Here are the slides of the talks from the OUP Professional Development Day in Biel on 1st December. Thanks to all those who took part.
21st Century Skills in the Classroom
Designing Tasks with Literature
Switzerland
Leave a reply
Category Archives: Handouts
Bulgaria
Slides from my Oxford Teachers’ Days talks in Plovdiv, Stara Zagora, Burgas, Varna and Ruse.
Learning to play, playing to learn
In this session we will look at the relationship between playing and learning. Classroom games provide a rich source of learning opportunities – and not only about language. The games we play in the English lesson also help children to learn important skills and values, while helping us to create a motivating and harmonious classroom environment.. The session will offer plenty of practical classroom ideas and activities and suggest the most effective ways to use games in your classroom.
Working with mixed groups
In this session we look at the challenges presented by mixed groups and consider some techniques that teachers can use to make classroom activities better tailored to individual needs while maintaining – or perhaps even enriching – the group dynamic. The session aims to offer both a selection of effective and practical classroom ideas for the mixed-ability classroom as well as tips for adapting materials to make them more suitable for heterogeneous groups.
BELTA Day 2015, Brussels
Slides from my session on Working with mixed groups
And a summary Working with mixed groups handout.
A terrific event – congratulations to the BELTA team.
Lithuania slides
Thank you to those teachers attending the OUP seminars in Lithuania.
My talk is called ‘Teaching as a daily routine’
I get up, I have breakfast, I go to school….In this session we’ll be taking a closer look at our daily teaching routine. Does everything run like clockwork, or is it a daily struggle? What could we change or improve? The session will look at a range of practical ideas and useful tips to help us establish the kind of classroom habits, routines and traditions that can make our teaching more effective – and make learning lots more fun.
As promised, you can download a version of the slides here.
Poland Winter Tour
My session takes a teacher’s perspective of the challenges posed by the new situation in schools in Poland and also addresses those challenges which can generally be found in any classroom setting. We discuss the difficulties of getting students focused and interested in the activities of the lesson and the problems associated with poorly motivated students – and look at what teachers can actually do to have a positive impact on the learning environment.
The talk is called ‘Rising to the challenge’ and a copy of the slides is available here in pdf format.
Using Literature to Teach Language
Thank you to everyone who attended the seminar in Bellinzona, Switzerland last week. I really enjoyed the day and hope that the sessions managed to combine ‘food for thought’ with practical ideas to try out in the classroom. As promised, I am uploading the materials again here.
It would be great to hear how the ideas we discussed work in your own classrooms, so do get in touch and let me know all about it!
Ed
Lithuania
As promised, I am uploading the slides from my talks in Lithuania:
Bringing lessons to life
My students hate writing – help!
Many thanks for the warm reception – it was a pleasure to be here. 🙂
Teaching Teenagers – Challenge Accepted!
In the second week of the English Language Teachers’ Summer Seminar at Exeter College Oxford we looked at some of the challenges involved in teaching teenagers. Thanks to the fantastic teachers from all over the world – your stories, ideas and enthusiasm made the course extremely enjoyable and, I hope, useful. Thanks also to Roksana for the reminder to upload the slides 🙂
If you would like an e-copy of the handouts for this course, just get in touch.
Promoting Speaking Skills
It’s time for Oxford University’s two-week English Language Teachers’ Summer Seminar in the beautiful setting of Exeter College.
My course in the first week was on the topic of Promoting Speaking Skills. It was a pleasure to work with fantastic teachers from Colombia, Turkey, Netherlands, Russia, Romania, Czech Rep, Ireland, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Taiwan, Yemen, Japan, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Thailand, Spain, Mexico and Bangladesh: we had a fascinatingly diverse array of classroom experience with which to work and I enjoyed leading the course very much.
As promised, I have put the slides from the week together in one file.
If you would like e-copies of the handouts for each day, email me at legyened@yahoo.co.uk
Serbia
Great to be back in Serbia.
As promised, here are the slides from my sessions in pdf format:
Secondary session 1:
Writing
In this session we will consider the reasons why many teenagers dislike writing in English and attempt to identify those aspects of writing skills with which teenagers tend to experience the most difficulties. Then we will consider a range of simple and practical classroom activities which can help to equip students with the skills and strategies they need to succeed with writing.
1 Secondary Writing
Secondary session 2:
Project work in and outside the classroom
Project work is a tried and tested approach for extending topics creatively, personalising English lessons and revitalising jaded students. So how can we get the best out of projects in the digital age? This session will offer some practical and time-saving ways to make project work more engaging for ‘digital natives’, while also looking at how we can give traditional projects a new twist.
2 Secondary Project work
Primary session:
Writing
Learning to write in English can be hard for younger learners who are just getting familiar with English. What are the best ways to help them develop? We will look at some simple and effective classroom activities. We will also think about upper primary students, especially those who find writing boring and difficult. What can we do to make writing more enjoyable for them? We will try out a variety of fun and imaginative ideas to help learners write effectively and creatively.
3 Primary Writing