In my previous school we did ‘Teach Meets’. Once a year, each teacher would share some research or teaching ideas related to their own practice. We’d come together once a term for some teachers to present (gallery walk style) and… Read More ›
teacher development
Effective questioning
Jane Maria Harding da Rosa at EELT asked if I had any tips regarding effective questioning. She felt that effective questioning is not covered much on initial teacher training courses, so is planning some input on it for her blog/channel… Read More ›
Adaptations: Follower (Year 7 poetry)
The assessment for our Year 7 poetry unit was on how Seamus Heaney portrays his relationship with his father in the poem Follower. It didn’t require a super-detailed analysis, mainly recognizing the main themes and the time shift, but some… Read More ›
Teaching EAL learners: talk for iQTS candidates (Uni of Sunderland)
I was invited by Uni of Sunderland to talk to their iQTS candidates about EAL teaching strategies. I had an open brief, so I opted to share some more general tips for early careers teachers. I talked about: There was… Read More ›
EAL adaptations: Poetry, Year 6
Our current poetry unit with Year 6 is probably the strongest planning I’ve picked up this year. Minimal adaptation needed, mostly accessible, fun, and the level of challenge is spot on really. It just needs tiny tweaks. Here are some… Read More ›
EAL adaptations: fantasy writing, rationales
Here are some more scaffolding tweaks I’ve made to our Year 7 mainstream English content. Last term, learners studied ‘Fantasy Writing’. It was an awesome topic and the in-house resources overall were brilliant. I had tons of fun teaching it!… Read More ›
Coursebook evaluation in… EAL?!
I’m using more coursebooks in my current practice than I have done in a long time. This has put the importance of coursebook evaluation on my radar again. Coursebooks and EAL Adopting coursebook-driven ELT curricula in EAL contexts wouldn’t be… Read More ›
Community building activities for tutor time
Last year, Joel Lawrence and I worked on some community building resources for tutor time at St. Joes. They were meant to be used as part of an induction phase, maybe weeks 1-2 of term. Nothing ground-breaking here! Just sharing… Read More ›
Interview task: create a lesson for a Year 10 IGCSE ESL class
I recently had an interview for a Head of EAL role here in Bangkok. It was for a school called King’s College, which is a fairly new school with a good reputation. I did okay – made it through to… Read More ›
AI experiments: IGCSE ESL speaking assessment bank
Yep, I’m still AI-novicing over here. Today I was looking for a quick fix for the upcoming IGCSE ESL speaking exams (window opens end of March). I wanted a curated bank of tests, or at least test-like questions for all… Read More ›
ELT Planning 