What’s your staffroom like? Do you know what’s in all those cupboards and drawers? Is there dust collecting on most of the supplementary materials? What’s in that unlabelled ring binder?

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I’m lucky to have worked in some really well-stocked staffrooms. I mean, the one in LTC Eastbourne had EVERYTHING – they were hoarders. Never had they thrown out a cassette tape(!), a freebie, a flashcard, a material produced in-house… it was a veritable ELT jungle. Despite the abundance of materials, I rarely explored the bookshelves and cupboards. The day I did… wow! Thirty minutes of rummaging saved me about 10 hours planning in the long run. It also resulted in me trialling ‘Teaching with Bear’, which wasn’t my finest hour. I can’t think why my intermediate adults didn’t take to it…

If I were inducting new staff I’d certainly schedule half an hour of staffroom rummaging. We don’t really make the most of the staffroom resources in my centre. We prepare almost everything on our computers, and search for supplementary materials online. Sure, it’s more convenient. It just that there’s a whole other wall of lesson inspiration just sitting there, and most of us have our backs to it!

So, yesterday I finally turned around. I was right, I knew I’d find something worthwhile. No ‘Teaching with Bear’ though…

This book by Jamie Keddie was mentioned during my MA module in Materials Development. It’s full of great tasks for making the most of images and sometimes building whole lessons around them. ‘Noun Marriages’ looks like a good task, might give it a go soon…

This ‘Top Tips for IELTS’ book is quite good too. It’s full of short tasks for practising different skills and strategies. It summaries key information about the course, and has quite a few of those tiny tips that really count for a lot of marks…

Most of the tips are also in IELTS course books I’ve used, but it’s nice to have them packaged in a self-study guide. There are about 10 copies in our cupboard… *mental note for my next IELTS course*

There are 10 of these in the cupboard. I’ve never actually used graded readers (shock!). Our ‘summer school’ is around April time here so I can see these coming in handy.

I’ve been chatting about intercultural communication a bit with one of our senior teachers. Saw this book tucked away among the frequently used Speaking/Reading/Listening/Collocations Extras…

Not sure how I can get these activities into my adult classes as we have a set syllabus. Still, a quick flick through revealed loads of topics I didn’t know about (embarrassing), so I better get learning!

Hofstede model, hmmm…

Old looking book = probably quite good but been overlooked for too long. Another interesting activities bank. I like the way the book is divided, particularly into ‘controlled activities’ and ‘awareness activities’. The awareness section has a tasks on pronunciation, cultural awareness, and discourse which will be useful for my learners…

I also found a book called ‘Homework’ by Lesley Painter (OUP, 2003). It was in pristine condition. I can imagine why, as who would want to pick up a book with that title?!

Turns out it’s got a lot of good activities in it, and they don’t all have to be for homework either!

I liked this task the best, useful in a city like Bangkok:

This is a good reference for introducing new vocabulary. I wish I’d found this when I first started out. It’s less useful for me now, but it’ll still provide a good way in for basic topics I’ve never taught. Good for teaching ‘starter’ classes in our centre for sure…

About ten years ago somebody wrote this awesome self-study pronunciation programme at our centre. I found this tucked away on a random shelf. Researched it – apparently the authors won an Elton award for the book in 2006.

Full of great activities, segmental and suprasegmental tasks. It will help me come up with tasks when materials writing I’m sure – no point reinventing the wheel.

Certainly a worthwhile rummage. I expected nothing less in a British Council staffroom – there are books aplenty.

So, what hidden gems will you find in your staffroom?

#exploreyourstaffroom

Categories: General, reflections

Tags: #exploreyourstaffroom, British Council, British Council Bangkok, cpd, elt, Eltons, IELTS, LTC Eastbourne, resources, staffroom, supplementary materials, teacher cpd, tefl