bring you news of a new free course on teaching young learners online and a webinar about language, diversity and inclusion during and after Covid-19.

We also bring you two blog posts focused on how to set up a classroom on an LMS (learning management system) and teacher motivation in these challenging times.

And for the classroom – online or face-to-face – we introduce activities on the theme of summer, a lesson to celebrate World Chocolate Day and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream for your younger learners.

We hope you find these resources useful.

The TeachingEnglish team

Teaching Young Learners Online

On this free course from the British Council you’ll explore online teaching in both theory and practice – how to plan accessible online lessons and assessments, what online safety looks like and how best to build relationships with young learners. Work together to plan, create and facilitate inclusive online learning that engages and inspires young people. Find out more about our new free FutureLearn course for teachers, starting this week, here.

IMMLE conference proceedings webinar

Watch a recording of our latest webinar about language, diversity and inclusion during and after Covid-19. A panel of speakers from the British Council, UNESCO Bangkok, Language and Development Conference Trustees, Thai Ministry of Education and participants from the Inclusion, Mobility and Multilingual Education Conference discussed the role of language, diversity and inclusion during and after Covid-19.

Activities on the theme of summer

If summer holidays are approaching, it can be nice to base some of your lessons around this seasonal theme. Here is a selection of activities that you can use at various levels. Although designed for use in the classroom, many can be adapted for use online to create interesting projects for your teenage learners. You can also find a selection of activities more suited to intermediate-level learners here.

A Midsummer Night's Dream for kids

Celebrate midsummer with this lesson for older primary (9–11 years) learners. Use the short animated video to introduce Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, check comprehension and discuss the ideas of 'dreams' and 'magic'. Finally, develop their creative writing skills by getting them to imagine and write about a magical dream or a magic potion or spell.

Setting up a classroom or teacher training on an LMS (learning management system) – Edmodo and Class Dojo

Even though emergency remote teaching offers no time for conducting teacher professional development without pressure, that does not mean that you cannot still develop your online classroom flow in a matter of days. Everything can be achieved with the effective use of proper tools, even if you are not very tech-savvy and even if you live on another continent. This blog post clearly outlines steps for setting up your classroom effectively through Edmodo (for teenage and adult students) and Class Dojo (for young and very young learners).

Chocolate: from the land to the hand

Celebrate World Chocolate Day on 7 July with this lesson for adult and teenage students about who makes our chocolate and, importantly, who receives our money each time we buy a bar of chocolate. Students read about different stages of the journey and learn where most/least of their money goes. They are ‘paid’ by the teacher, so that they actually feel the unfairness of the system. Finish with a discussion on the injustices.

Teacher motivation at a challenging time

'The current situation has changed everything and nothing. We sit at home, our lives so much different in form than they were a few long weeks ago, and yet the content – the need for work, for closeness and continuity – is still with us, it’s fundamental.' Read this post by Richard Fielden-Watkinson about what motivates us as teachers and how it may be difficult to feel motivated in the current situation we find ourselves in.