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Teacher Guides: implementing project-based learning and assessing key competences. 10 Free Tools for Building Blended & Online Learning. As internet connections improve and costs of classroom hours increase, it’s becoming increasingly important to offer some form of blended or totally online materials to enhance courses. In this posting I’ll introduce some useful free and freemium tools that can enable any teacher to start creating content for online delivery. You can find more tools like these in Digital Tools for Teachers 1. Perusall – This tool enables teachers to build onto more traditional course book based courses and add a blended element. 2.

This is a very similar tool to Perusall, but it’s completely free and works around any web-based text. 3. You can use Teachable to create and sell your own online courses. 4. CourseLab has been around for a while now and is a free tool for authoring your own interactive digital content. 5. 6. Ed is a really impressive course creation and LMS tool for creating highly interactive and touch responsive learning content for mobile devices. 8. 9. 10.

Save. Ask Answer Add - A Speaking Activity to Help Learners Maintain a Natural Conversation. Ask Answer Add - A Speaking Activity to Help Learners Maintain a Natural Conversation Ask Answer Add is one of my favorite speaking activities and requires no resources in class. It is a very straightforward exercise and I’m sure it will really help your learners build their speaking skills and learn the invaluable skill of maintaining a conversation. The premise is quite simple, and it is suitable for any level of learner. In fact, I have been using this with a group of lower level non-English majors and with different class of higher level English majors and I have had equal success in both classes. Ask The idea behind the activity is very simple. The first step is to place the learners so that they are sitting or standing in pairs and facing each other. For lower level learners, I present them with a question to ask their partner.

What’s your favorite food? Answer Start with just one question and let the learners know that they are going to ask this to their partner. A. A. A. A. Classroom Management From Day One. Megan Toujouse took her classroom management plan to her first interview and was hired immediately. Toujouse had developed the plan, step by step, piece by piece, in a course taught by Elecia Lathon at Louisiana State University. Lathon instructed Toujouse and her classmates to develop a plan that they could take to job interviews, share with colleagues, and use for years to avoid becoming a stressed-out disciplinarian.

Amanda Brooks, a fifth-grade teacher in Dyersburg, Tennessee, began her first day of teaching with a PowerPoint presentation that explained her classroom plan to students. She says that first day went like clockwork and was practically flawless. At the end of her first year of teaching, Brooks wrote, “I am so thankful for that first day, when I had my students practice our classroom procedures. At the end of Brooks’s fourth year, the district hired her to teach incoming teachers how to manage their classrooms. Classroom Management Is About Organization Harry K. English vocabulary: personality types. Words to describe people. - learn English,vocabulary,english.

Magazine Cover: Be a superstar! How to Use the New Version of Padlet. Squealer as a Propaganda Machine in George Orwell's Animal Farm. George Orwell’s 1946 novel Animal Farm uses the animals of Manor Farm as a metaphor for Stalinism in order to demonstrate the corruption and dangers of a Communist leadership. In keeping with this theme, the novel employs many instances of propaganda–an oft-used tool of totalitarian leaders–to illustrate that people can be easily convinced by flawed ideas if they’re presented in an engaging manner.

This allegorical dystopia uses songs, slogans, and poems to depict the manner in which the animals gradually come under Napoleon’s spell with the effective machinations of Squealer, the farm’s Minister of Propaganda. Although Orwell also uses positive propaganda to demonstrate its power in uniting a populace, the overwhelming message of this novel is that people living under an oppressive regime are ripe to be manipulated by the persuasive power of propaganda. Animal Farm demonstrates that true power may lie not with the dictator himself, but with the mouthpiece who speaks for him.

References. Castles in the Air: 8 Gentle Quotes by Transcendentalists. America’s religious streak took off in an odd direction in the early 19th century as Transcendentalist philosophers and writers began tending to a sorely under-nourished part of our national identity, channeling that world-famous revolutionary spirit toward gentler, more introspective aims. “Resist much, obey little,” wrote Walt Whitman, his metaphor tinged with musket-fire but his message pointing directly toward the reader’s pursuit of his or her essential self.

On what would have been the poet’s 198th birthday, we’ve assembled a flight of memorable words scribbled by Whitman’s brothers- and sisters-at-arms in the Transcendentalist movement. By yanking the conversation in a particular direction, this gentle band of mystics, preachers, schoolteachers, moralists, and naturalists altered the discourse in ways that are still felt (and passionately re-quoted) today. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Goal-Setting for Teachers: 8 Paths for Self-Improvement. Some links in this post are Amazon Affiliate links. If you click these and make a purchase from Amazon, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support! One thing I love about teaching is that the list of ways you can improve is a mile long. It truly never gets boring. But because the work of a teacher has so many dimensions, it’s easy to get overwhelmed; you can’t possibly do it all.

So instead of trying to tackle everything at once, I recommend you pick just one thing. Consider an upcoming time frame when you’ll be away from your regular teaching duties, like summer or spring break. Start by figuring out where you really need work: I have created an exercise called the Gut-Level Teacher Reflection that will help determine what areas of your practice need the most attention.

Ready? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have some room for growth with technology. Become a Google Educator. Add some new teaching strategies to what you’re currently doing. 10 Best Grammar Resources for Teachers. Every day is a grammar day for teachers, but the whole world is invited to celebrate morphology and syntax on the fourth of March—National Grammar Day. Everyone loves a party, but how can you motivate students to embrace good grammar the other 364 days of the year?

These ten grammar resources might be just what you need. 1 Visual Aids If students visualize how grammar works, they will be able to understand sentence structure. For example, an infographic on Copyblogger.com explains what a dangling participle is. Here’s their example sentence: “After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.” 2 Online Courses According to its website, the Grammar Challenger helps students “master fifty of the trickiest . . . grammar, punctuation, and word usage” concepts. 3 Interactive Whiteboard Activities Interactive whiteboards project your computer screen on a dry-erase whiteboard. 4 Games What if students could learn and play at the same time?

Get Organised! Collaborative Speaking Tasks | Tim's Free English Lesson Plans. Image credit: www.organisemyhouse.com Follow me on twitter @RobbioDobbio This is a speaking lesson plan designed for teenagers that focuses on various exponents of suggesting, offering, agreeing and disagreeing. The main aim of the lesson is for students to improve their collaborative speaking skills, it will work well as preparation for FCE/CAE speaking exams. You will need the powerpoint and teacher’s notes below: get-organised – Powerpoint Get organised Teachers notes Teacher’s notes The class is loosely based on Willis’s Task Based Learning in that students are given the opportunity to repeatedly practice a similar task and hopefully internalise some useful exponents for collaborative speaking.

Put students into groups of 3, it would also work with pairs but 3s are ideal. Show the 2nd slide of the power point. Note: This is a good opportunity to teach the difference between “will” for decisions in the moment of speaking and “be going to” for a future intention. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” BBC Bitesize - KS3 English Literature - Language - Revision 4. Fun Review Activities. Reviewing material can be so boring. Not only is it boring for you to teach, but think about how your students feel!

When reviewing for a unit or state exam, try to incorporate activities and classroom games that engage students, not bore them. The trick is to make it so much fun that the students don’t even realize they are reviewing material. Try a few of these teacher-tested ideas below, they will have the material mastered before you know it. Classroom Games Turn review time into fun time with games. Jeopardy! Some practical teaching strategies to help you empower your students. Use these teaching strategies to celebrate your own successes, and thereby... Consider using the following strategies when providing differentiated...

Tips to help you prepare to get a teaching job by preparing for the interview. How to use classroom management to make our rooms are places where questions... Pass the Chicken – You will need to purchase a rubber chicken for this fun review game. Just write: short, inspiring activities to get students writing | elt-resourceful. In recent blog posts I have looked at some different aspects of writing in class. Common to all of them has been the point that good preparation is key to producing a successful piece of writing. However, there is also a lot to be said for writing completely unprepared; short, fun activities where, instead of thinking and planning carefully, students just get on with it and write. These sorts of activities can be used as a warmer, or slotted into your lesson to change the focus and pace.

They encourage students to see writing as fun and help to develop creativity and confidence. In many cases the activities can also be used as a starting point for longer writing activities, but that’s up to you. Soundtracks Play students a series of short extracts of classical music, with very different moods. Similarly, play students a short part of a film (perhaps from YouTube), but only let them listen to it (not see it).

Visuals Give students a selection of pictures of people. Realia Other Like this: Literature is Great. Introduction This lesson is about literature, with a focus on the UK. It develops the students’ ability to speak in long turns and use idioms, which originate from the works of Shakespeare. Cognitive processing reading skills are also developed through speed reading an authentic text based on the life of Charles Dickens. The students’ own experiences and opinions form the basis of all discussions. Topic Literature Level Time 90 minutes Aims To give a short presentation about a book/novel that the student has read.

Materials Lesson plan: download lesson plan Worksheets: download worksheet The plans and worksheets are downloadable and in pdf format - right click on the attachment and save it on your computer. Copyright - please read All the materials on these pages are free for you to download and copy for educational use only. How to use newspaper articles in language class. How should teachers use 'authentic' texts like newspapers in class? Author, trainer and teacher Rachael Roberts gives advice on the example of newspapers. Back in 1981, Vivian Cook wrote: ‘One of the words that has been creeping into English teaching in the past few years is 'authentic'. It has a kind of magic ring to it: who after all would want to be inauthentic?’ Teachers and students are naturally attracted to authentic texts (by which I mean any text which has not been produced for the purpose of language-learning).

Finding that you can read something designed for a native speaker is motivating, and developing ways to deal with ‘real’ texts enables students to read more confidently and extensively outside the classroom. But, as Cook goes on to say, we also need to consider just how helpful the authentic text we choose actually is for our students. First challenge: Text organisation For example, how clearly is the text organised? Second challenge: Headlines It's Bradley Zoo-per! Using poems to develop productive skills. This is a great motivator. Poems are often rich in cultural references, and they present a wide range of learning opportunities. For me, the aim is to teach English through poetry, not to teach the poetry itself, so you don't need to be a literature expert. Most of the tried and tested activities used regularly by language teachers can be adapted easily to bring poetry into the classroom. Communicative speaking activities Working on pronunciation Writing activities Some pros and cons Conclusion Communicative speaking activities Before doing any productive work, I like to give my students plenty of pre-reading activities so that they are adequately prepared.

As a way in to a poem, I might play some background music to create the atmosphere, show some pictures to introduce the topic, and then get students to think about their personal knowledge or experience which relates to this topic. Working on pronunciation It can be fun to get students to rehearse and perform a poem. Insights on professional development for busy teachers. RO Training Handout 2015. ReadOnhandbookPrentice STAMPA. A Teacher Planning Model For Multiple Intelligences. A Teacher Planning Model For Multiple Intelligences by TeachThought Staff Until recently, the prevailing thought in education was that differentiation according the theory of multiple intelligences was a good thing. Then data started coming out, and the theories Howard Gardner set forth back in 1983 came under fire. Mention multiple intelligence (MI) thinking today, and you’re guaranteed to rise the ire of someone on twitter telling you that it’s 2014, and the 1980s are gone and there is no data that exists that proves MI does anything but waste time.

The Background Gardner’s theory was more about rethinking intelligence than suggesting we teach algebra by jump roping. 8 Multiple Intelligences According To Howard Gardner According to the John Hopkins School of Education, each intelligence can be defined as follows: These theoretical multiple intelligences gave rise to the idea of learning styles that serve each of those intelligences. As a teacher, how can I promote spatial thought? Swoon! How to use songs in the English language classroom. What makes for a successful song-based lesson?

Adam Simpson, second-time winner of the British Council’s Teaching English blog award for his post on conditionals (written with Paul Mains), explains. One of the big problems we all face, whether teaching English to children or adults, is maintaining learners’ interest throughout our lessons. Consequently, we often have to be very creative in the techniques we use. What makes music such a great teaching tool is its universal appeal, connecting all cultures and languages. This makes it one of the best and most motivating resources in the classroom, regardless of the age or background of the learner. Planning for the use of songs in class The process of selecting a song is one of the most difficult aspects of using music in a lesson.

Carefully examine what it is you want your class to learn in the lesson Is this going to be a lesson focusing on vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, or a particular topic? How old are your learners? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The Best Music Websites For Learning English. Teachingenglish.org.

Step by Step Support EN new. StrumentidibasediOpenSankore. Great video sites for EAP and high level classes | Video Content. 50 Things You Can Say To Encourage A Child - CLIL-5 great video sites with CLIL content. 5 Great Web Tools for Creating Video Lessons. Se le catacombe hanno le cuccette… How to Create a Progress Chart in Google Sheets. Other ways to say: Nice, Good, Bad, Sad, Happy, Pretty - learn English,vocabulary,communication,english. How to write a personal statement for a UK university. Calendar of Events. English as a Second Language. Powerpoint for teachers. The Challenge of Teaching English to Dyslexic Students by Julia Shewry. 10 useful websites for ELT | elt planning.

Reflective teaching: Exploring our own classroom practice. Introduction to teaching with SKYPE | Teaching on-line. Ripetizioni gratis: nasce in Toscana il 1° social network per gli studenti. The Practical Ed Tech Handbook - Download It Today. Scuola, compattare l'orario... si può! Sperimentando una delle idee del Movimento delle Avanguardie Educative. 25 maps that explain the English language. Creativity in the English language classroom. Khan Academy. Listening to students' spoken language | ETp.

C607%20Information%20and%20Communication_WEB%20ONLY_FINAL.pdf. MaterialeCooperativeLearningBreveGuida.pdf. Smart List: 30 Ways to Learn Almost Anything. Study Tools. FORUM FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS-FELT. New Chart Comparing The Best Tools for Creating Educational Posters and Inforgaphics. Web Resources.