2024 vibe: PGCEi and AO QTS go-to!

This year, I decided to get Qualified Teacher Status in England. It was a great decision to do this through the Uni of Sunderland – I’ve blogged about the overall experience and the interview presentation.

The response to those posts suggests that the Assessment Only Route is hugely popular at the moment – I’ve been surprised by the amount of people contacting me to ask for more info. I’ve also had lots more people asking for support with their PGCEi assignments. I enjoy helping them out and wonder if mentoring in schools might be a path to follow down the line. 

Peter Lucantoni

I met Peter Lucantoni earlier this year – awesome guy. He invited me to do some webinars for Cambridge English and Assessment in the MENA region. Great experience. 

I still have to review Peter’s book here too! Watch this space!

Talking of reviews…

Yeah, it’s not been a productive year for blog reviews. Bit busy. But I reviewed Emma Turner’s Be More Toddler, which is worth a read. I’ve written about how we’ve applied various ideas from teaching resources in our practice though, like our use of Teaching Walkthrus for peer observations, and how Boers’ research into vocab acquisition informs aspects of our teaching and learning.

Rambling on about assessment

I spent time mid-year gathering thoughts on EAL-related assessments. I suggested the CEFR is unduly criticized in EAL contexts, and also suggested improvements to the Bell assessment framework. I also wrote about how we apply the Bell Framework in our context. My colleague Adri took part in a panel discussion with Bell on this very topic, which you can view here.

Materials writing

Adri and I completed our first co-authoring project – a book on supporting EAL learners written for the Delta Teacher Development Series. Here’s a positive review of the book from Gemma Donovan:

Delta, hey? I remember my early days in the staffroom at LTC Eastbourne, flicking through Pugliese’s Being Creative for teaching ideas; experimenting with Teaching Unplugged; wanting to work with Duncan Foord after reading the Developing Teacher. Aaah that series had a big influence on my practice. Feels weird to have contributed to it tbh – thanks to Sandy for prompting it.

I still write imaginary conversations about ELT materials development. The most viewed post this year was this one on test specifications. 

Teaching remains my priority for 2025, but there are a few possibilities for writing collaborations too. Watch this space!

This blog

Next year will be my 10th year blogging! Amazed there’s still an audience. 

Aside from teaching…

Finally back to scuba diving! Approaching dive 100! I wonder if me and Daniel Xerri could write a scuba-themed ELT book. I bet he’s already done that.

Back to learning Thai. I got the word for ‘chair’ and the word for ‘Korean’ mixed up the other day – they are quite similar!

Back to table tennis. I currently play with Rakza7 backhand and Rakza7 soft on forehand (max sponge both). You?

Have a great festive season!

Categories: General, reflections

Tags: elt, materials development, publishing, reflections, tefl, year in review