Moving Your Classes Online #1 | World Of Better Learning Published 13 March 2020 To help support all teachers who now have to teach from home due to the Coronavirus outbreak, we have created a series of blog posts with expert advice on how to move your classes online. To begin, here’s a message from Eric Baber, Director of Professional Learning and Development, introducing the blog series. Moving your classes online: getting started It can be a daunting experience when you’re suddenly required to move all your face-to-face classes online with little or no advance notice, as has been happening to a number of teachers in various places around the world over the last month and more. Opening online channels of communication The first thing you need to do is think about what might be the most efficient way to contact your students. What is the best way to communicate with students? It’s important to emphasise that there is no one right answer to this question. 1. (Email? It’s good to start with what you’ve already got and build on that. 2. 1. (Email?
350 Good Questions to Ask - The only list of you'll need. Here is my ridiculously long list of good questions to ask. Use them to get a conversation going or as a fun way to pass the time with friends or loved ones. With 350 questions to choose from, I’m confident that everyone can find plenty of good questions to ask! Try to be creative as you can and have fun with the questions. And don’t forget to ask follow up questions! I’ve also put a PDF and an image of all 350 good questions to ask at the bottom of the page. Good questions to ask 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125.
Moving your classes online #2 | World of Better Learning Published 13 March 2020 This is a follow up post from Ceri Jones who continues to share advice on how teachers can feel prepared with teaching students and moving classes online. Ceri Jones is a teacher, trainer and materials writer based in Spain. She is part of the author team for our courses Eyes Open and Evolve as well as an online tutor for The Consultants-E. 1. Once you’ve set up the channels of communication so that you can inform your students about the changes to their classes, you need to think about how you’re going to structure those classes. Synchronous or asynchronous? Synchronous classes are “live” events, with the teachers and students meeting in an online space at an arranged time. Asynchronous classes are held in a shared online space, but the teacher and the students don’t need to be present at the same time. You may find that you want to use a combination of both. Video, audio or text? The obvious answer to this question is to have a combination if you can. Video Audio
Teaching Children Online | World Of Better Learning Published 18 March 2020 Are you a primary English teacher who is about to teach online for the first time? Or, are you a primary teacher facing the dual challenge of teaching children online and preparing them for English exams? Or, maybe you already teach English online and are looking for extra ready-to-use ideas to engage and motivate children? David Valente shares advice on ways of teaching children online, keeping them engaged and focused on the task in hand. When primary teachers start teaching English online, they can sometimes go too far down the entertainment route with the aim of keeping children engaged. In this post, I share some simple but effective tips to help primary English teachers maintain a focus on purposeful online learning. Tip 1: Plant seeds of early independence Enable primary-aged children to do things for themselves during online lessons, give them choices in each lesson and ask questions such as: Do you want to draw or write your answers? Idea 3: Sample WALTs
Teaching Your Adult English Class Online | World Of Better Learning Published 19 March 2020 Our blog series continues to help English teachers move their classes online in view of many institutions being closed due to the Covid-19 virus. Today’s post is by Carol Rainbow, who offers suggestions for teaching your adult English class online. The virtual learning environment When teaching groups of adults online, planning for learning is slightly different to what you may have prepared for face to face class work. The VLE will offer an opportunity for the tutor to add tasks or activities to be completed by the learners. Most VLEs offer forum opportunities where learners and tutors can have asynchronous discussions, share ideas, post responses to tasks or just socialise. Tip – Remember the language that you are preparing the VLE in is not the learner’s native language, so keep it clear, simple and as straightforward as possible! Your chosen VLE may or may not have a video conference facility. Planning for asynchronous interaction and collaboration Task 1 Task 2
Ideas for adapting group lessons to working on Zoom As has happened in much of Europe, Poland has now closed schools, universities and other places where people might gather in the hope of reducing the spread of coronavirus. Our school had its last normal lessons on Wednesday, with Thursday and Friday dedicated to training our teachers how to use Zoom. We start teaching on Monday 16th, so my total experience with Zoom so far has been in the training process. However, I wanted to share what we’ve done and some of the ideas we’ve had for our adapting our standard EFL face-to-face lessons, in the hope that others will be able to build on this. Useful links International House World arranged a live session run by Shaun Wilden on Tuesday 10th, in which he introduced us to Zoom. I’d also recommend Ceri Jones’s posts on the Cambridge University Press blog: Other useful posts: There’s a very active hashtag on Twitter called #coronavirusteaching, which you can view without having a Twitter account. I posted this tweet: Technical arrangements Chat box
- English Listening Lesson Library Online Good Enough Is Good Enough | World Of Better Learning Published 19 March 2020 Philip Kerr has a message to all teachers who have made the transition from teaching in the classroom to online: If this is the end of the (teaching) week for you, well done – you’ve made it. I’ll keep this short! You may be busy… Switching classes to online In a language school that I work with, my colleagues have spent the last ten days frantically figuring out how to switch their classes online. I have to say that my colleagues have been doing an incredible job. Looking for practical help If you’re looking for practical help, keep following the posts here on the Supporting Every Teacher blog series. But, if I have one piece of advice, it is to try to keep things in perspective. It’s worth bearing in mind, too, what many of your students will be going through. But right now… The week is almost over and hoping that you don’t have to teach this weekend. If you would like to read more blog articles from the Supporting Every Teacher series, click here. But right now…
10 Ways to Increase Student Engagement Online The Flipped Classroom I had the pleasure this morning of joining a webinar, 'The Flipped Model - ensuring excellence in the VLE' as part of Eaqual's webinar series where Julie Wallis presented a model for best practice using the flipped classroom to enhance online learning. I came away thinking 'this is flippin' it' May 12, 2020 In "flipped classroom" 5 Tips for Teaching with Breakout Rooms What on earth would we do without breakout rooms? June 8, 2020 In "breakout rooms" Helping your Dyslexic Learners Succeed When planning for any lesson, it’s important to first take your learners’ strengths into account. May 1, 2020 In "dyslexia"
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