Digital Tools for Giving Feedback
Apparently, the term originates in biology when a response comes back to an organism (Rinvalucri,1994) but coming from an engineering background, I had my own idea of the word ‘feedback’ when I first started to teach. Having now taught English for more than 15 years, it has a different meaning to me. People study English to get feedback on their language skills, their progress and the tasks they complete. It is hard to find someone who doesn’t like or want to be corrected. After all, speaking correctly and properly is one of the reasons people attend language/skills courses.
Practical Ideas for Classroom Formative Assessment
We are all better at spotting mistakes in the work of others. By Dylan Wiliam Why I wrote my new book My latest book, written with Siobhán Leahy, is designed specifically to help individual teachers who want to develop their practice of formative assessment on their own or with small groups of colleagues. In this blog, I provide some suggestions for practical techniques you can try in your classroom right now.
Support for teachers and teacher educators
The British Council is committed to supporting the use of technology for the continuation of education in a crisis. As many teachers find themselves in an unfamiliar situation of having to teach their classes online, with little or no experience, the British Council TeachingEnglish website is committed to providing as much support as possible to help you navigate your way through the world of online teaching. Below is a list of initiatives that we are currently providing, or planning to provide in the coming weeks. Insights and research Covid-19 insight reports The two reports here provide insight into how education systems and teachers and teacher educators have responded to the impact on education of the Covid-19 pandemic.
10 tools for effective peer feedback in the classroom - Ditch That Textbook
Providing feedback is an important skill. The ability to give meaningful feedback to our peers is even more powerful. Here are 10 tools for effective peer feedback in the classroom. As teachers, we strive to provide our students with quality feedback on their work.
7 Tips For Peer And Self-Assessment
Christina Brown Christina is an Art and Design Teacher in a London secondary school. In her third year of teaching, she has also just completed an MA in Art and Design in Education at The Institute of Education (University College London). Christina is also a practicing artist... Read more about Christina Brown How can you ensure pupil-led assessment is meaningful?
Creative activities for Language Learners at home
Introduction The British Council is committed to supporting the use of technology for the continuation of education in a crisis. As many teachers find themselves in an unfamiliar situation of having to teach their classes online, with little or no experience, the British Council TeachingEnglish website is committed to providing as much support as possible to help you navigate your way through the world of online teaching. This is the seventh in our series of webinars aimed at supporting teachers working in an online context.
Peer and self-assessment
Learners are much better at giving each other accurate and sensitive feedback than we suspect, and this activity gives them the opportunity to demonstrate it. Divide the class into groups of three, composed of Student A, Student B and Student C. If your class is not divisible by three, you will need to make one or two groups of four, where some roles are doubled up. The basic structure of the activity is as follows:
Assessment for Learning
So, what is AfL and why is it important? Can it improve students’ results? What does it involve? What is AfL? To understand what AfL is, it is useful to start with what it is not.
Digital tools for penpalling in your classroom
British Council teacher and trainer Melissa Thomson shares her favourite digital tools to connect penpals who are learning English. Over the past few years, learners from my primary, teenage and adult classes have met digital penpals in Japan, Algeria, Scotland, Greece, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. I had a penpal as a child I grew up in Scotland, and every month I wrote to a girl in Australia.
Assessment for Learning
What is Assessment for Learning? Assessment Reform Group (UK 2002):Assessment for Learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there. Assessment for Learning is also known as formative assessment. What is the difference between formative and summative assessment?
How to Make the Most of Virtual Field Trips
This how-to article accompanies the feature "Internet Explorers: Virtual Field Trips Are More Than Just Money Savers." How do you keep virtual field trips from becoming the modern-day version of the filmstrip -- something students just passively watch? A few tips from the pros:
Motivating speaking activities
At this age, the learners aren't motivated by new language, they're motivated by an activity. It can be very difficult to get them to speak if they really don't see the point. You can approach this by focussing on the following. The function of the language and using an authentic or near authentic task (e.g. get them to sit back-to-back to practise speaking on the telephone).A motivating task, which uses the language you want them to practise (e.g. students write questions on small squares of paper using the target language, then form the papers into a board game to be played using dice and counters).
