teacher training

Review: ELT Lesson Observation & Feedback

Lesson observations – where to start?! Jeanette Barsdell, the author of ELT Lesson Observation and Feedback Handbook, was thrown in at the deep end and expected to observe a teacher on her first day as a DOS. Despite being terrified, she got some great advice, hit the ground running and developed into a competent observer. She’s written a guidance book for anyone who observes or intends to observe ELT teachers, and overall is a great resource.

Overview

Barsdell explains that the book will help you with (quote):

  • managing and setting up observations
  • decoding a lesson plan to understand and improve practice
  • understanding from teaching practice a teacher’s strengths and weaknesses
  • stating strengths and areas to work on in a constructive way
  • being comfortable giving face-to-face and written feedback.

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Training: Improve your whiteboard work

I’ve written a training session about whiteboard work designed for our CELTA level teachers. After the last round of teacher observations we established that boarding new/emergent vocabulary was an area for development. This session includes some tips to help teachers develop their technique. It’s primarily aimed a less-experienced teachers – I remember this topic being covered on the CELTA but it’s something that’s easy to let slip (in my opinion!).

What you need for the session:

Each pair/group of teachers will need to work with a whiteboard. It is possible to get 3 standalone whiteboards in our classrooms, but that might not be practical for you. Alternatives might be using mini-whiteboards (if big enough) or A3 paper. The paper might be a nice record for after the session. Teachers will also need a set of coloured whiteboard pens (coloured pens if using paper). Two or three colours should be enough.

The flipchart slides need a projector/IWB.

 

STAGE 1 – Lead in

The section starts with a chat about teachers’ current practice…

  1. How would you rate your board work skills?
  2. What are you good/bad at?
  3. What are you like at boarding emergent language?
  4. What information might you add to the board when you teach a new word?

The next stage is sort of diagnostic, done as a game. Teachers work in pairs/threes. A ‘new word’ is displayed on the flipchart. Teachers write this on their board and display any info related to the word that they think is useful/necessary for the learners.

Allow 1 minute then move the box on the flipchart to remove an example of how the word could be displayed on the board.

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DipTESOL: introduction to the phonemic chart

This is an introductory session on the phonemic chart for trainees taking the DipTESOL. I’ve designed this to supplement input given via distance learning courses, to be run in-house. It’s meant to help trainees give a basic explanation of the phonemic chart – something I was asked to do during my DipTESOL phonology interview.

The first question I was asked in my DipTESOL phonology interview was (along the lines of…):

Can you give me a brief description of the phonemic chart, and how it might benefit learners of English?

Gulp. Where do I start?

If I were a DipTESOL tutor the first thing I would do is get the chart into play. I think the phonology part of the course is what many trainees fear, so let’s nip that in the bud straight away… This session isn’t about jumping straight in and learning all the sounds, sound symbols, place and manner of articulation and all that scary stuff. It’s about exploring the idea of the chart and helping trainees become more confident discussing it rather than using it.

Disclaimer: my flipcharts don’t look good 😦

Session time: about an hour

I encountered the phonemic chart on my CELTA course, so I’m guessing others will have too. I’d guess also that many teachers know more about it that than they think, so let’s start with a discussion: (more…)

General ideas for teaching pronunciation

(This is a follow-up to my post on phonology-based activities. I’m sharing it now because some of our teachers are about to begin training for the Trinity DipTESOL. Phonology/pronunciation features quite a bit on that course, so I want to offer our teachers an ideas bank to help them explore this area in class)

Here are a load of random pronunciation activities to try out in class. These activities have pretty worked well for me with students aged 9-16. This is a work in progress! I’ll add more to this list when I get more time or try new things.

Note: there are not many activities here that focus on connected speech. That’s because most of my CS activities come from Marks and Bowen (2013) and I don’t want to do them a disservice by plagiarising their whole book! Buy it – it’s great!

If you find something useful then please share your own ideas in the comments! Sharing is caring 🙂

Use GIFs / images / actions

Use whatever you can to associate sounds with a particular object or action. If it’s /æ/ mime a cat, /ɪ/ then mime kicking a football. Keep it active. GIFs are pretty memorable too.

Mime games

The best thing about assigning actions to phonemes is miming games! Say, for example, you’ve taught certain sounds like /d/ (act like a dog), /b/ (throw a ball), /æ/ (act like a cat). You can play a ‘backs to the board game’ where each word includes only sounds that have been taught (bad, dad, etc). The students describing the words can’t say anything, they can only mime the action for the corresponding sounds. Great fun!

Fly swat games

You’ve introduced a set of phonemes. Display them on the board. Organise the class into teams, give each with a fly swat. They line up at the board. Say a word which includes one of the sounds (best to prepare a list of words beforehand). The first team to swat the correct sound wins a point.

Variations

Add more challenge. With the above sounds you can say either ‘vowel’ or ‘consonant’ before you say the word.

Example

Teacher says: ‘vowel, butter’. Students must swat /ʌ/

Teacher says: ‘consonant, butter’. Students must swat either /b/ or /t/, or both in order if you’re feeling particularly cruel. Some of my students go mad for this! (more…)

How to survive a CELTA course

In her second guest post, Nicky Salmon offers some useful tips for surviving an intensive 4-week CELTA training course.

The title might sound a bit dramatic, but a typical course is very intensive, especially if you have chosen the 4-week option.

Here are a few pieces of advice from past trainees and trainers. We ask trainees to write advice in the back of their portfolios for the next group. Below are some of their suggestions.

Advice from past trainees:

1. Eat and drink regularly. Don’t drink too much coffee or those energy drinks. It just makes you more nervous. Make time for lunch.

2.Make sure you have part of one day off at the weekend. You need to relax and do something else, even if it’s only for a few hours.survive 1

3.Spend 15-20 mins each day organising your file and all the paper you get.

4.Swap phone numbers and email addresses with your Teaching Practice (TP) team on the first day. They are your new family.

5.Read the feedback you get on a teaching practice lesson before you teach the next one.

6.Save everything on Dropbox and email lesson plans and materials to yourself. If there is a computer problem at your centre, the stress is enormous if you have to rewrite things just before you have to teach them.

7.Don’t be afraid of feedback to and from trainee colleagues after TP. It’s meant to be constructive.

8.Make sure you have a good night’s sleep on Sundays.

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How to become an English teacher

In this great guest post, Nicky Salmon offers some really useful tips for how to get into English language teaching. Nicky is a CELTA trainer, and will be happy to answer any of your questions or comments on this post.

The big decisions.

You have decided that you’d like to teach English to speakers of other languages. Possibly you would like to travel and teach in other countries. What next?

Step 1. Choose a course.

If you don’t already have a teaching qualification, don’t worry. There are a number of excellent Pre-Service teaching qualifications to choose from. You need a minimum of two A2 level passes or equivalent.

Choose from well-known and well-established providers.

Cambridge and Trinity College London are the most well-known, the best and the most popular. Have a long look at their web sites and read about the courses, the content and any reviews.

cambridge english trinity college london (more…)

Course review: Dyslexia and foreign language teaching

I finished this FutureLearn course a few weeks ago. It was offered by Lancaster University, and was the second course I’ve done through them – the other one was an introduction to corpus linguistics.

The course was 4 weeks long. Here’s an overview of the content:

Week 1

The first activities this week explained what dyslexia is. It addressed some of the common misconceptions/basic facts about this learning difficulty and others, and covered some important terminology (like ‘specific learning differences’, ‘learning disorders’, etc). There were some interesting interviews with students who have dyslexia, and a task to help you experience what it’s like to have a specific learning difficulty.

The course then moved on to discuss the effect of dyslexia on language learning, and the nature of reading difficulties. Input was provided though brief video lectures from leading researchers. (more…)