Tag Archives: Young Learners

YLs Teacher Training course Session 4 Instructions

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After a break of more than three weeks, I am back with the next instalment of my training course.

This is session 4 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 looks at how to make instructions clear to children’s classes to ensure successful learning takes place. The session includes a demonstration of how not to give instructions, followed by a step-by-step guide on how to make a greetings card with a children’s class. Trainees are set homework to observe each other and see how they can improve their teaching practice.

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

Session 4_YL Teacher Training course

 

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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

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.

YL can-do descriptors for rating

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I have just finished the second day of selecting can-do descriptors from a list of new and adapted ones to be sent out for rating. It involves carefully selecting descriptors that fill gaps in the current syllabus.

I will be co-presenting a workshop on this at this year’s IATEFL conference so come and find out more. We’re on in the morning on the Monday.

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

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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.

YLs content mapping

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I have dedicated most of today to content mapping a higher level of a Primary course. Basically it involves looking at each activity in the Pupil’s and Activity Books and assigning them a can-do statement or creating a new or adapted can-do statement to describe what the children have to be able to do to successfully do the activities. It’s fascinating work, but seeing as it involves toggling between two spreadsheets for most of the day any light relief, like the writing of this blog, comes as welcome relief.