It can be tricky motivating learners even in a face-to-face classroom. Each learner has their own interests, their own personalities, their own reasons for being in class, and sometimes, finding an activity that gets everyone engaged and talking can be difficult. This problem is compounded in a virtual classroom where
With schools, colleges, and universities back in classes, the educational landscape is very different to what it was the last time teachers were in the comforting physical confines of their classrooms. However, a return to the physical classroom does not simply mean going back to the way things were before.
As I stare at my blinking cursor, stuck on the opening sentence, I’m trying to give myself a pep talk to create my very first blog entry….’just do it, just do it already’. Two minutes later, I am still at the opening sentence. Why is this so hard? I mean,
They say a lot can happen in a year. Indeed, a lot can happen in a few months. Cast your mind back to the start of the year when everything was still normal for most of us – schools were open, classes were running, and a fully online teaching world
In traditional face-to-face teaching, there have always been lots of benefits to recording students in class. For example, if you make an audio recording of a role play conversation, then the two students can listen back. Or a student can make a video recording of their presentation, watch it back
Writing is generally considered to be a solitary endeavor, which can make it challenging to teach at the best of times. When it comes to teaching writing skills online, teachers often find this particularly challenging. And as many teachers have had to start teaching online with little or no formal
Like so many teachers, I recently started delivering my English lessons on Zoom. On reflection, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that so many of the things I do in a normal face-to-face lesson are easily transferable to a platform like Zoom. I can present language by screensharing or using the whiteboard,
So far in this series of articles on using video in the classroom, I’ve focused on ways to plan a video lesson and how to make the activities more collaborative. In this post, I’d like to look at the impact authentic video can have on a lesson when we teach
Research suggests that reading can be one of the best tools to boost a language learner’s vocabulary. The following 7-step guide provides some tips to help students maximize their vocabulary gains while reading independently. 1. Read something interesting and at the right level. The first step is to make sure
In this blog post, Caroline McKinnon, a teacher in the United States, describes how she connects her online classroom to the real world. Let us know how you are connecting your online classroom to the real world in the comments section below. — Last week, I took my class on