Tag Archives: English Language Teaching

YLs Teacher Training course Session 3 Rules and Boundaries

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It’s now almost half term in UK schools and it is time to look at what happens when the ‘Happy Honeymoon’ many teachers experience at the start of a school year starts to wear off.

This is session 3 of my 10-week Teacher Training course for teachers of Young Learners. It is written with NQTs or newly qualified teachers in mind and it builds on the work done on classroom management in session 2 of this course. Trainees are required to take part in a ‘maze’ activity originally published by International House experts David Spencer and David Vaughan in IATEFL’s YL SIG magazine CATs.

I hope you find these materials thought-provoking and relevant to your teaching context. Do please let me know if you have any feedback or questions.

Session 3 Rules and Boundaries

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YLs Teacher Training course Session 2 Classroom Management

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It’s now almost half way through the autumn term in most UK schools and in schools and colleges in many other countries.

Here is session 2 of my 10-week Teacher Training course for teachers of Young Learners. It can be run with new teachers of children (and those with some experience too!) and it explores the ins and outs of good classroom management, both principles and practice. All you need is an IWB, access to the Internet and Teachers TV or You Tube, plus some fairly basic pen and paper materials.

I hope you find these materials stimulating and relevant to your teaching context.                  Do please let me know if you have any feedback or questions.

YLs TT course – session 2_adapted for blog

YLs Teacher Training course Session 1 Why children are different

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It’s now very much autumn and teachers have been back at school for a couple of weeks now in most of the UK and in many other countries.

Here is a training session that can be run with new teachers of children (and those with some experience too!) to explore how and why children are different and what to do about it.

I hope you find my materials interesting.

YLs TT course – session 1

A ten-week Teacher Training course for recently qualified teachers of Young Learners

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Ahead of the return to school for most teachers and young learners, I am pleased to share a ten-week initial Teacher Training course for recently qualified teachers of children and young teenagers. I wrote this when I was still working as a Teacher Trainer and have updated it to place it on my blog.

First of all, I am sharing the pre-course information that can be given to trainees either ahead of or at the start of the course: YLs Initial ten-week Teacher Training course – overview

August is holiday time for many teachers

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During August, many teachers are taking a thoroughly well-deserved break. I am keeping my head down proofreading a Lower Secondary course that is being versioned for Egypt.

Next week, I plan to take some down time from Wednesday through to the following Tuesday morning. I am planning to use some of that time to add some content to the Teaching materials tab on this blog. So look out for something from me soon.

Cognitive levelling

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More than a month after my last post and I am back at my desk looking at cognitive levelling this week and the research that has been done into this area, or not, as the case may be. This seems a more recent area of research in the field of children.

As well as estimating the age at which a child can be reasonably expected to do something, say ‘Can tell the time in clock hours e.g. It’s nine o’clock.’ I have been trying to band the abilities into four areas: open (age 6 upwards), 7 or older, 9 or older and 11 or older. This is still very much up for discussion as so much happens around the age of ten when more abstract thinking and understanding come into play. For instance, when should children be expected to write a well-constructed paragraph with a topic sentence, main body and final sentence?

I hope to answer that question more expertly as this week goes by.

As February approaches…

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I am now splitting my time between content mapping a Primary course for Pearson and writing revised Primary test material, again for Pearson. On Monday I’m meeting my contacts at this publisher to plan my IATEFL workshop on how we have gone about producing can do descriptors for Pearson’s YL syllabus. Interesting times and I am enjoying it.

Content editing a Primary course for Egypt

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This week I have been mainly content editing a Primary course that is being versioned for use in Egypt. It is fascinating what can and can’t be considered culturally acceptable. Example: playing cards shouldn’t feature as this could be considered to allude to gambling. I’m due to finish the content edit this week, which is great as I have a new project writing some Primary tests just starting up.

Content editing

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It’s been a busy week content editing a Primary course to produce a new version of an existing course for Egypt. It was a steep learning curve, but once I got into it I really enjoyed it and I think the pupils will too as the team has really revamped the stories. I’m spending some time this weekend catching up on the content mapping that is ongoing.