Life hacks for online teachers

Life Hacks for Online Teachers

The digitalisation of education was already in motion even before the events of this year, which has seen more and more classes taught online or in blended scenarios. The transition brings with it great opportunities for innovation, but it’s certainly not without its challenges, too! We’re sometimes spoilt for choice with a plethora of digital tools and platforms and apps with ‘bells and whistles’ so there’s a lot to be said for taking a step back and focusing on what’s important. In this blog post I’d like to share some of the ‘life hacks’ I’ve learned as an online teacher which I hope will help simplify and make more efficient your digital teaching lives…

*Should you wish to delve deeper into this topic, check out the webinar I delivered – you can access the recording and slides at the Pearson teacher training hub

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Ideas for Christmas Classes!

‘Twas the class before Christmas and all through the school all the teachers were searching for something to do!  Xmas Pearson

Sound like a familiar situation?  Your students have their work completed and exams taken.  Holidays are just around the corner and you need one more lesson to send them off on a positive note.  Well look no further.

In the true spirit of giving and the holiday season the Pearson Teacher Training Team for Spain and Portugal have come up with a few ideas that will put a smile on your students’ faces and save you some time so you can maybe get in a just a little more holiday shopping to boot.

These varied and enjoyable Christmas activities designed for adult and teen learners of English are the focus of our Christmas Webinars (slides available herewhich are taking place this week.  They can be easily adapted for different levels or mixed, matched and changed to your liking or particular needs.  So have a look at the menu below, click on each title, download what you like and go into class ready to get your students into the holiday spirit!

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Halloween: great teaching ideas for teens

Halloween: great teaching ideas for teensGhosts, witches, black cats, haunted houses… Despite the creepy flavour of these terms, I’ve always liked Halloween: 31st of October, the spookiest day of the year, as it is said to be. As teachers, many of us celebrate this autumn festivity by decorating our classrooms with spider-webs, skeletons, bats, etc., and by asking our students to dress up as ghosts, witches or werewolves.

We have already talked about some Halloween activities that your primary students will love, but there is also a wealth of activities out there for teenagers. Just type “Halloween activities for teens” in your internet browser and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Is this just another blog post with a compilation of links? No, it isn’t. Here you will find practical teaching ideas, which require little preparation time. Continue reading

Taking word clouds to the next level with Wordsift

word cloud 1Not only do word clouds look pretty, there are also a number of ways they can be used in the ELT classroom to help our students learn. In this post we’re going to be looking at how.

Now, there are lots of word cloud generators out there such as wordle and tagxedo. However, not all these tools were created equal: there are word clouds and then there are word clouds! One which really caught my eye recently is Wordsift, created by Kenji Hakuta of Stanford University.

What’s the basic premise of a word cloud? Well, it’s an image made up of the words used in a text with the size of each word indicating its frequency in the text it was drawn from. A quick glance at the word cloud on the right reveals that ‘freedom’ is the most common word in the text and you can probably guess which famous speech these words come from. Word clouds are quick to make: copy the text, paste it into the generator and let the program do the rest. Continue reading

Check out our teacher training sessions at the British Council

It’s been a busy few weeks for Pearson’s teacher trainers who have been giving talks at the British Council ‘Teaching for Success’ events across Spain. As promised, here are the links to the presentations we gave:

Valencia, Barcelona & Madrid with Brian Engquist, Marta Cervera & Michael Brand

Saturday 1st October 

Exploiting video to the max

From the Classroom to the Wider World

Bilbao with Elena Merino  

Saturday 24th September

Embracing Authenticity

Ten Top Tips for Terrific Teachers

Thanks for attending the talks and we hope you found them useful!

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You might also be interested in…

– Do you want to be Pearson’s Global ELT Teacher of the year?

– Mark your calendar for Pearson Webinars for English Teachers

Don’t forget to sign up to our ELT blog. You’ll find lots of great stuff to read here!

More info at Pearson ELT Spain & Portugal

Mark your calendar for Pearson Webinars for English Teachers

Pearson Webinars for English TeachersAre you teaching a B2 exam course? Find yourself falling into the same old exam practice routine?

Would you like to know how to make cooperative learning work in your Primary classroom?

Do you need fresh ideas on to use video in your English classes?

If your answer is yes, join us in October for two weeks of Professional Development webinars presented by our teacher trainers: Brian Engquist, Elena Merino and Michael Brand, who will share with you new ideas, activities, tips, tools and tasks to spice up your lessons! Continue reading

Celebrate Roald Dahl’s centenary with Pearson English Readers

‘‘You have to believe in magic to find it’’, Roald Dahl.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - Pearson English ReadersRoald Dahl was without doubt one of the most magical of children’s writers working in the twentieth century. Today his magic still infuses our popular culture and his stories have been translated into scores of languages and adapted into blockbuster films. Our English language students can also experience the Dahl magic via the Pearson English Readers.

Roald Dahl was born 100 years ago in Llandaff, Wales on the 13th of September and this year marks his centenary. His writing career started in the United States with short stories and magazine articles for adults. Roald’s first venture into children’s fiction was the short-story Gremlins, which he wrote for Walt Disney in 1942. Gremlins wasn’t a success, so he returned to writing for adults producing the best-selling short story collection Someone like you in 1953. Continue reading

Teaching skills for working with teens

Teaching skills for working with teens - Image by Mansour BethoneyTeaching English to teenagers can be frustrating and fulfilling in equal measure. They can be full of energy and ideas that add a real buzz to the class, but they can also be sullen, self-conscious, reluctant to work together and difficult to engage. However, if you approach lessons with teenagers with the right ideas, materials and tricks of the trade, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be a great success.

Here’s our list of indispensable teaching skills for working with teens:

***Do group project work***

Group projects come in all shapes and sizes and work well with teenagers. They increase motivation, promote learner autonomy, have clear, achievable objectives, involve all four language skills, and can be managed in a way that lets everyone in the group take on a role that’s best suited to them. They also make a welcome break from routine and can be run over several classes, with a section of each lesson allocated to them. You’ll find plenty of examples of project work here and here. Continue reading

Here you can see our latest Pearson Anaya Events sessions!

Here you can see our latest Pearson Anaya Training Events for Secondary Teachers!

Pearson Anaya EventsESO: Next move talk

The challenge of motivating ESO students in English

What are the most common challenges teachers encounter in the secondary classroom and how can we rise to them? In this session we will examine ways to make classes more student-centred and look at a range of engaging activities with special focus on projects and the new curriculum, which are sure to motivate your ESO students. Continue reading

Extending the CEFR across English and the globe

GSE-extends-CEFRThe Global Scale of English (GSE) is a new standardised, granular scale from 10 to 90, which measures English language proficiency. We have added over 950 new learning objectives to those already created for the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) including 300 each for general, academic and professional English. Learners can now track their progress from the start of their learning journey with 40 new learning objectives below A1.

How are GSE learning objectives created?

After reviewing existing learning objectives and identifying gaps, new learning objectives are reviewed and refined before being rated by thousands of teachers worldwide on the GSE and CEFR. The learning objectives then go through two rounds of data analysis by our psychometricians in order to calibrate them to the GSE. Any problematic learning objectives are removed, and the final list is checked again by content editors before being published. Continue reading