The following are student created infographics on a specific topic of Digital Citizenship and Internet Safety. Students are in 8th grade. The objective of the unit was ==> Students will create an infographic presenting student researched information on a specific Internet Safety Topic. Students created their infographics using the webtool PiktoChart ==> www.piktochart.com   

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. In this week’s blog, Verissimo Toste responds to Sylwia’s blog comment about motivating young learners. I’m interested in the idea of participation points for the class. How does it work? Is it a motivation for the whole class? Are there any awards? I’m asking because I mainly have a problem with involving students in the lesson, especially the weaker ones. They fell behind with grammar and vocabulary and they became discouraged. They are also very lazy." Sylwia brought up an interesting issue: involving young learners in the lesson, or more specifically "the weaker ones". According to Sylwia, these weaker learners "fell behind with grammar and vocabulary and they became discouraged." The first point I would like to bring up here is that success motivates, and equally, failure demotivates. If a learners’s previous experience with English has been negative, it is natural that they will give up. So, an important objective for the teacher of young learners is to make everyone feel successful. This is not as difficult as it may seem. Here are some ideas: 1. Focus on what has been learned Praise learners for their achievements. When teaching colours, for example, focus on the colours each child has learned, not on the ones they still don’t know. Don’t compare them to one another. Relate to each learner individually. Focus on what each learner has achieved and the improvements they have made. 2. Make your classroom safe and supportive Strive to make your classroom a place your learners enjoy being in. Equally, make your lessons a time your learners look forward to. Encourage them to enjoy the songs they sing, the games they play, the projects they share with each other. Make your lessons fun and have fun with them. When an activity is on the verge of being too difficult or uninteresting, step back. Save it for another time. Children do not learn when they feel stressed or when they don’t like what they are meant to learn. 3.  Children like learning This is an important point, so I will repeat it: children like learning. It is what they do all day, every day. Children learn what they need to learn. Your learners will enjoy learning a new song. If you ask them to teach that song to their parents, you create a need for them to learn the lyrics. You also create a situation in which they are motivated to learn the song in order to teach someone else. This may create a need for reading the lyrics, or to memorise the song well enough for when they arrive home. Notice how, in this situation, you have also created a need to play the song more than one time, as your learners will need to know it well in order to teach it. 4. Children are natural language learners Everyone has learned a language. There is no language in the world that is too difficult for a child to learn as their mother tongue. So, children are natural language learners. They will make the effort to learn the new words you are teaching, or some new language structure. They simply need to feel safe, to enjoy it, and to believe they can do it. Now, more specifically, what can a teacher do to involve all of their learners in the lesson? 5. Personalise the learning Whatever language you are teaching, see how your learners can use it to talk about themselves and their world. When teaching words associated with the house, relate it to their houses. When teaching abilities with "can", or possessions with "have got", relate it to their abilities and their possessions. Young learners like to talk about themselves. When they see English as a way to talk about their interests, they will become more motivated and will make a greater effort. 6. Each according to their ability As your learners are learning the language, relate to each according to their ability. Antonio may tell you a lot of things he has got and, in this way, use most of the language you have been teaching. Ana, however, may only tell you about a few things. In both cases, praise them for what they have done. This will encourage Ana to continue learning. She will notice how others communicate more and be encouraged to learn more. Remember, success leads to success. If Ana feels successful, she will continue to make an effort. 7. Praise them! Reward them! Establish a system for rewarding your learners for their efforts. Rewards should be based on effort and not knowledge. Make sure that everyone is able to get the reward if they try. For example, in my classes I create an honour board called, "I Am Special". Let’s imagine I am teaching likes and dislikes, with the vocabulary related to food. The first week anyone who can name 5 different food items without looking at the book gets their name on the board. Two weeks later it might be those who can tell me 3 food items they like and three they don’t like. 8. Give them the opportunity to succeed. Give your learners a second and third opportunity to succeed. Maria may not be able to name 5 food items the first week, but during the second week she is able to. That’s when you put her name on the honour board. Eventually, you may see everyone’s name on the board. Great! Congratulate the class on how well they are doing - all of them! 9. Establish routines Establish a routine in class. This will help communicate to your learners what is expected of them. How should they enter the classroom? What is the first thing they should do as they come in? What do you want to see on their desks? What do you not want to see? Do they put away their books? Establish some definitions for working together, raising hands, etc. 10. Use project work Finally, since Sylwia mentioned weaker learners and the idea of mixed ability, I always recommend that teachers use project work for these situations. I mentioned that personalising learning helps motivate children to learn. Using project work can give learners a basis to use the English they are learning. For example, when learning "can" for abilities, learners can make a poster of what they can do. Using images will reinforce learning. The project gives everyone an opportunity to show what they have learned. Making it personal and sharing the information with others in the class will engage them in their learning and make the language real. Invitation to share your ideas We are interested in hearing your ideas about getting young learners involved, so please comment on this post. Please keep your challenges coming. You can let us know by commenting on this post, on Twitter using the hashtag #EFLproblems, or on our Facebook page. Each blog will be followed by a live Facebook chat to discuss the challenge answered in the blog. Be sure to Like our Facebook page to be reminded about the upcoming live chats. Here are the topics for the next two blogs: 04 December 2013: Learning English beyond the exams 18 December 2013: Written self-correction for younger learners Related articles Solving your difficulties as an EFL teacher - #EFLproblems (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Cell phones in the adult classroom: interruption or resource? (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Teaching writing in the age of WhatsApp (oupeltglobalblog.com) Filed under: Professional Development, Young Learners Tagged: #EFLproblems, Children, Classroom activities, EFL, Language learning, Motivation, Professional Development, Project work, Verissimo Toste, Young Learners

In eLearning it’s vital for teachers to be able to engage with their students in order to know if they’re learning and understanding the material. In today’s LMScast with Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett, we discuss how to use technology to scale the human touch between teachers and their students in online courses. We’ve been building engagement systems for websites in the Infusionsoft community for years. Using Infusionsoft, you can apply tags that trigger engagements with customers based on their actions. For example, if a customer makes a purchase, you can set up a sequence in Infusionsoft to send them emails based on which product they bought. We’ve built our lifterLMS WordPress learning management system plugin with that same type of engagement in mind so you can use automation to scale your interactions with your students. You could set up engagements in lifterLMS to email your students when they finish lesson one or when they pass a quiz. You can set up the engagement system to meet your unique needs and to help you identify which places in your course materials may be causing your students to get stuck. And then the system can automatically let you know which students you should reach out to in person with extra help. The system is not to replace you, but to give you more productive time. Some of our lifterLMS users are also Infusionsoft users, and for them we’ve created an add-on to lifterLMS that integrates with Infusionsoft. This integration will allow use of the ecommerce system in Infusionsoft, and campaigns inside Infusionsoft can be set up to trigger engagements based on students’ activity. The integration between lifterLMS and Infusionsoft allows for advanced options that are based on the flexibility that tagging brings for organization and engagement sequences. Part of our background is that we have deep WordPress, Infusionsoft, and LMS online course knowledge, and we’ve merged those together into lifterLMS and the Infusionsoft add-on. We’ve created the foundation of a learning management system with a deep Infusionsoft integration for WordPress sites. If you have any specific feature requests for lifterLMS, we’d love to hear from you. You can leave us a comment on this LMScast episode at LMScast.com/Infusionsoft. You can also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us! Joshua: Hello, Everyone. Welcome to LMScast. This episode is a little bit different, because Chris and I are actually in the same location today in Santa Cruz, California. But yes, I’m Joshua Millage. This is Christopher Badgett. Today we are talking about Infusionsoft and WordPress. Chris, where do we start with all this craziness. Chris: Let’s take it down to the learning management system level and talk about … Those of you who have been following lifterLMS, our WordPress learning management system plugin, we do bring up integration with Infusionsoft, and it’s one of the things that we’re getting ready to release tomorrow as a matter of fact. This is in the middle of February when we’re recording this. That Infusionsoft integration with our plugin, what it does is it allows for two very different things to happen for Infusionsoft users. One is to use the Infusionsoft eCommerce system. It’s kind of like the more obvious thing, in the same way that WooCommerce allows you to add the Infusionsoft payment gateway option with the premium plugin add-on or extension. What’s more interesting, and one of the things that’s really interesting about lifterLMS and our whole mission and purpose in the eLearning, LMS, online courses community is engagement. In our Infusionsoft add-on, it allows you to inside of a course engage your students in a certain way with a automated email, badge, or certificate based on a triggering event. Now let’s say someone finishes lesson one or passes a quiz. If you’re an Infusionsoft user, you’re very used to the language of applying a tag. We can also do something where if a user hasn’t logged in for a certain number of days we want to apply this tag. Now we’re in Infusionsoft world. Joshua: The Infusionsoft world is really interesting. We’ve been building engagement systems in Infusionsoft for years now. What’s cool is you can trigger engagements in Infusionsoft based on when tags are applied and certain systems, like there’s a system called PlusThis, which allows you to wrap up videos and apply tags based on how much of a video is watched. It allows you to do some really interesting things. In that use case, you could apply a tag based on whether or not someone got 50% of the way through your video. You’d trigger an email if they hadn’t watched more than 50%, say, "Hey listen, you missed X, Y, and Z at the end of the video. Click this link to go back and watch it." And you could actually up your engagement. I think the one thing I want to demystify first is that lifterLMS scales the human touch with automation. Let’s start there because- Chris: That confuses some people. Joshua: That confuses too many people. I think it’s interesting because I can see why people are getting a little bit confused on that. It’s polarizing. If an email is supposed to be Chris, that’s not really scaling the human touch; it’s robotics. I think what lifterLMS is going to do and what it is doing currently is it’s allowing you to see when you need to follow up with your students. Our hope and our goal here is to provide a foundation of technology that helps scale the human touch by taking the thinking out of when do I contact my students. The system will say, "Okay, people are getting stuck here," and maybe engage them, send kind of a shot across the bow with an email, but it will also tell you, "Hey, people are getting stuck here. Why don’t you give them a call?" Or maybe an email is generated when someone hasn’t logged into your course, so it’s showing they haven’t engaged with your material. It also tells you that you need to go in and give them a call in addition to that email. This is just example. We want to create a bunch of different ways for your to engage your students, a bunch of tools that do it automatically. Our hope isn’t that that replaces you. It helps you scale and gives you more productive time so that you can get in, look at your dashboard, and know these are the people that need help, these are the people that I need to reach out to. Because what happens with the internet is that we don’t have a classroom. We don’t have that in-person non-verbal communication where intuitively … This is kind of my origin story, is a professor saw me every day struggling in class, reached out, asked to get coffee, helped me out, and I succeeded in that class. How does that story translate online? What does that look like? That question has driven us to go, "Okay, we’re going to start with just some basics here with email automation and Infusionsoft, and merging that with course analytics and student analytics. The sky is the limit. We have a lot of other ideas. At the same time, if you’re someone who has no interest in ever engaging your students, we don’t really want you to buy lifterLMS. I digress a little bit here, but I want to get back to the Infusionsoft thing, because Infusionsoft is an engine that can connect to lifterLMS and really allow you to turbocharge these interactions. Chris: If I could jump in there, I also want to point out just with lifterLMS that if you’re not an Infusionsoft user, the stuff that we have built natively inside lifterLMS to allow these trigger points and email engagements that can be personalized to the user to go out is kind of like Infusionsoft-like capability that we’ve brought right into your WordPress and into your learning management system. Don’t feel like you have to use Infusionsoft, but the people that do use Infusionsoft know it’s a really amazing community, pretty advanced in terms of marketing and strategy around types of campaigns people want to build. We just wanted to reach out and since we have all that history with Infusionsoft make that intersection between WordPress learning management system and Infusionsoft, which is optional. You don’t have to use Infusionsoft to supercharge that. Joshua: Transitioning over to scaling the human touch in the Infusionsoft world, I would say the upper echelon, the top 5% of Infusionsoft users, do this, and they do it really well. They do some incredible things with Infusionsoft. I think there needs to be a tool that sits in between Infusionsoft and WordPress that allows the rest of us to do some pretty cool, engaging things with our students and our customers. LifterLMS is that perfect tool. With our Infusionsoft premium add-on that can connect with lifterLMS, you can do a lot of advanced things. All of them are based on tagging options, which if you’re getting into Infusionsoft I recommend using tags for pretty much everything because of their flexibility in organization and starting and stopping actions. With that said, I think where we’re headed here with Infusionsoft and WordPress is creating a learning management system that can also act as a foundation for the Infusionsoft user who wants a deeper integration into their WordPress site. Chris: Absolutely. Also, those of you who aren’t using Infusionsoft, that’s okay. The WordPress users kind of are your CRM. But the Infusionsoft people like their Infusionsoft CRM, so when someone purchases a course now they have a contact record and so on. Joshua: Some of the things that we’re going to be able to do is pass that user data back to Infusionsoft, store things in custom fields, apply tags based on actions. We’re going to be able to pass eCommerce data back through so you’re not going to need a third party plugin to manage that, which there’s a lot of them. Then as time rolls on and we update the plugin, we’ll be able to track a lot of behavioral actions. I think we’ve talked at a high level about even integrating with video players and things like that. We are looking at really creating the foundation of a learning management system and a deep Infusionsoft integration for WordPress. Not that it’s the goal, but I’m excited to see how people use it as a framework to integrate the two. It’s kind of on the horizon I think. Chris: That’s kind of what we do. We’ve built the lifterLMS plugin, but we also do a lot of custom WordPress sites that have membership sites. We do a lot in the Infusionsoft community. We’re kind of at the intersection of WordPress and Infusionsoft, and if that project happens to have online courses or learning management system needs, we can extend and go deep with Infusionsoft advanced integrations or custom learning management system stuff. For the plugin and the Infusionsoft integration, you’re off to the races with just that alone. Then there’s this whole other layer of custom development that in the hands of a skilled developer or someone with skilled Infusionsoft knowledge can really take it to another level of deeper customization and that sort of thing. Joshua: Yep, absolutely. This has been a good one, Chris, to give some insight into where we’re headed with Infusionsoft and lifterLMS. If you have any specific feature requests or needs or what you’d like to see us do, we’d love to hear for you. Please leave us a comment at LMScast.com/Infusionsoft. We’d love to hear from you and get to know what you want to see in our premium add-on for lifterLMS. Chris: Absolutely. Just to wrap it up, part of our story is we came with deep WordPress knowledge. We came with deep Infusionsoft knowledge. We came with learning management system online courses knowledge. We’ve just combined that all together, so we’re really excited to see what other people who are at this intersection are going to do with the tools we’re building and the community around that. Joshua: Yep, absolutely. Until next time, we’ll talk to you soon. The post Infusionsoft and WordPress for Your LMS Courses appeared first on LMScast.

Photo courtesy of Gryphon House Margaret Whitfield, co-author of the forthcoming Kindergarten series, Show and Tell, offers some practical tips on using songs and games for Kindergarten classroom management. There are many reasons for using songs and actions in the kindergarten classroom. They’re memorable, they engage different types of learners, channel energy effectively and - best of all - they’re enjoyable. But songs and actions are also fantastic for encouraging teamwork and managing the classroom. How can songs and actions encourage teamwork? Singing a song is in its nature a collaborative activity. All the children can join in to create something that they’re proud of. Harness this by allowing children to join in at different levels. Give them a tambourine if they’re too shy to sing - they’ll still be absorbing the language, learning the natural rhythm and intonation. If they’re super-confident, give them a line to sing solo. Try arranging the children in a circle and moving around as you sing the song - the children have to work as one or the circle collapses! Ask groups to work together to make up actions or new verses. Have the group teach their verse or actions to the rest of the class, using props and flashcards, if appropriate. By working in groups like this, children are encouraged to collaborate and the less confident members of the class are more likely to contribute. (Try this free song activity idea from Freia Layfield, an Oxford University Press Teacher Trainer.) Think about how you teach songs as a way of promoting teamwork. Encourage the children to be involved in the process. Begin by simple options - listen again, or sing? Clap the rhythm or ‘la-la-la’ to the tune? The children can move to different areas of the classroom according to their choices. Then have a child be in charge of the CD player. Teach the children simple phrases (Pause, please. Play it again, please.) so that they can direct the child working the CD player. With older children, once they are used to being in control, you could challenge a small group to work together with the CD player to learn the song. How can songs and actions be a tool for classroom management? All children have their own ideas about what they want to be doing, and it can sometimes be challenging to focus them on the job in hand, particularly if it’s not one they’re fond of. My experience is that many very young children will respond better to commands if you sing them - however simply, and however badly. Clean up, put your shoes on, wash your hands, and so on. The same can be true with actions - it’s like a code you share with the children; for example, clap your hands to get their attention, hold them in the air, then rub them together as though washing your hands. One advantage of both these approaches is that you’re not using your voice in the usual way. A step on from this is to turn everyday classroom routines into short chants and songs. This can be particularly effective if you use a tune that children know and like; for example, try teaching this ‘clean up’ song, sung to the tune of ‘London Bridge is falling down’: Time to clean up everyone, everyone, everyone. Do it together, let’s have fun, Let’s get busy! If you build in some actions, as well, you can ensure that children are focused on the song and not carrying on with what they were doing. In our forthcoming series, Show and Tell, my co-authors and I have included chants to support good behavior, so you can build these into your classroom routine and use them as a fun reminder. For example, when a child drops something (or looks as though he/she is about to!): Little hands be careful, Pick it up and hold it tight. Little hands be careful, And it will be alright. You can also use songs as a reward. Leave time at the end of the lesson, pick a child whose work or behavior has been especially good, and ask them to choose their favorite English song for the class to sing. These are just a few ways that songs and actions can be used to promote teamwork and help with classroom management. If you have any feedback or ideas of your own to share, please post! Would you like more practical tips on classroom management and how to develop communication, collaboration and other 21st century skills with your kindergarten children? Visit our site on Teaching 21st Century skills with confidence for free video tips, activity ideas and teaching tools. Sign up for the webinar on Making the most of kindergarten classroom management on 18 December.Filed under: Pre-school Children, Professional Development, Skills Tagged: Classroom management, Collaboration, Communication skills, Creativity, EFL, ELT, Kindergarten, Margaret Whitfield, Mixed-ability, Show and Tell, Songs, Speaking, Teamwork

In today’s LMScast, Joshua Millage and Chris Badgett talk about the 3 E’s of online education. These 3 E’s are all about how you can create a successful online course and how you can really change someone’s life and help them improve in some way. The 3 E’s are: Educate Entertain Execution These 3 E’s of online education are also the secret to how you can take your online course to the next level. The first of the 3 E’s of online education is Educate. Since the point of online teaching is education, most people creating a course have some level of experience with how to educate. Something that edupreneurs can learn from internet marketers is the concept of results in advance. You should give your students something early on in your course that they can put into action so that they continue to stay engaged with your content. And giving your students a skill or helping them solve a problem is key to educating. The second of the 3 E’s of online education is Entertain. It is possible to make an online course educational and entertaining at the same time, and this is an area where many education entrepreneurs need to put in some extra effort. Your course content should be engaging, and you should differentiate your course offerings from other courses in your market. It’s also important to bring the human touch into your educational material. Once you’ve gotten the edutainment in place and you’re making the course interesting and fun, the next step is the last of the 3 E’s of online education: Execution. In this step, you’re empowering the learner to execute based off what they’ve learned and what they were entertained by. Execution takes the course materials out of the intangible realm of ideas and into action steps the student can take with the material they learned. One example of an execution call to action is to end a lesson by saying, "If you were going to take one action from this lesson, I recommend that you do this…" As an education entrepreneur, you need to support that drive to execute in your learners. And our call to action for you today is to go set up the 3 E’s of online education in your next course: Educate, Entertain, Execution. We’d love for you to leave a comment underneath this episode to let us know how you’re using the 3 E’s in your online course! You can also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us. Joshua: Hello everyone! Welcome to LMScast, and I’m joined with Christopher Badgett. Today we’re talking about the three E’s of online education. Chris, what are the three E’s? Christopher: The three E’s are all about hot to create a successful online course and how to really change somebody’s life and help them improve in some way. The three E’s are Educate, Entertain, and Execution. Joshua: I love that, because it’s easy for me to remember primarily. Educate, I think that one goes without saying, I mean that’s the point of online teaching and everyone who’s creating a course should know how to teach at some level. I think the thing to remember is you want to offer them some sort of result earlier on in the course rather than later, to help them stay engaged. I think that’s something that the edupreneur can learn from the internet marketer with that whole concept of results in advance. Give them something early on. Give them something they can put into action often so that they continue to engage with the content. Do you have anything to add to that? Christopher: I would just say that yeah, education is the most obvious one. In some ways, it kind of slips under the rug like if you’re just entertaining. For example in a podcast format, I know there’s some podcasts where it’s very entertaining, but in the end, you’re like, "Wait a second, what did I learn? Did I actually learn something there? Was it just funny or like a lot of conversation and stuff?" Education is giving somebody a skill or helping them work through their problem is key. Joshua: Yeah. I think it’s really key. What’s the second E again? Christopher: That will be entertainment, which I think a lot of education entrepreneurs need to step it up a little bit in terms of making their content engaging and differentiating and bringing that human touch to their educational material a little bit. Joshua: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, some of my best professors were just complete nut cases in front of the classroom, but it was always fun to go to class, and it was always fun to learn with them, because they kept it interesting, and they peaked my attention span by making things educational and entertaining at the same time. Then the third one is execute? Christopher: Yeah. That’s one that … if you get good at edutainment like where you’re making your education interesting and fun, the next level is really to take it to where you’re empowering the learner to execute based off of what they learned and what they were entertained by. That’s things like, "If you’re going to take one action from this lesson today, I recommend that you do this…" or it might be some supplemental materials that go with that lesson like download this worksheet PDF, fill it out, then you’ll be ready for the next episode. You’re getting people out of idea land into the execution. Joshua: I like that. It’s calling them to action. Telling them to go do something with the material that they learned. Christopher: Absolutely. Yes. There’s a lot people like what I would call "idea people" out there and they have a lot of great ideas, these huge great ideas, learners that have great ideas. At the end of the day, it’s all about execution. As an educator or educational entrepreneur, you need to support that drive to execute in your learner, because if you’re not doing that, you’re failing. Joshua: Right. Absolutely. I think then that our call to action for this episode is go set up your three E’s in your course, on your next course. I would love to hear from you. You can come and contact us at LMScast.com in the comments underneath this episode. You throw a comment in there. Chris and I answer all the comments, so we’d love to hear how you’re using the three E’s of education to I guess spice up your online course. Christopher: Absolutely. That’s the secret to taking it to the next level. It’s educate, entertain, and help people execute. Joshua: Absolutely. All right. Well thank you for watching this episode of LMScast, and we will see you in the next episode. The post The 3 E’s of Online Education for Your Course appeared first on LMScast.

This wordle is free by linking back to ==> mrkirsch.edublogs.org <== Part #1 - Case Study ==> Read the scenario below: "When he was at the park, Emilio took an amazing photo of a squirrel hanging with one paw from a tree branch. He uploaded this photo to his Flickr photo-sharing website. He also entered it in the school’s photography contest, and it won first prize! Soon people at school visited his Flickr site to download his funny photo. His friends posted the photo on their profiles, blogs, and webpages. Some people at school printed out the photo and posted it in their lockers. Someone in art class used the photo in a collage. Someone else from another school made T-shirts with the photo and sold them." Part #2 - Apply New Knowledge (Answer these questions on your blog). 1. If you were Emilio, how would you feel? 2. Do people using Emilio’s photo have a responsibility to ask permission before they use his work? Should they give him credit for his work? 3. Is there a difference between a person selling Emilio’s photo, and a person using the photo just because he or she likes it? Is it different when the people using the photo are Emilio’s friends? 4. If Emilio was concerned about the copyright of his photo, what could he do? Part #3 - Complete this post by Friday, March 13, 2015 @5pm. 

Kathleen Kampa and Charles Vilina, co-authors of the forthcoming Young Learners series, Oxford Discover, share some classroom management tips. As teachers of young learners, we all know the benefits of a well-managed classroom. Our students are alert, focused, and excited to learn. All of our energies can go into teaching the lesson, rather than dealing with management issues. So how can we achieve this perfect classroom? It’s important to remember that good classroom management is like fire prevention - our aim is to avoid problems in the first place. A teacher who is well organized and prepared, and who has specific goals for each lesson, is off to a very good start! However, there are other things we can do to keep our students focused and happy. We’d like to begin with two broad perspectives on classroom management, and then move on to some simple strategies that you can use right away. 1. How students perceive learning determines a lot of their behavior If students sense that learning is a one-way street, with information flowing only from the teacher to the student, management problems can occur from the very beginning of the lesson. Some students may be bored, others may feel forced to learn, and others may seek to stand out and be noticed by misbehaving. The solution is to create a classroom of curiosity, nurturing a spirit of "wondering". These qualities of curiosity and wondering are natural to students, but are often lost in traditional classroom settings. As teachers, we can reignite these qualities by being curious and wondering ourselves, as in: I wonder how caterpillars turn into butterflies. I wonder how this machine works. I wonder if there is another way to do this. I wonder how energy is created and used. After observing this type of questioning from their teacher, students are encouraged to join in and ask their own questions. They perceive that they are seeking answers together, and that there may be many possible answers. Students become empowered to learn and discover as a class. They are also eager to share what they have learned with their teacher, making them partners in learning. As a result, there are fewer occasions for misbehavior or boredom. 2. CCBA - Catch Children Being Amazing! We created the acronym CCBA (Catch Children Being Amazing) to remind teachers that students respond better to praise than to criticism. By noticing and pointing out how something is being done well, teachers give students specific examples of good behavior and learning. As you continue to comment on your students’ good behaviors, creative ideas, and positive contributions, you can easily shift the focus of attention from bad to good. Here are some examples: I’m really pleased to see how well you all made a circle and got ready to sing. Look at how Jenna and Miki are making big letter shapes together. Michael, you wrote your story so neatly in your notebook. Noticing and commenting on your students’ good behavior and achievements also builds confidence. Students often tell their parents later about a CCBA moment in their class. In so many ways, CCBA creates a positive classroom environment that supports learning for the entire year. Here are some simple classroom management strategies you can try tomorrow! "Quiet signal" - Kathleen Kampa, Oxford Discover co-author   1. Refocusing Student Attention Occasionally, it is necessary to get your students’ attention, especially if they are chatting after an activity is over. It is best to do this in a calm, quiet, and confident manner. Here are two simple strategies you can try. Before using them, it’s a good idea to practice with your students several times until they become natural. The first strategy is called the "quiet signal". To do this, raise one hand while placing the forefinger of your other hand over your lips. Students then imitate these actions. Soon everyone is quiet. The second strategy is to use a simple clapping rhythm. When students hear it, they repeat it. This signal is a clear way to get your students’ attention. 2. Transitional Songs Transitional songs help move students smoothly from one activity to the next. They’re particularly useful for classes with young learners. Here are two songs you’ll be able to use tomorrow in your classroom. Come and Sit In Front of Me (by Kathleen Kampa) Melody: The Muffin Man Come and sit in front of me, in front of me, in front of me, Come and sit in front of me, in front of me. Let’s Make a Circle (by Kathleen Kampa) Melody: Skip To My Lou Let’s make a circle big and round, Let’s make a circle big and round, Let’s make a circle big and round, Everybody please sit down. 3. Celebrating Success Creating a climate of success is important. Students work hard in your classroom, so celebrate their achievements! Here’s a chant you can use often throughout your lesson: We Did It! (Celebration Chant by Kathleen Kampa) Celebration Chant - We Did It! We did it! We did it! We did it today! We did it! We did it! Hip hip hooray! 4. Working Together When students work together in pairs or small groups, they’re building the 21st Century skill of collaboration. Students who work together toward a common goal are focused and engaged learners. When dividing students into pairs and groups, it is important that the students view the process as fair. First, decide the size of each group, based on the activity and the number of students you have. Sometimes an activity asks for students to work in pairs, or groups of three or four students. Some groups can have one additional student if the class cannot divide equally into groups. There are many ways to divide students into groups. For example, if you want eight groups, students count off from "one" to "eight." If you want six groups, they count off from "one" to "six". Students with the same number then work together. Another method is to have students pull colored cards out of a box without looking. Students with the same color work together. Students can also be placed in pairs or groups prepared beforehand by the teacher. One strategy is to place shy students with more confident students. This creates a unique opportunity to unify the class and include everyone in the learning process. Classroom management issues exist with every class. However, by creating a positive environment of curiosity, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and encouragement, your class will develop a group personality that embraces learning. Happy teaching, everyone! Kathleen Kampa and Charles Vilina Would you like more practical tips on classroom management and developing 21st Century skills with your children? Visit our site on Teaching 21st century skills with confidence for free video tips, activity ideas and teaching tools. Sign up for a webinar on Making the most of classroom management on 17 & 19 December.Filed under: Professional Development, Young Learners Tagged: 21st Century skills, Chants, Charles Vilina, Children, Classroom management, Collaboration, Kathleen Kampa, Oxford Discover, Songs, Young Learners

There’s something in the DNA of an education entrepreneur that drives them to teach for profit, and there’s no greater classroom than the internet. In today’s LMScast Joshua Millage and Christopher Badgett discuss characteristics of educators and entrepreneurs, and how those characteristics can come together to create exceptional online courses. The simplest definitions are that an educator is all about teaching, and an entrepreneur is all about the money. But the edupreneur is a blend of those categories. This individual has an "irrational passion" for sharing their knowledge and skills, but also wants to realize a monetary return for sharing what they know. When developing a tool for all of these people, the designer needs to understand what they do and how they work in order to create truly functional tools for them. An educator has a core passion for their subject matter and they simply want to teach what they know and love to as many people they can reach. The subject can be anything, from business to crafting, but passion is what drives the need to share it. The more enthusiastic the teacher is, the better rapport they will establish with their students. Maturity is also a key factor for online educators. The Google Analytics for our LifterLMS WordPress learning management system software users shows that most course designers are aged 30 to 40. The second highest group is between 40 and 50, while the third highest is between 20 and 30. Maturity is, of course, not necessarily age-based, but is more indicative of experience and immersion with a subject. Designing truly good, solid courses requires a level of commitment, organization, and knowledge that is generally attained with maturity, which usually — but not necessarily — comes with age. If you have what it takes to do the work, certainly don’t let your age stop you. Entrepreneurship figures in as a desire to sell something new and progressive that will be beneficial to others. In order to do that, the product has to be promoted and distributed. It is the marketing and delivery factor that pure educators may have difficulty with, while teaching may not come naturally to entrepreneurs with a mind for business and sales. But each can learn by doing, and the best approach is to start with small projects and work your way up. Pick something relatively easy and learn how to do it. Master that skill and then advance to the next level. It also helps to have a community to interact with, and that is not always readily available to edupreneurs who tend to work in isolation. Online communities like the LifterLMS Facebook and Twitter groups and user forums are a valuable resource to eLearning educators and entrepreneurs. In designing their LifterLMS WordPress learning management system, Joshua and Christopher have drawn upon their individual backgrounds in online education and business, as well as input from their users, to develop an exceptionally versatile and user-friendly platform for designing dynamic, engaging online courses for people who possess the DNA of an education entrepreneur. They have also made it simple for you to monetize your course offerings. Try a demo of LifterLMS here and see for yourself what it can do for you. Remember that you can post comments and also subscribe to our newsletter at LMScast.com for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us. Joshua: Hello, everyone. We’re back with another LMScast episode. I am Joshua Millage, and I’m joined with Christopher Badgett. Today we’re talking about the DNA of an education entrepreneur, and really what it means to be an education entrepreneur. Chris, I’m going to let you start it off since you are an education entrepreneur and you have been for quite some time. What are you like, man? Chris: That’s a good question. I think part if too just circles back to the fact that we created LifterLMS, a WordPress learning management system plugin that makes it possible to create and sell online courses. As an entrepreneur outside of the education entrepreneur space, we really needed to understand our target market of who are we building this tool for, who’s it for. For example, in my past I’ve done a lot of alpine mountaineering. When I select an ice ax for how I’m going to climb the mountain and use that for self-arrest, and whether I’m going to be ice climbing or just straight up steep angle mountaineering I want a very different tool, but it’s helpful to get inside the mind of that climber or inside the mind of that person who’s going to be using the tool. Yes, that’s one of the things that makes it unique for me in terms of being a part of the creating force behind LifterLMS, is the fact that I’ve also created and sold online courses on my own before that. There’s a couple things that I see that’s common among education entrepreneurs. The first I would just say is it’s just an irrational passion around the subject. That’s number one, plain and simple. To give some examples of that, it doesn’t really matter what niche you’re in, whether it’s highly professional business-oriented, whether that’s accounting or stock trading or auditing. Whatever it is, there’s people in those spaces that have a high degree of irrational passion. It can also go to the artistic realm, something like quilting or painting or drawing, or into the more vocational fields like farming or automotive repair. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, we all know it. If you look inside of all your friends you can very quickly say, "Oh yeah, that person has an irrational passion for this thing." That’s a key component of the education entrepreneurs: having that passion. Joshua: I would agree with that. That’s going to create the best learning, too when the person who is teaching it is truly engaged at a whole different level, so I would agree with that. Chris: Totally. Joshua: What else is part of the DNA? Chris: I think a desire to teach is the next one, and it also comes often from a place of maturity. A lot of the people we run across as clients in the WordPress learning management system space, or they want an advanced membership site above and beyond what’s typically possible with a membership site, or some advanced experience for their target audience that includes some education, that maturity often translates into being a little older. I can just say looking at the Google Analytics of our LifterLMS learning management system software that the highest group of people is between 30 and 40. Then the second highest is between 40 and 50. The third highest is between 20 and 30. Not that you have to fall in one of those age brackets, but the education entrepreneur tends to be a little older than the people they’re teaching to. As I would say, it’s more of like a 30+ thing, but not always. Joshua: Absolutely. What about the people who are under the age of 30? Can they be edupreneurs, or they all automatically internet marketers because they’re younger? Chris: I don’t think so. There’s a lot of great internet who are older and younger. It’s more an issue of I think the maturity to take the time to curate all that knowledge, have the desire to teach, and also have the organization to chunk it down into curriculum that can be taught. It just takes time. That being said, I know teachers in traditional education who went straight from high school to college to get a teaching degree, and they were student teaching. When they came into the high school to student teach they didn’t look that much older than you and they were right there with you. It’s not like you have to be that old. I’m just making an observation from the people that are attracted to learning management system software and the audience around that. They just tend to be a little bit older. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it if you’re younger, and in fact, my hat’s off to you. I think everybody should teach something as soon as possible, even in the teens or younger. Because the best way to learn something and to master that craft is to teach it. Joshua: I would agree with that. I think as soon as you switch into the teacher mindset there’s an accountability and a level of responsibility that you feel being someone who’s going to broker knowledge. It forces you to go deeper. It’s like something in your head just clicks in, and you’re like I need to learn this at a different level, so I agree with that. I think the other thing about an education entrepreneur is the entrepreneur part of it, which is they want to take that and they want to put it together and they want to sell it, and they want the world to benefit. They want to distribute it in some way. That resonates with me. I think I’m kind of a pure entrepreneur in that sense, a little bit crazy in that. I think any entrepreneur is. I think what I would say to those people who maybe have the entrepreneurial side but they don’t know want to teach, is to start with something. You started with omelettes for no other reason than you just needed to get in the mode. That’s what I’ve always appreciated about you, Chris, even when you wrote your book and then you created a course around how to write a book in a weekend or a blog post or something like that. It’s these mini experiments. It’s these little tries. It’s these low threshold, low barrier to entry tests that propel us forward. I’m speaking to myself because there’s a couple of things that I want to learn and teach that I need to just push myself through and go. I would say to those people that don’t know where to start, pick something easy and remember that the journey kind of looks like eating an elephant. It’s massive and it seems daunting, but you just do it one bite at a time. Chris: Absolutely. Yeah there’s often this dichotomy or this conflict between the educator and the entrepreneur. The educator is fighting the cause for education but isn’t concerned with the money, and the entrepreneur is all about the money and just extracting value in some way. But that’s not really how it works. I always encourage people to transcend and include both of those things. If you happen to lean more to the teacher side, the education side, develop the entrepreneur side. If you happen to be really entrepreneurial, lean more into mastering some specific skill and doing those many experiments. Something I’ve done is I’ve partnered with educators like in the organic gardening niche and brought my entrepreneurial expertise to their subject matter expertise, and then we’re really powerful by that partnership. There’s all kinds of ways to bridge that gap of entrepreneurship, but at the end of the day serious entrepreneurs are all about creating value and changing the world in a positive way. That’s who we’re speaking to. Joshua: I love it. Chris, this has been a good one, and I think it will resonate with a lot of people. Hopefully it inspires people to take action. A shameless plug, but if you’re looking for a system to build and sell your courses, we’ve got just that system over at LifterLMS.com. We’re really proud of it. It’s out into the wild now. You can go and check it out. There’s a demo at demo.lifterlms.com. If anything, regardless of whether or not you buy it, we’d love to just get your feedback on it. Feedback is really huge to us. It helps us create a better product for the market, and so it’s really important for us to hear that. Chris, do you have any final thoughts for the crew? Chris: Yeah, I would just give another shameless plug, and we also have this great product, but we also have this great community that’s surrounds it of other education entrepreneurs. The final thing I would add is that there’s a lot of education entrepreneurs out there that are kind of isolated. It’s one thing in my business experience and marketing experience. I’ve really noticed that these education entrepreneurs often are a little bit more isolated. They don’t really pack up and tribe up like some other niches or subcultures out there. It can feel kind of isolated, and you’re like, wow, I want to teach this stuff and I want to build a business around it, and I’m not really surrounded by other people like that. We offer that with the community that’s building around LifterLMS in social media and our Facebook community and our forums and so on. If this does resonate with you, it’s just another perk to getting onboard with LifterLMS so that you can rub shoulders with other people that think like you, and we welcome you to that community. Joshua: Absolutely. Right on. Thank you all for listening and we’ll see you next week. The post The DNA of an Education Entrepreneur appeared first on LMScast.

This Wordle-Logo is Free by linking it to ==> gustmees.wordpress.com <==     Part #1 - Tackk The link here ==> Tackk takes you to the platform Tackk. This is the web tool we will be utilizing to create our Job Descriptions.    Part #2 - What is a job description mean? What does it include? Lesson 79- My job description - English Basic Communication. from Mr. Kirsch on Vimeo.   Please click the ==> link  and watch the video about what a job description. What it  is and what does it include when employers are looking for new employees for specific jobs.   Part #3 - Job Description Examples Please click here to access some different examples of what job descriptions are and what they look like. There is also a guide for a "How To" write a job description as well. This will be your background information when you begin creating your job description on Tackk.  jdHowToWrite_printerFriendly Job Description Template Please refer to the Job Description template ==> below when you begin creating your own Job Description of your favorite job utilizing @Tackk.   

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. This week’s blog is in response to Raef Sobh Azab’s blog comment regarding the challenge of motivating students who are in an exam-focussed environment. Stacey Hughes from the Professional Development Team discusses how to take English beyond the focus of exams. One major problem is that the educational system in my country is mainly exam-based. Most teachers, students, and even parents do not care at all about the quality of learning. They are mainly concerned with passing the exams. L1 is all the time used in class, real life English is not stressed, language skills are not practised at all, learning aims are not achieved, and private lessons given to students at home or in private centers are the norm. This is really frustrating for some teachers who are keen on improving their teaching skills and eager to get their students engaged in the learning process, thus, achieve a real progress and taste the beauty of language." Certainly, one way to ensure students are exam-focussed is to make exams central to the course. Constant reference to exams either by the teacher, parents or institution will show students that passing the exam is the goal. But how can we make English communication skills the goal? 1. Determine personal learning goals The first thing is to find out from students what their personal learning goals are. Do they want to just pass the exam or do they actually want to learn to communicate in English? Do they want to be able to listen to music, watch films, or search the web in English? Do they want to be able to go to an English speaking country and speak with people there? Do they want to be able to get a job where they use English to communicate via email or telephone? Or maybe they want a job that allows them to travel - in this case, English may be useful. Help students find an intrinsic reason to learn English - one that is important on a personal level. It also must be said that there may still be students who don’t really want to learn English, and for whom passing the exams is the only goal. However, if the exams are based on reading, writing, listening and speaking in English, then maybe they will see that improving these skills will also help them pass the exams. 2. Use English as the classroom language Create the expectation that for the time that English lessons are going on, they will be conducted in English. This change may take some time for students to get used to, so take it slowly. Maybe you could aim for half an hour at first and then build on that. Make sure you reassure students that, during the last 5-10 minutes of the lesson, they can ask questions in the L1 if they didn’t understand. Make your instructions clear and make sure you use examples, visuals and, if necessary, written support on the board to accommodate students who aren’t confident in trusting their listening skills. Finally, encourage students to use English when speaking to each other and praise them when they do. 3. Make sure each lesson has a clear communicative aim Instead of an aim such as, to learn the present perfect, make the aim, to talk and write about things I have done before. This shift in focus lets the students know what the communicative purpose is for learning the tense - how it can be used in real communication. Scaffold tasks so that students have lots of support. So, for example, you might do a Find Someone Who… type exercise in which students have to ask each other, "Have you ever…".  Write the kernel on the board, brainstorm some endings and write them on the board: …walked for more than five miles, …eaten foreign food, …run a marathon… Keep these on the board during the discussion phase so that students can refer to them for support. Stronger students will be able to make up their own, so this is an example of an activity which could work well in a mixed ability class. 4. Don’t make exams the only focus There are lots of ways to bring in on-going assessment and even self-assessment to show students that each stage of the lesson is important. Listen to students during tasks and tell them if you think they are doing a great job at speaking in English - give them an "A" for the activity. Create a check list that students can use to self-assess: I can talk about what I’ve done. I can ask someone if s/he has ever done something. I can write about what I’ve done. (etc.). Ask them to assess themselves honestly and set review tasks if students feel they can’t really do that yet. 5. Take learning out of the classroom Ask students to set some realistic personal language goals that are not part of the course: respond in English to a blog post, listen to a song and copy out the words, look for information about a favourite subject in English on the web - there are many possibilities. Breaking out of the exam-based mentality can be difficult. While it is still important for students to do well in exams, there is nothing to stop them from having their own personal goals for learning English. Even if their goals don’t ‘count’ towards a grade, for the student, they may be even more important. Invitation to share your ideas We are interested in hearing your ideas about teaching English beyond the exams, so please comment on this post and take part in our live Facebook chat on Friday, 6 December at 12pm GMT. Please keep your challenges coming. The best way to let us know is by leaving a comment below or on the EFLproblems blog post. We will respond to your challenges in a blog every two weeks. Each blog will be followed by a live Facebook chat to discuss the challenge answered in the blog. Be sure to Like our Facebook page to be reminded about the upcoming live chats. Related articles #EFLproblems - Cell phones in the adult classroom: interruption or resource? (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Teaching writing in the age of WhatsApp (oupeltglobalblog.com) #EFLproblems - Motivating Young Learners (oupeltglobalblog.com) Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Exams & Testing, Professional Development Tagged: #EFLproblems, Communication skills, EFL, Exam preparation, Exams, Language learning, Personal learning goals, Professional Development, Stacey Hughes