British history

Top Tips: Teaching at UK summer schools

Summer school season is nearly upon us! This is my favourite time of year – you get to work in some great locations around the UK, visit famous attractions and generally have a lot of fun! I’ll be missing out this year, but I’ve worked at 6 different schools in the past. Each time I’ve been a Teacher and Activity Leader. If you’re doing a similar role this year then here are a few tips to help you hit the ground running! (more…)

Fluency practice: What do you know about Britain?

Here’s a fun way to get students sharing information, in the context of history and culture. I originally got this idea from waygook.org, which is a good source of lesson inspiration if you’re a teacher based in South Korea.

Let’s say you have 16 intermediate/upper-intermediate students. Give each one a slip of paper with information about British history on it, here are four examples: (more…)

British History Lesson: Boudica

I recently taught a great group of upper-intermediate Italian college students. They were from a humanities college, they requested lessons in history, psychology, sociology and so on. It was International Women’s Day the weekend before, so I thought it was fitting that we looked at one of the most famous, or infamous, women in British history –Boudica! (more…)

writing task on Henry VIII using gradual approximation

Teaching writing is something I’ve hardly ever done. I mostly work with groups that visit England for a week or so, and want intense listening and speaking practice. During my DipTESOL I really had to think about what teaching skills and experience I needed in order to develop. How to teach writing, and how to make it interesting, was an area which I had to work on.

For a lesson plan on Henry VIII and a writing task, skip to the end of the blog. To learn a bit about writing in the classroom, read on.

Considerations when teaching writing

Spoken language and written language are very different. Whilst the linguistic elements of spoken language carry a lot of meaning, an utterance can also be supported by paralinguistic features or suprasegmental features of pronunciation (stress, intonation, etc) to further emphasise what is being said. Written language doesn’t have this luxury, so there is often more importance placed on the actual linguistic elements of writing compared to speech.

(more…)