This is taken from an interesting infographic courtesy of Dyeseka from Open Colleges. Some food for thought! 1. More Homework Means More Learning Researchers have found that the connection between more homework and greater learning is tenuous at best. This is especially true for grade school and middle school students. In an effort to redesign the student workload, many districts around the US have begun prohibiting homework on weekends, holidays, and even week nights. 2. More Money Means Better Schools Although school spending has increased over the past several decades, neither graduation rates nor test scores have budged from their relatively dismal standings. Since 1970, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been administered yearly to a representative sample of US students, and the scores have not correlated positively with the boost in expenditure and the rise of technology over time. 3. The Myth of Insurmountable Problems Many policy makers are quick to blame society for underperformance in schools. But the belief that education can’t help is dangerous. Reforms that focus on the incentives of public schools lead to educational gains, and accountability and choice have often been shown to deflate the significance of social problems like poverty. 4. Test Scores Are Related To Economic Competitiveness Consider Japan, whose current economy flags while its students continue to ace assessment tests. Or Finland, New Zealand, and Sweden, each of which produces at least as many research engineers as the US per 1,000 full time employees. Quality education can prevail in an economically challenged nation. There’s no doubt about it. 5. Schools Alone Can Close The Achievement Gap The achievement gap is already apparent in students on their first day of kindergarten, due to a number of factors including economic background, educational background (how educated are the student’s parents?), nutritional intake, genetics, and parental guidance. Because of this contingency, researchers have argued that it reflects poor reasoning and poor policy to believe that school reform alone could ever close the gap. 6. Private and Charter Schools Are Educating Kids Better NAEP scores of private and charter school students are no higher than those of public school students. Studies suggest that the "boons" of private schools may amount to nothing more than the exposure to other students with educated parents and affluent backgrounds. 7. Teachers Are Clueless About The Content They Are Teaching Twenty-eight states require secondary-level instructors to have majored in the subject area they plan to teach. All candidates must pass content exams before completing their program or being certified to teach. Twelve states require elementary school teachers to have earned a content degree, and nineteen require middle school teachers to do the same. 8. The "Teacher-Proof Myth" There are no teacher-proof solutions. None to be legislated, none to be bought, and none to be accessed virtually. The human task of helping a student cannot be replaced by automated learning models, nor by one all-purpose instructional method arising from trial and error. More trust must be placed in our teachers. 9. Our Teachers Work Less And Get Paid More According to an OECD report, US teachers spend between 1,050 and 1,100 hours per year teaching - much more than in almost every country. Argentina and Chile are also high on the list. Despite high spending on education, teacher salaries across the world are far lower than those earned by other workers with higher education credentials. 10. Unions Defend Poor Teachers Between 2006 and 2010, 245 teachers resigned or were dismissed in the US. This is because the unions have made an effort to monitor underperforming teachers in school districts across the nation. If students in one classroom are performing worse than students in another, it makes little sense to blame the teacher before considering other factors. 11. Student Achievement Has Been Deteriorating For Decades: Contrary to popular belief, today’s students perform about as well as their parents in terms of standardized assessment tests and high school graduation rates. There is simply no hard evidence for the statement that student performance has been declining for decades. These are myths put forward by teachers’ unions and education policy makers. 12. Teachers Are Solely Responsible For Learning Learning is an interactive process. Teachers are not the only people in the classroom who have valuable knowledge to share or responsibility to shoulder. Students, too, can teach each other and benefit from working together. A teacher is a facilitator, first and foremost. 13. The Disadvantaged Don’t Have The Same Capacity To Learn There is no evidence that students from disadvantaged communities have a lower capacity to learn than students from privileged backgrounds. Economically challenged students may perform worse on assessments; experience anxiety and lack of control, which lead to underachievement; react negatively to authority; skip multiple classes on a regular basis; and abandon formal learning - but none of this is due to lower educational capacity. 14. Schools Don’t Matter Intellectuals and politicians alike have claimed that education can’t save disadvantaged youth, and that the problem lies in socioeconomic policy and reform. However, since the instatement of acts like No Child Left Behind, schools have been instrumental in giving underprivileged students a chance to escape poverty. Education is power for the impoverished. 15. Small Classes Would Produce Big Improvements Although research has highlighted the perks of reduced class sizes, especially in college settings, there is little evidence that it benefits students on a wide enough scale to make a difference. Considering the financial challenges of breaking students up into smaller groups, hiring more teachers, and investing in more resources, reduced class size should not be looked upon as a means of "saving" education. 16. Teacher Preparation Matters Little For Student Achievement Although Teach for America has produced some excellent teachers with little to no training, the National Bureau of Economic Research has shown that beginning teachers with more extensive clinical training (like internships or certification programs) produce higher student achievement gains and retain their positions longer than teachers with less preparation. 17. Most Teachers Don’t Care: If student performance is low, it doesn’t mean that teachers don’t care. Teachers become teachers precisely because they do care. But it is not an easy job. Educators face many challenges every day - say, with a particularly disruptive child or a time-crunch due to a school assembly - and do their best to help students succeed despite these difficulties. 18. Credentials And Experience Don’t Matter. Only Content Knowledge Does It benefits every teacher to be an expert in his or her subject field, but experience is key. If instructors don’t know how to engage and audience and relate their knowledge to others, their expertise will be as good as useless in a classroom setting. Credentials and experience count. When educators teach the same subjects and grade levels consistently, especially during their first five years of teaching, it behooves them - and their students - to be not only experts in their field but to have experience relating their subject to others. Experienced teachers are more organized, strategy-driven, and creative in the classroom. Cited From: http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/18-myths-people-believe-about-education/#ixzz2SpoIr8wb This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. This week, Stacey Hughes responds to Raef Sobh Azab’s blog comment about whether to focus on general English or EAP for low-level university students. Raef wrote: I teach English to university students at the English Department in a non-native English speaking country. My students lack the basic skills of the language. Their levels are beginner and/or elementary at best. My question is: what is the best and the most suitable choice for them? Is it general English because of its language input and real life context or EAP which is badly needed for their academic studies?" Raef has posed a fundamental question, and I suspect that at the heart of it lies the distinction between General English (GE) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). For one thing, where each is traditionally taught is different: EAP being taught primarily in university settings in pre-sessional or in-sessional courses. EAP is also different in its aims, which are to prepare students for not only the culture of academic study but also for the topics they will encounter and the types of tasks they will have to do. The GE or EAP question is similar to the GE or Business English (BE) question posed by BE teachers. Can and should students learn more specialist language before they have learned generic language? The answer, I feel, lies in the purpose for learning English. If a student needs EAP, why would we spend time teaching them GE? Though there are certainly important differences between GE and EAP, I wonder if, at lower levels at least, these differences are really that marked. Look at the words and phrases below. Where would you place each in the Venn Diagram below? Did you find that the majority of the above could fit easily into either category? Did you find yourself saying, "It depends"? I would hazard that, to some degree, all of the tasks, skills and activities listed above are features of both GE and EAP. What might differ is the degree to which each is taught. So, for example, a GE student might give a short presentation about cultural differences. The aims of the task might be to showcase the student’s fluency, accuracy and pronunciation. An EAP student might give a similar presentation on the differences in educational culture between his country and another. The aim may be slightly different, which would be reflected in the marking of the presentation. This student might be marked on body language, eye contact, clarity of visuals and how well the student was able to present ideas clearly, in addition to his fluency, accuracy and pronunciation. Similarly, in writing tasks, both the GE and EAP student would be asked to write a paragraph or email and would be assessed on similar things - format, grammar, linking, topic sentences, vocabulary choice, etc. However, the EAP student might also be assessed on how well she links ideas together (text cohesion) and whether or not her ideas follow a logical progression (text coherence). So, if we consider the aims of the activity or task, the focus changes slightly, but the task remains effectively the same. This suggests that EAP can be taught at a low level, and arguably should be in the scenario that Raef mentions above. If his students have little time to reach a certain level of proficiency, then keeping in mind the academic rationale for tasks and activities will help students build the skills they will need as their language level increases. In his question, Raef mentions "real-life context" as a difference between GE and EAP, and it is in this topical aspect that we might find a split. Traditionally, EAP topics have tended to centre around academic subjects and be more "weighty" or serious, while GE topics have tended to be more generic and "lighter". Choice of topic has dictated which vocabulary students learn, with EAP vocabulary being more formal and ‘academic’. However, at lower levels, this distinction is not as great as at higher levels. Looking through a couple of low level EAP course books, I see vocabulary being taught that would happily sit in a GE course book - apartment, big, friendly, library, mathematics, parents, teach, weather - as well as some vocabulary that is possibly more EAP specific - brain, gestures, poetry, organisation, research, survey. None of these ‘EAP’ words are greatly more difficult to learn than the ‘GE’ words. The topics in these course books are not that different either, in that they are common topics that are accessible to lower-level students. Even so, there is one distinct difference: they have a more academic context - listening activities may be a short lecture, podcast or talk show involving an "expert", and readings similarly present an authoritative "voice". This sows the seeds for students thinking about source credibility and the need to question information while still studying the vocabulary for describing personality or communicating their reasons for their choice of holiday destination. What about grammar? Grammar can be taught as usual, but within an academic context. Compare: Caroline studies hard at the university versus Robert plays tennis at the sports club. Each sentence shows good use of the present tense, though sentence A is possibly more "EAP". My feeling is that EAP is a suitable choice for Raef’s low-level academic students and may be a more efficient choice given their ultimate need for academic English. Invitation to share your ideas Do you have anything to add on the subject of whether teaching EAP to low-level students is appropriate? We’d love to hear from you! You can respond directly to this blog by leaving a comment below. 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.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Business & English for Specific Purposes, Professional Development Tagged: #EFLproblems, Academic English, EAP, EFL, English for Academic Purposes, Further education, General English, Higher education, Low level learners, Professional Development, Stacey Hughes, Teaching lower levels, Teaching problems

Summit French is a blog created by Doug Siegel. It is a homework blog where students can find out what they've missed for the week. It also has links to some excellent language resources. You may wonder why this is worthy of a post? This is a great example of a simple but effective use of blogging to support learning. Doug posts regularly so that his students know that visiting the blog is worthwhile. So Doug, here is my advice to you. Build on the excellent foundation that you have and try to get students to really interact with the blog. Encourage them to post comments, give them the opportunity to post and give each other feedback. The potential is unlimited. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Jamie Keddie, author of Bringing Online Video into the Classroom, looks at the benefits of handing over control of the video camera to students. Jamie will be hosting a webinar on this topic on 15th and 16 April. Filmed presentations Anyone who is involved in rail transport will know that stopping trains at stations wastes time, energy and money. Unfortunately, it is also necessary to let passengers on and off! Today, your students are highly-creative problem solvers. Their task is to work in small groups to design a high-speed train which doesn’t have to stop at stations, but which still allows passengers to alight and disembark. After sharing ideas and reaching a consensus, each group prepares to present their solution to the rest of the class. This involves creating diagrams to reinforce ideas. When they give their presentations, you sit at the back of the classroom and film their performances. Later, you show students the following video which illustrates an idea for a train which doesn’t have to stop at stations: From teacher’s to students’ hands Filming presentations and other performances can be a great way to motivate students and document their work. However, in the activity described above, the technology stayed firmly in the teacher’s hands. The result of this could be missed opportunities for student creativity, interaction, and learning. By giving control of the video cameras to students, the activity could have been completely different. Rather than the traditional speaking-at-the-front-of-the-class format, groups of students could find their own quiet corners (either in or out of the classroom) and work together to create a video in which individuals communicate their group’s idea to the camera. The resulting videos can then be delivered to the teacher and later played on the classroom projector for everyone to see and comment on. Here are some thoughts about why this second option may be favourable: 1. Students’ own devices In many situations, students will come to class with video cameras already in their hands! Smartphones and tablet computers both have video-recording functions which are perfectly adequate for the classroom. 2. An open learning space If students make use of their own video devices, the filming process can extend to outside the classroom. Assignments in which students create videos for homework become possible. 3. Less stress for students Speaking English in class can be stressful enough for many students. When the teacher points a video camera at such learners, the experience can be even more intimidating. The camera may be less daunting in the hands of a classmate. 4. Technological control means creative control If students control the technology, they can get creative. For example, they may want to think carefully about the filming location or props to include in the frame. They may also want to edit their work, include close-ups of visuals, decide what to leave in, decide what to take out, add credits, etc. In addition, with control of the technology, students can go at their own pace. They can film as and when they are ready. They can also do more than one ‘take’ in order to get the result that they are looking for. 5. Content ownership Digital content is notoriously ‘slippery’. It does not deteriorate with time and can easily fall into unintended hands. Understandably, students may be concerned about what happens to videos that you create in the classroom. When students make use of their own video devices, they automatically become owners of the content. This can make the process less intimidating. In addition, if you would like students to share their videos online, they can choose to do so on their preferred video-sharing site. 6. Parental permission Permission to film younger learners and teens can be easier to obtain if we can demonstrate to parents that we want them to make use of their own video-recording devices in and out of the classroom. As well as the ownership issue mentioned above, we can ask parents to take an active role in the video production process. For example, if we want students to upload their work, parents could monitor video content first before giving the go-ahead. 7. Reduced workload for the teacher Perhaps the most important point to make! Tablets and smartphones can be regarded as all-in-one devices. Students can use them to create, edit and share video. There is no need to transfer video files from one machine to another (camera to computer, for example), a potentially time-consuming step that many teachers will be familiar with. 8. Engaged viewing For some inexplicable reason, most teenagers that I have worked with engage better with video presentations than with live classroom presentations (see image above). With students’ attention, we can make use of the pause and rewind buttons for language feedback. This can include drawing attention to good language and communication, and error correction. To find out more about using video in the classroom, register for Jamie’s webinar on 15th and 16th April.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Multimedia & Digital, Teenagers Tagged: Authentic video content, Bring Your Own Device, Bringing Online Video into the Classroom, BYOD, Creativity, Digital classroom, Images, Jamie Keddie, Smartphones, Tablet devices

This video is too good not to post. Chris Hadfield has done so much to stimulate public interest in Science and Technology since he has been on the international space station.So here's to the first Music video shot in space. It truly is beautifulThis post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, co-author of Let’s Go, outlines the benefits of only teaching young learners one new thing at a time by recycling, reinforcing, and building on new language. How can you get your students to learn more English? Teach less! It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true. Teachers are often pressured to teach more - more vocabulary, more grammar, more content - to satisfy parents and administrators. Moving through a coursebook quickly becomes the measure of success. However, the classes in which I see students making the greatest progress are those in which teachers introduce relatively little new language and actively recycle previously learned language, spending the majority of class time reusing both new and familiar language in new contexts. The measure of a successful lesson isn’t how much you teach; it’s how much students can do with the language they’ve learned. There are certainly times when you might choose to throw students into the deep end of the language pool - when asking them to work at understanding the gist of a listening or reading task, for example. But, it should be a choice that works toward your lesson goals, not the standard approach. If you need to spend most of your class with books open, explaining the language on the page, then students are unlikely to remember much for the next class. You end up teaching the same things over, and over, and over again without much feeling of progress. In contrast, when we recycle language in class, we’re teaching students how to use the language they already know to figure out language that they don’t. It’s one of the most important abilities that skilled language users employ. There’s no way we will ever be able to teach our students all the English they’ll ever need to know, so instead let’s teach them how to be confident in their ability to figure things out for themselves. One of the easiest ways to model this skill is to introduce new language in the context of familiar. Another way of looking at this is to make sure you maximize the value of any language your students spend the time learning. Here’s one simple example of how using familiar language to introduce new language can help students learn more effectively. If you teach without recycling familiar language, this looks like a dense lesson - eight new vocabulary words and two question and answer patterns. However, actively recycling previously learned language can make the lesson more manageable. For example, students have already learned the concept of plurals, and how to add an -s to the end of words to indicate more than one item. They may need to be reminded, but they don’t need to learn it again. That reduces the vocabulary load to four new words (and their plurals). What’s this? It’s a (CD) is also a very familiar pattern. It’s the first question students learned to ask and answer in the first book of the series to which this page belongs (Let’s Begin). It was recycled in a lesson two units prior to this lesson. By recycling the familiar pattern with the singular vocabulary words, it’s a small step for students to understand that the new pattern, What are these?, is the same question but for asking about more than one of something. By reducing the amount of new language to be taught, students now have more time to practice the language they’ve learned. They can use the questions and answers with vocabulary from earlier lessons, or apply their plural-making skills to topics that interest them, or personalize the language and build new skills by using the language to write about things in their own lives (e.g., This is my bedroom. These are my CDs. This is my cell phone. etc.) and then to read what classmates have written. Language becomes a tool for communicating about things students want to talk about, and because language is constantly recycled, students are unlikely to forget it. Active recycling plays a big part in Let’s Go, so the Teacher’s Book lists what language is being recycled in each lesson, and the ‘Let’s Remember’ lesson at the start of each level highlights familiar language from the previous level that will be built upon in the new one. You can do the same sort of recycling, with the same benefits, with any coursebook or even with no coursebook at all. You simply need to keep track of the language being taught so that you know what you can recycle to help students learn new language or build new skills. A simple guideline is to teach one new thing (new pattern or new vocabulary, but not both) in each lesson, or for longer lessons or older students, in each section of a lesson. Reducing the amount of time spent on introducing new language creates more time for students to use language: to use it in games and activities that provide the repetition necessary for memory to add it to their language repertoire in order to talk about new things to learn to read what they can say and understand to use language they can read to write about their own unique lives and experiences and to use language to connect with other students in order to share their own and learn about others’ lives and experiences. If you are interested to see how active recycling works in Let’s Go, you can download a variety of sample lessons from the Oxford Teachers’ Club Let’s Go teaching resources page.Filed under: Young Learners Tagged: Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, Children, EFL, Introducing new language, Language acquisition, Let's Go, Primary, Recycling language, Reinforcing language, Revising language, Teaching English, Young Learners

Update from Will RichardsonA few weeks ago we posed a big question: Could our little edu-network make a REAL full-length documentary feature that incorporates kids in every aspect of the production process? It appears we’re going to find out. Within days, hundreds of you volunteered to help make this admittedly ambitious undertaking become a reality. (If you haven’t signed on and still want to help, fill out our survey now!) As a result, we have formed a core group of amazing people focused on marketing, fundraising and developing a comprehensive web presence. All of this structural support makes it possible for us to dig in deep and craft a compelling narrative for this film.To reiterate, Doug, Josh and I decided right from the start that this film could and should be built by the people who are most affected by education policy—namely kids, parents, and teachers. Instead of just talking about the problems with school in its current form, we’d like to see "our" film driven by what the community is actually doing. So, we’re setting the bar as high as possible to show what happens when kids are given the opportunity to do meaningful work, and prove that we can transform the focus and function of school. The next step is to engage with everyone out there thinking, writing, creating, and putting their ideas into action for the benefit of kids.We’d like to hear from you, get a glimpse of what you are doing, and potentially include footage of your kids doing meaningful things in and outside of your classrooms. Here’s how you can help:Send us high quality HD video footage of kids, teachers and classrooms that we can use in a teaser trailer we are putting together to fundraise, promote, and build excitement for the movie. This footage will also help us better visualize what the final feature will look like, although at this point we are not specifically looking for footage or stories for that purpose (yet). Some ideas of what we’re looking for include:Kids (and teachers) sharing ideas and creations publiclyKids designing their own experience to learn through inquiry, research, collaboration, and creatingKids (and teachers) collaborating with colleagues, classmates, and experts around the worldKids creating works that have real value outside the classroomSubmitting your videos of powerful learning is simple. You may provide a link to videos hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or anywhere else on the web. For this teaser trailer we will likely use only a few seconds of any clip so if there is a specific part of the video we should look closely at, please identify that. If we want to use part of your video in this trailer we will ask for you to send us a file in full HD (1080p) format and have everyone in the video, and their parents, sign release forms.We’d love to get your submissions by June 1. You can e-mail Josh and Doug at whyschool@roughcutschools.com if you have any questions about the process.Finally, we’re now also on Twitter and Facebook. Follow us and like us to keep up with our progress. Our new website will be up soon as well.Thanks for all the support and enthusiasm you’ve already shown for this project. With your help we know it will be awesome! This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

TeCoEd is an excellent resource site designed by Dan Aldred for the teaching of Computer Science and ICT. Dan's philosophy is that the best method of teacher development is sharing good practice  a philosophy I very much agree with.The site is very easy to navigate with clear drop down menus on Raspberry PI, Computing, ICT, whole school tools and more. There are also some slide shows showing links to curated Scoop IT topics. I'm going to have to find out how to do that!If you teach ICT or Computer Science or run Raspberry PI clubs or coding clubs, TeCoEd is a great place to start. Have a look at http://www.tecoed.co.uk/index.html.This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Zarina Subhan, an experienced teacher and teacher trainer, tackles the second of our Solutions Speaking Challenges: "My students say the absolute minimum". I find myself in the classroom in an unfamiliar position. It’s not the fact that I’ve given up teaching that makes this a new experience for me. It is the fact that I’m a student again. I’m learning Spanish and am sitting behind the desk, no longer the decision-maker who tells the learners what to do, but the student awaiting instructions and wondering if I understood them. I’m rediscovering how uncertain, vulnerable and anxious it can feel to be a language student. Most of the reading, writing, listening, speaking and (most importantly) thinking in the target language (TL) happens in the classroom. I know I am there to improve my language; my motivation as an adult learner is high, yet I have to admit I could speak more in Spanish. So why don’t I? The PPP Model When you think you’ve grasped the structure of the language that has been presented, it is quite demoralising when you ‘practise’ it and get it all confused, or if you get the grammar focus right you somehow lose all previously-learned knowledge of the language. When it is my turn to speak I keep babbling on about whatever it is that I’m attempting to say. The natural thing for the teacher to do is to correct me. However, as soon as s/he corrects me it interrupts me. I’m trying so hard to concentrate on what I have to say that this correction stops my thinking, when I need every single brain cell to be able to speak. It has taken me a great deal of focused thinking, recalling, structuring and motivation to construct and actually produce that language. Instead of feeling pleased about having actually communicated in the TL, I focus on what I failed to say correctly. So, what if I could write a letter advising my teacher what would I say? Letter to my teacher Dear Teacher, Please wait until I’ve completed what it is I want to say, then focus on the idea I communicated and show me you’ve understood. That would really give me a feeling of success rather than failure. If at the end you could praise me and only correct me in terms of the structure/language/topic that is the focus for the lesson, it would help me turn your extrinsic motivation into my intrinsic motivation, and help me feel better about opening my mouth again in future. Could you also not insist on us taking turns one after the other to speak? I stop listening to my classmates until it’s just before my turn, when I tune back into the lesson. Perhaps if you asked for volunteers - the ones who actually have something interesting/fun to say - it would be more interesting for the rest of us and it wouldn’t be as painful as ALL of us reading out our boring, unimaginative offerings. If you gave us more than 2 seconds to come up with a response to your questions it would give me more thinking time. Please count to 10, or say the same thing a slightly different way. Whatever you do, don’t translate it, don’t ask several questions all at once, and don’t give us the answer before anyone has attempted to offer a response! Instead try writing up the key words of your question, show me a visual cue, and remind me when I last used this word/phrase. This all boosts my confidence and gives me more time to figure out my response rather than spending half my thinking time trying to be sure I’ve understood you correctly. I’ve noticed that when we have a laugh, I can forget about my anxiety and about being wrong/not being understood. So how about if we have points/smiley stickers/competitive games between teams - so that every time we give you a response in the TL we gain an advantage for our team? It may seem childish to you, but actually my wish to win/gain points/stickers overcomes the anxiety I sometimes feel and motivates me to speak. Talking of anxiety, not everyone likes speaking in front of the whole class. If you moved around the class and came to individual groups/pairs, we would feel happier speaking to each other with you listening in. Then you can correct us individually in a more intimate situation and not with everyone listening. My lack of speaking is nothing personal. My lack of speaking is simply because I don’t like looking a fool in front of others. So I’d really appreciate it if you could eliminate the thinking that making mistakes is foolish and encourage the attitude that having a go is courageous. I think, then, I would be a better speaker in your classes.Filed under: Skills, Teenagers Tagged: ELT, New Solutions, Secondary, Solutions second edition, Speaking, Speaking in class, Speaking in English, Teenagers, Zarina Subhan

Google documents are a much more powerful tool than the simple cloud based word processing software I first discovered about 6 years ago. Now it is full of excellent and often Microsoft Word-beating features.Contextual spell check is an example of one of these powerful features. I learned about this at this year's Bett conference in London from Mark Allen at his Google Apps presentation.If you type into a Google Doc "Icland is an Icland".If right-click on the first icland I getIf I right click on the second I getThe spell checker understands the context and that the same mis-spelt word is likely to mean Iceland in the first instance and island in the second instance. Very clever indeed! This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

How can we help students speak and learn grammar at the same time? Susan Earle-Carlin, author of Q: Skills for Success Listening and Speaking 5, provides tips for helping students use good grammar in their speaking. Speaking, like writing, requires good grammar in order to communicate a message clearly. I sometimes use an analogy with my students to compare readers and listeners with passengers on a tour bus. Too many grammar mistakes, like too many bumps and detours in the road, will turn their attention away from what’s important towards how uncomfortable they feel and whether they will ever reach the end. So the question is, how can we help students use good grammar while not inhibiting them while they are speaking? Control the grammar output Make activities appropriate for the grammar level of the students. Ask beginners to describe the food in their home country, but have advanced students compare their class in English with one in another field. Direct the students to target a certain grammar point in speaking. For example, ask students to talk about the objects in the classroom (singular/plural nouns and determiners), explain what is going on in their school at the moment (present progressive), or describe a scene using three adjectives and three adverbs (word form). Review the grammar first to optimize success and follow-up with some global comments on that grammar point, not singling out any particular student. Provide practice Give students lots of opportunities to speak in small groups without teacher intervention. However, remind listeners to ask questions if they don’t understand something the speaker says. Allow students to practice a presentation with peers to help reduce the stress most ELLs have about speaking in front of the class. Less nervousness usually results in better grammar. Encourage students to record and listen to their presentations for practice. Tell them to write down a sentence they have grammar questions on and give them the opportunity to ask you or the class for advice before presentation day. Provide feedback Interrupting students who are speaking to provide feedback is too negative. Instead, record their small group discussions or presentations. Listen to the recordings in conferences with individual students to discuss problems and suggest ways to improve grammar. If students can have access to the recordings, assign a transcript for homework and tell students to circle and correct their grammar errors. Check them over and make suggestions on grammar areas to review. Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Grammar & Vocabulary, Skills Tagged: ELL, English for Academic Purposes, English Language Learners, Grammar, Q Skills for Success, Questions for Q authors, Speaking in English, Speaking skills, Susan Earle-Carlin

It's that time of year when things get busy and on top of that my wife is pregnant so I haven't had much time to post over the last 2 weeks. Thankfully here is a guest post from Anna who works for pdfconverter.com. It is a great tool that is quick, easy to use and completely free.Free Technology for Schools has not received any payment for this post. Teachers today have a challenging task to incorporate the constantly changing and improving technology into traditional ways of educating students. Those teachers who readily accept innovation and are already incorporating technology in their classrooms are doing their students a great service. As teachers are preparing these young individuals for the world of tomorrow, it can hardly be a good thing going through educational program without being in step with technology.There are many wonderful ed-tech tools and resources that make the classroom more interactive and fun. Free Online PDF to PowerPoint Converter is one such tool that can be very beneficial to both teachers and students. As its title clearly states, the tool turns PDF files into PPT slides and it works online, so there is no software installation required, which is very convenient for the classroom/computer lab setting. We all know that MS Office files are best sent/shared in PDF form, because of this format’s most obvious advantages: anyone can open and view the PDF file regardless the operating system or device they are usingPDF preserves formatting of the document and ensures that the recipient will see it just as its sender (creator) intended it. So, when students have an assignment to send a presentation to their teacher or to peers in order to work on it together, the presentations will often be sent in PDF, in order to preserve their formatting when opened on a different computer. When a teacher or peer opens the PDF and wants to make corrections, the quickest way to do it is to convert the PDF into its original presentation format. The PDF to PPT converter is very easy and accessible, so it would be fun to practice using it in class. Once you go to the tool’s page here, you only need to follow three easy steps:Select file to convert.Type your e-mail address.Initiate the conversion process by clicking "Start."Experimenting with the Free Online PDF to PPT Converter is one way of making the students comfortable with using technology. If you are concerned about the privacy of your documents, rest assured that the tool provider deletes all converted files within 24 hours of receiving it, and no data is ever shared with a third party. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Today’s question for the Q: Skills for Success authors: How can I help my students understand words in a reading passage? Scott Roy Douglas responds. We are no longer taking questions. Thank you to everyone who contacted us! Look out for more responses by the Q authors in the coming weeks, or check out the answers that we’ve posted already in our Questions for Q authors playlist. Related articles #qskills - How can we help students to use words from the Academic Word List? #qskills - Is it better to create your own materials or use existing materials? #qskills - How do I manage disruptive behaviour in class? #qskills - How can I help students that have a hard time learning the language? #qskills - How would you answer Krashen’s assertion that teaching EAP is a "waste of time"? #qskills - What can I do to improve my relationship with difficult students who do not like to study English? Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Skills Tagged: Adult Learners, Behaviour, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, English Language, Language learning, Q Skills for Success, Questions for Q authors, Reading, Scott Roy Douglas

Tackk is a new website which allows you to create simple web pages with ease. It is a similar concept to Padlet but with a slightly more minimalist appeal. Essentially it is like an online bulletin board where you can simple create event flyers and mini adverts.Each Tackk expires after one week unless you sign up for a free account. The free account lets you keep Tackks indefinitely and create personalised urls for each Tackk.Although Tackk has slightly less functionality than Padlet, it is extremely simple to use. This would get even the most technophobic teacher using technology to enhance learning. I absolutely love the simplicity with which someone can now create content. Teachers' time is extremely valuable and the less time they have to spend learning to use complicated technologies the better. If you are not confident with technology I challenge you to try this out in a few lessons and see if it changes how you teach.This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Today’s question for the Q: Skills for Success authors: How can I teach reading skills to beginner students without spending all my time on grammar issues? Debra Daise responds. We are no longer taking questions. Thank you to everyone who contacted us! Look out for more responses by the Q authors in the coming weeks, or check out the answers that we’ve posted already in our Questions for Q authors playlist. Related articles #qskills - How can I help my students understand words in a reading passage? #qskills - How can we help students to use words from the Academic Word List? #qskills - Is it better to create your own materials or use existing materials? #qskills - How do I manage disruptive behaviour in class? #qskills - How can I help students that have a hard time learning the language? #qskills - How would you answer Krashen’s assertion that teaching EAP is a "waste of time"? Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Grammar & Vocabulary, Skills Tagged: Adult Learners, Debra Daise, EAP, English for Academic Purposes, English Language, Grammar, Language learning, Q Skills for Success, Questions for Q authors, Reading skills

It has been 7 months since I started this blog and I have found it to be one of the most rewarding things I have done in my career as a teacher. I am now firmly of the belief that it is something all teachers should do on some level. I can think of no better way of building links with other teachers allowing you to experience new ideas and widen your skill set. So here are 5 key things I have learned so far from being a teacher blogger. I have to say that up until this point, I have stayed away from the 5 things format but in this instance, I think it is the easiest way to structure this post.1) Professional developmentToo many teachers think that professional development is a course (or series of courses) that you go on. When doing recruitment, I get frustrated by teachers who have a CV with a list of one day, non-assessed courses who then mention nothing about how they have developed in a covering letter. I am much more interested in people who have been proactive and have taken steps to build communities and share their learning with their colleagues. Since I have started this blog, I have made connections with people across several continents and learned of new useful technologies and new approaches. My only regret is that Edtech is only part of my job and I wish I had another blog to discuss school leadership and subject specific work. I am planning to start one where I can do this but I haven't got it off the ground yet.2) CommunityThere is no doubt that blogging leads to you developing a far reaching learning community or network. I have been eternally surprised by how much busy professionals are willing to take time out to help answer a question or make contributions to Free Technology for Schools. Could it be that blogging brings out the best in people and promotes altruism? My favourite occasion this year was when Memrise contacted me for some advice. As you can probably tell from some of my posts, I think this is one of the most amazing new pieces of technology available for learning languages. Having the opportunity to help them develop new tools for educators was an excellent experience.3) Learning new skillsBy simply committing to writing on a regular basis, it has made me become more proactive about learning new things. I can't write a blog about free technology if I am not learning about new technology, therefore blogging for me has promoted learning. It has also allowed me to dust off the old skill of writing, something a science student in the UK system doesn't really do from age 16 onwards. I will be honest, the quality of my posts is variable but I do think I have made some improvements.4) Making timeThis goes without saying. To blog effectively it should become routine. Different people have different time allowances. I found I was able to do it once or twice per week. When you blog regularly you notice it with your traffic. At one point I had built my traffic up to 18000 page views per month. Once it got to June with the usual end of year report writing coupled with the needs of a pregnant wife, my writing fell and so did my traffic. It is going to be interesting to see how easy it is to blog in November once the baby arrives. I might become the nocturnal blogger...5) Promote your blogYou will not be making the most of your time spent blogging if no-one is able to read what you write. I would also say that you really want the right people (i.e. other teachers) reading your blog so you should really think about how you promote your blog. I have found the following  really useful; Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Edmodo. I also use Pinterest, Scoop it, Teach 100 and a few other blog networks.There is a danger that you can spend more time promoting than writing which is bad so here are a few tips. Edmodo and Google+ will give you the biggest traffic surge if you post in relevant communities and you can automate posts to Facebook and Twitter using www.ifttt.com. The key is to promote enough to get people reading and then interact with readers.I hope these 5 points are useful. Now that I have the free time during the summer, I am going to start work on a few other blogs. In particular, I am going to start a personal blog to discuss wider issues in teaching and learning along with some fun things that I experience and learn from. I'm sure I will let you know about it here on Free Technology for Schools.This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

At this year’s ELTJ Debate, Janet Enever (Umea University, Sweden) argued against the motion that ‘This house believes that Primary ELT does more harm than good‘. Janet shares her thoughts on some of the points that came out of the debate. You can watch the full recording of the debate on the IATEFL Online website, or catch up on the highlights in our Storify story of the event. Firstly, I’d like to say how pleased I was to hear so many interesting and relevant points raised at the ELTJ Debate. Together, they provided fruit for a really valuable round table event - perhaps this would be a more productive format for developing shared understandings and creating networks than the adversarial stance of a debate. Here, I’d like to pick up on a few points raised that I felt were particularly important - just to start the ball rolling for additional perspectives to be aired. There’s proof in the pudding Firstly then, the exciting new evidence from Eva Wilden in Germany! A study of over 6,500 children at the end of the German primary school phase (aged 10/11 yrs). She reported clear evidence of greater progress in receptive skills by approximately 50% of the sample who began English earlier. This large scale study is very significant evidence. In addition, the study linked higher achievement with stronger reading skills in German (national language - which may or may not be the children’s first language). Can we extrapolate from this that higher level literacy in the language of schooling/L1 works hand-in-hand with higher achievements in English? I’d like to add a note here on the broader question of literacy and politely take issue with Fiona [Copland]. There is now strong evidence on the potential of early language learning to contribute positively to literacy in L1. The references are now too numerous to list here, but perhaps I can include one quote and suggest that for anyone interested, it would be worth following up on this particular source. So: Fernandez (2008:8) summarises evidence, that: far from detracting from the development of literacy, learning a second language actually enhances and enriches children’s language experience and offers unique insights and opportunities for the development of cognitive skills, which are unavailable to the monolingual learner." It seems possible that Eva from Germany has evidence of just this happening - I’m glad to say that she has now agreed to present at our conference in Umea this June - so join us if you can to hear more! Of course, OUP are one of our proud sponsors! Political buy-in Secondly, I’d like to mention the contribution of a colleague from Bangladesh. I haven’t had the chance to spend time there so cannot pretend to be knowledgeable on the challenges, though I’ve heard this account many times and seen many of these challenges elsewhere in the world. The current problem for Bangladesh seems to be that there are very few positive aspects to this policy decision! Here I will take up just one. From the ELLiE study we learnt that primary English teachers need a fluency level of at least B2 if they are to be able to respond to the unplanned, informal everyday requirements of English in the primary classroom. In many contexts this continues to be a distant goal, but this does not diminish its importance. At a language planning stage we need to ‘help’ politicians to fully understand this and strategically plan to achieve this target. Years ago when I worked in Poland (soon after the political changes), I witnessed thousands of teachers of Russian losing their jobs. Some, astonishingly, managed to speedily turn their hands to rapidly learning English and became excellent English teachers instead. The shift in language choice that has occurred there over the past 24 years is certainly remarkable, with a national policy now established for introducing the first foreign language (mainly, but not only, English) from the start of schooling. However, in a country of 40 million, this has taken a generation to implement - and they are still working on it. Evidently, Bangladesh has much greater challenges - probably not only in the teaching of primary English, with large classes and a struggle for adequate resources. How much is too much? The final point that I’d like to discuss relates to the question of ‘how many languages are possible at primary level?’ This is indeed a difficult question to answer - probably impossible! A delegate from Switzerland outlined their current debate. Last year I attended a national discussion forum on this in Bern where I learnt that English was creeping up the agenda in a number of cantons, and concerns were rising particularly about the decline of their fourth language - Romansch. From informal coffee break conversations I gained the impression that the German speakers in particular no longer saw French as so important/valuable as English. This topic links also to the question raised by a British Council representative from Senegal in Francophone West Africa. Similarly, there, current discussions consider whether children will suffer from overload if they have to cope with learning two languages in addition to their home language/mother tongue/language of schooling (various terms may apply in different contexts). In response to the question of: ‘How many languages are too many?’ we can cite countries such as India where it is often the norm for young children to shift between 3-4 languages in their daily lives - but these are generally languages that are widely used in the community. We can also cite smaller-scale examples where three languages are taught in schools from an early age - e.g. Luxembourg, Belgium, some regions of Spain such as Catalonia and the Basque region. However, again, at least two of these languages are widely used in the community, whilst the third (English) is seen as a high status international language. From this and other evidence then, we know children can cope, but we have to ask whether the contextual conditions are sufficient to provide enough support for them to make progress. With good teachers, good resources and a supportive wider community (both in and out of school) I’m sure it can be done. However, achieving this on a wider scale takes substantial national/political commitment. Of course, it also takes a significant amount of class time so it’s important to consider the priorities and take care not to create a primary curriculum that suffers from overload. In Africa, I know it’s a real dilemma, with some former colonies having opted for non-local language as the medium of instruction from the start of schooling and then later recognising this might result in only limited progress in basic education. The theme of Medium of Instruction deserves a separate discussion I feel - and was not the focus of the Debate. Here, we are discussing the introduction of a foreign language, together with the teaching of a former colonial language (English or French mainly). My expectation is that the outcome is unlikely to be balanced bilingualism. Nonetheless, the experience of learning two languages early, in addition to the first language, will certainly provide a valuable foundation for later further development - assuming the conditions are sufficient to ensure good provision. Of course, Harry Kuchah’s contribution from Cameroon serves as a salutory reminder on how difficult it can be to achieve satisfactory conditions for learning. There are so many more points I would like to discuss, but I hope the above provides some food for thought and provokes further discussion. As you can see, there are so many perspectives to consider. If Janet’s points on the ELTJ Debate have interested you, or you’d like to challenge them, feel free to leave a comment below. And don’t forget to watch the recording of the Debate or read our Storify highlights.Filed under: IATEFL, Pre-school Children, Young Learners Tagged: Children, ELT Journal, ELTJ Debate, First language, IATEFL, Janet Enever, L1, Language learning, Medium of Instruction, Primary and Secondary methodology, Primary ELT, Teenagers, Young Learners

Although I tend to focus on and review websites and apps that encourage new ways of learning and increase collaboration, occasionally I stumble across a website that offers lots of good old traditional worksheets.Maths worksheet land contains a vast number of worksheets for all grade levels and has them linked to the common core for all you American teachers out there. It is not interactive, it does not allow students to work simultaneously on equations but they can do a worksheet on simultaneous equations.If you are a Maths teacher, I have no doubt that you will want to check out this resource and the best thing is it is 100% free. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

We’re helping to solve your EFL teaching problems by answering your questions every two weeks. This week, Verissimo Toste responds to Juliana Mota’s Facebook comment about how to connect one lesson to the next. Juliana wrote: How should we review lessons learned and make a connection with the new class?" The first obvious answer is, "It depends." But that’s not very useful. So let me propose some ideas and activities which you can adapt to the age of your students, their learning preferences, and their different abilities. It’s their responsibility From the very beginning, I try to make any revision the students’ responsibility. Once we have finished work on a unit or a module, I give them time to go back through the work we have done and ask any questions. This, of course, is easier when the class is based on a course book. Students leaf through the pages and are reminded of the work done. I then ask them to assess how they feel about the work in grammar, vocabulary, and the different skills. This assessment differs from class to class depending on the age and level of the students. Students make a test I ask students to make the test for the work we have done. Usually students leaf through the pages and suggest activities from the class book and the workbook. I ask each student to do this individually then compare their suggestions in pairs. Then, I ask them to work in groups of four. At this point, they compare their suggestions, but they must also agree on one test for the group. This generates a good discussion on the length of the test and what content is most important. More importantly, however, is that it creates a context for students to revise the work done, to prioritise that work, and to assess how they feel they are doing. With the test based on their suggestions, students get a clearer idea of what they need to do in order to prepare. Giving them time to revise the work done generates more questions, leads to some revision exercises, and helps them notice their strengths and weaknesses. This is further reinforced when they get their test back. Connect learning When possible, connect new learning with language students have already learned. For example, you can base presenting the past simple on a daily routine. The daily routine gives the teacher an opportunity to revise the present simple, both the grammar and the vocabulary. Teaching adverbs can present opportunities to revise adjectives, as well as verbs. A text on the events of a very bad day can revise past forms and lead to teaching the conditional, "If they hadn’t …" Skills lessons Lessons with the aim of developing skills can, and should, focus on language learned. A listening or reading text will, most likely, use language students have learned. Once you have worked on the skill itself, guide your students to notice the language used in the text. Noticing language is an important learning tool that will help students improve their English. Developing the productive skills of speaking and writing, will also provide students with an opportunity to revise language they have learned. Speaking activities are usually based on language students have just learned. Controlled practice activities will give them a chance to correct any mistakes. Writing tasks can give students an opportunity to use the language they have learned. Unlike speaking, students have more time to reflect on their mistakes and opportunities to correct through the writing process. Project work         I am a big fan of project work, whether the projects are small, taking little time, or larger projects spread over a greater length of time. Project work offers students the opportunity to use the language they have learned. As they share their work with others in the class, they will be exposed to the language in different contexts to communicate real information, usually about them and their experiences. The project will give them opportunities to reflect on the language they need. As the projects are meant to be shared, students are careful about mistakes, motivated to correct them before the project is presented to others. The activities I mention here are based on making revision an integral part of the class and not necessarily based on any particular language point or skill in which students have difficulty and thus need more work. The activities give students the opportunity to revise what they have learned, reflect on their progress, adapt their learning based on the reflection, and finally, improve their English. Invitation to share your ideas Do you have anything to add on the subject of revising language? We’d love to hear from you! You can respond directly to this blog by leaving a comment below. 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.Filed under: Adults / Young Adults, Professional Development, Teenagers, Young Learners Tagged: #EFLproblems, Academic English, EAP, EFL, English for Academic Purposes, Language learning, Language skills, Professional Development, Project work, Revising language, revision, Self-reflection, Teaching problems, Verissimo Toste

If there is one thing I love about the summer holidays it is having the time to catch up on some recreational reading. The first book I read this summer was called Automate this: How algorithms came to rule the world, by Christopher Steiner.Automate This tells of how the use of modern algorithms began in Wall Street to give slight trading advantages and is now spreading to every area of human endeavour. With each spread, the story seems to be the same; people first say that the algorithm will never be able to replace the work of real people and in each area, it appears, the algorithms always win, disrupting entire industries.There are some comical and terrifying tales, like the book on Amazon that reached a sale price of over $1000000 due to 2 competing algorithms, stories of money vanishing in the finance world and some beautiful classical music written by algorithms.As a teacher, this book really gave me food for thought. When I was training to be a Science teacher and revisions were being made to the UK National Curriculum, a component called 'How Science Works' was introduced. The idea being that all students would be consumers of Science and its fruits whereas only a minority would go on to be Scientists. It therefore made sense to teach students about the scientific method and how science impacts on society.Compare the revisions to the UK Science curriculum with what is happening with ICT/Computer Studies education. Lot's of students leave school with zero knowledge of code or knowledge of the impact that it will have on them and society. It is absolutely imperative that schools try to catch up and formally introduce the teaching of code to students, or at least teach them about how it will impact on their lives.During the summer, I also had a slight problem with a hotel I was staying at and called the travel company to complain. I got the usual message "this call may be recorded for training and moitoring purposes". It is nice to know after reading this book that what that really means is that an algorithm is analysing your voice and detecting your mood so that it can assign you to the most suitable agent to minimise conflict. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

This is a guest post from Deepak Soni at Drypin. There are two free ways to download videos from YouTube and other video sites like dailymotion, vimeo etc. In first way you need to download a software that we discuss below. In second way you can download videos online or without any software. Both ways supports all version of windows and also supports windows-8 PC. In both ways you may download videos to computer in all video formats like 3gp, mp4, flv etc. and also in any quality is available of video like 144p to 1080p.Method 1Download YouTube videos free with software In this way you need to download a software that is completely free and after installation you may continue download unlimited videos in various formats like HD, Full Hd(Formats: 144p to 1080p).Step-1: Download Software from here Step-2: Open the .zip file and extract it.Step-3: Run "YouTube Video Downloader.exe" file from zip folderStep-4: Go to "YouTube.com" and copy the link from address bar of video that you wants to download.Step-5: Now come back to software and paste the link in Video URL.Step-6: Click on "Generate links" button to get available download formats of the video.Step-7: Select which format you wants to download and click the button "Download Selected Video". Step-8: Now you can see you download in the "Download" tab of software. Method 2Download YouTube videos free online In this way you may download and save video to your pc without any software. You may also download all various formats and picture quality in this way also. Step-1: Open your browser and Go to the Keepvid.com.Step-2: Go to "YouTube.com" and copy the link from address bar of video that you wants to download.Step-3: Come back to the Keepvid.com and Paste the link in Download Bar of the page.Step-4: Press the Download Button and select the download format.Step-5: Save the file where you want to keep it. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Sage Stevens, Assessment Support Manager in the Assessment Materials division of ELT at OUP, looks at the main changes to the 2015 specifications of the Cambridge English: First exams. Sage will be hosting a webinar on this topic on 23rd May. As many of you will be aware, the specifications for Cambridge English: First (FCE) and Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) are changing in 2015. For those of you feeling somewhat at sea about just how these changes will impact on your teaching I will be hosting a webinar which will hopefully leave you feeling less ‘Lost at Sea’ and more ‘Fancy a swim?’. In other words, I hope to help navigate you through the changes so that you can prepare your students with confidence to sit these examinations in 2015 and beyond. I am an Assessment Support Manager in the Assessment Materials division at OUP, but prior to this role I was a writing examiner for Cambridge ESOL CAE, FCE, BEC (Vantage) and others for a number of years. I hope to share with you my experience in assessment and also my knowledge of Oxford’s new preparation and practice materials for the Cambridge English: First exam from 2015, which I have been actively involved in developing. My webinar on the 23rd May will cover the following areas: An overview of the main changes to the 2015 FCE exam. This will include looking at how the previously separate Reading and Use of English papers have been combined into one, without losing any of the integrity of the separate papers. We will then focus in a bit more on changes to the Writing and Speaking papers. We will explore what teachers and candidates can expect with the new format, word count and rubric for the Writing paper, and we’ll look at the changes to interaction patterns and stimuli in the Speaking paper. Throughout, I’ll be using examples of activities from the new editions of Cambridge English: First Masterclass and Result Student’s Books, and the Online Practice material that accompanies these courses - all designed to help you to prepare your students successfully for the tasks in the 2015 exam. The webinar will be vibrant and informative. Participants will have the opportunity to put forward their views, participate in polling activities, and answer questions to ensure that the information is understood and clear. I look forward to meeting you! To find out more about the changes to the Cambridge English: First exams, register for Sage’s webinar on 23rd May.Filed under: Exams & Testing, Professional Development Tagged: Cambridge English: First, Cambridge English: First Masterclass, Cambridge ESOL, Exam practice, Exam preparation, Exams, FCE, FCE Exams, Reading skills, Sage Stevens, Speaking skills, Writing skills

Taught it is a great new site for sharing any resource quickly and easily. Without signing up you can share resources with the click of a button. Once you upload your resource, it provides a link and QR code for sharing the resource which are both active for 48 hours.If you choose to sign up to the site, you can save your shared files, extend the duration of the links and make connections with other people sharing resources. Signing up is quick and easy too.Taught it is another tool I highly recommend to encourage the less tech savvy teachers in your school to give using technology a go. The site provides links to files so short that a teacher could even get their students to write it down in their planner to access a resource for homework.One thing this resource has got me thinking about is differentiation. We constantly talk about differentiating our lessons to provide access to all of our students, yet when it comes to technology, schools often expect teachers to fit into a one size fits all approach, normally using the expensive software solution the school has paid for. I wonder how much more technophobic teachers would use technology if schools adopted a differentiated approach and helped teachers use the most effective tools based on their skill level.This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Schools www.freetechforschools.com

Photo courtesy of Jesse Milan via Flickr Margaret Whitfield, co-author of the new Kindergarten series, Show and Tell, offers some practical tips on making the most of CLIL in the Kindergarten classroom. CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) has been a buzzword in English language education for a number of years now, and is an established part of many programs. Its supporters claim that combining subject learning (e.g. science or music) with language learning can increase student motivation and improve understanding. However, they’re often talking about older children who have some existing knowledge of English and the subject - can we bring CLIL into a Kindergarten classroom with equal benefits? Well, the good news is that we don’t have to. CLIL is already there! In Kindergarten, children are being exposed to new concepts and content all the time, from number work to songs to mixing colored paints and beyond. In addition, young children are innately curious about the world around them and love to explore new things. So instead of starting from scratch, let’s look at the ways in which everyday Kindergarten activities can be exploited to make the most of their subject-learning and language-learning potential. Let’s pretend Pretending is a fundamental part of children’s play at this age. Whether they use costumes or just their imaginations, children are exploring the adult world they see around them. You can use this in a number of ways to explore different themes: Social science Focus on families, learning the names of different family members and talking about what they do, and providing opportunities for children to role-play families. Extend this to science, talking about and role-playing animal families. Extract from Show and Tell Student’s Book 2 Language arts Focus on fictional characters that the children are interested in - superheroes, princes and princesses, pirates, and so on. This can be a great way into describing people as well - look at storybooks together and talk about what the characters are like and how they feel at different points. Then the children can act out the characters, being happy, sad, fierce or brave! Extract from Show and Tell Student’s Book 3 Social science Focus on jobs, learning the names of different jobs and clothes and color vocabulary to talk about uniforms. Talk about what people in different jobs do and encourage children to role-play firefighters, doctors, police officers and so on - they won’t need much encouragement! Extract from Show and Tell Student’s Book 3 All these activities link with language areas that you might be teaching, but the role-play will also generate a need for more language that children will then practice in a memorable way through their play. Hands on Practical activities are key to keeping children of this age interested and motivated, and they can be used to explore all kinds of topic areas. Take a look at the free ‘sink or float?’ experiment activity. Here are a few more ideas. Subject focus Language focus Activity Math: counting, simple addition and subtraction, finding one more or less Number namesToys vocabularyHow many …? Use toys (or other objects) to count in different scenarios, e.g. a teddy-bear picnic. Music: learning a song, keeping the beatMath: counting backwards Number names Learn a simple counting song like ‘Five little monkeys’; use percussion instruments to keep the beat. Science: learning about the senses  Food vocabularyIs it …?I like/don’t like… Use taste and smell to identify food without being able to see it. Extract from Show and Tell Student’s Book 1 A table like this can be a useful tool for planning CLIL activities: whether you start with a subject area, a language objective or an activity that you already do that you want to exploit further, it can help you to consider the different elements together. Make sure that there is a natural fit between the language and the subject, and the activity will provide memorable, contextualized language practice. Consider the difficulty of each element, as well - if the language is tricky, maybe it would be better to use a subject area that children are familiar with; if the concepts are challenging, try to match it to language that the children already know. I hope that, if you didn’t already, you’re now feeling that CLIL is an inspiring and achievable tool for kindergarten. Please post your experiences, and especially activities that have worked well for you, in the comments section below. Would you like more practical tips on using CLIL and teaching 21st Century skills to your kindergarten children? Visit our site on Teaching 21st Century skills with confidence for free video tips, activity ideas and teaching tools.Filed under: CLIL, Pre-school Children, Skills Tagged: 21st Century skills, Children, CLIL, Content and Language Integrated Learning, Critical thinking, EFL, ELT, How to teach critical thinking, Kindergarten, Margaret Whitfield, Pre-school children, Show and Tell