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Resources – Express Yourself in English All course materials will be provided by the teacher unless the student requests otherwise. Types of Materials used: Topics for speaking activities with vocabulary Audio recordings for listening comprehensionVideos for comprehension and discussionWritten texts for comprehensionGrammar practice worksheets Having access to materials from a variety of sources such as magazine articles, interviews, videos, songs and short stories helps students to become familiar with a variety of styles of English and acquire a broader vocabulary.

The path to paperless: 13 tech tools for teachers on a tight budget Flipgrid Holly Clark, education strategist and coauthor of The Google Infused Classroom, says video discussion platform Flipgrid is a great tool for teachers to capture information about student learning and growth. Flipgrid is a free app where teachers can post a question or other cues for student response, and students can then reply with short videos. InsertLearning The Learning Rainforest: A model for great teaching and learning. Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky Khalil Gibran It’s a few months since I published The Learning Rainforest with John Catt. So far sales have gone pretty well – I couldn’t be happier with that. I’m also getting invited to run lots of CPD events and engage in longer term consultancy work based on the ideas in the book. If that might be of interest for the next academic year, contact me here. If you haven’t got a copy yet, here are some extracts to give you a feel for the content of the book:

Lesson idea: Viral videos This was a context builder for a sequence of lessons on viral videos, viral ad campaigns, viral marketing, etc. It’s similar to the idea I shared for introducing recipes. Anyway, used this with B1+ teens, worked well. 20 Classroom Technology Tools You Might Not Know The use of technology in the classroom is no longer up for debate. It's now extremely clear: the effective use of classroom technology drives student results. But, any competent education professional would be quick to point out that student results are only positively impacted when they are introduced to the right tools. With a U.S. based edtech market that has raised more than a billion dollars over the last year, the options for technology tools to use in your classroom can seem infinite. Luckily, we're here to help!

Ten books every teacher should read Plato’s Republic, Rousseau’s Émile and Dewey’s Democracy and Education – there’s a strong case to be made, as Dennis Hayes has, that these are the only books on education that teachers need to read. But if I was about to enter the classroom as a teacher for the first time or was looking to improve my practice, I would probably want to read something with more practical advice on what I should be doing and, more importantly, on what I shouldn’t. Much of what happens in a classroom is highly variable and hard to define, but over the last 10 years a wealth of books has sought to draw together evidence from other fields and provide a series of “best bets” on what might have the greatest impact on student learning. Here are just a few of them.

Target Language: Practise spelling, vocabulary & grammar The reason for creating this new PowerPoint quiz format was to have some variety. Rather than simply playing Jeopardy or using a class quiz, why not play a game where students get points for hitting the target and for practising the target language of the lesson/course. Watch the tutorial below to see how to edit and use the PowerPoint template. Video tutorial demonstrating how to edit and use the Target Language PowerPoint.The video run-time is 2 minutes and 37 seconds. The 90 Hottest EdTech Tools According to Education Experts If you work in education, you’ll know there’s a HUGE array of applications, services, products and tools created to serve a multitude of functions in education. Tools for teaching and learning, parent-teacher communication apps, lesson planning software, home-tutoring websites, revision blogs, SEN education information, professional development qualifications and more. There are so many companies creating new products for education, though, that it can be difficult to keep up - especially with the massive volumes of planning and marking teachers have to do, never mind finding the time to actually teach! So how do you know which ones are the best? Well, as a team of people passionate about education and learning, we decided to do a bit of research to help you out.

Andy Tharby Image: @jasonramasami In 2013, Ofsted published a pretty damning report about the provision available for more-able students at secondary schools in the UK. One statement from the report rings true to me: Many students become used to performing at a lower level than they were capable of. Extensive reading and learner autonomy: 10 websites Are you looking for websites with material for extensive reading? Sharing some of these resources with students and encouraging them to engage in regular reading can help them to improve their language proficiency while developing learner autonomy. Indeed, extensive reading has multiple benefits: Students develop a wide variety of reading strategies.It improves reading fluency, which affects comprehension.It’s a perfect way to learn new words in context and revise the vocabulary they are already familiar with.Students can test their own grammar but also notice new constructions that help to convey different meanings.It may affect the students’ motivation to learn the language! The following websites offer free access to both graded and unabridged reading materials, and they cover a range of text types and genres to suit a variety of interests.

27 Tech Tools Teachers Can Use to Inspire Classroom Creativity Students who grow up with a love of learning are more likely to stay engaged in STEAM subjects and other lessons as they grow older. They won’t take what they learn at face value, and will instead seek out ways to expand their knowledge and ask questions about what they learn. Teachers are always looking for ways to pique student interest, from engaging experiments to unique learning methods. If you want to add fresh elements to your classroom and encourage your students to be creative, check out these tools. Moodle In my last post, I looked at shortcomings in edtech research, mostly from outside the world of ELT. I made a series of recommendations of ways in which such research could become more useful. In this post, I look at two very recent collections of ELT edtech research. The first of these is Digital Innovations and Research in Language Learning, edited by Mavridi and Saumell, and published this February by the Learning Technologies SIG of IATEFL.

World of Better Learning Simon Wright Lauren Pitts Delia Kidd Insights Pedagogy Motivating and Inspiring Students Motivating and Inspiring Students Movies can be a source of inspiration for both students and teachers. Before having students watch a film (or selections from one), teachers should provide a context and a purpose for viewing the video.