The previous blog about the climate change debate looked at teaching ideas for higher levels, focusing on a) the words we need to talk about climate change b) the way people feel about it and c) constructive ideas for dealing with it. In this post, I want to suggest activities
As a classroom debate topic or an essay subject, climate change sometimes seems a bit overdone. In fact, is it even a debate anymore? Practically everyone now agrees that global warming is happening and humans are contributing to it. So, we tend to avoid talking about it – either from
This week on In Focus, hear from Caroline McKinnon, an ESL teacher based in New York, who is using Learn English with TED Talks with her students. Caroline shares her experience with using the supplemental resource, including her top three tips. Caroline has traveled the world teaching and teacher training.
Look and do! One photo, lots of classroom ideas In her blog series, Katherine offers five practical and engaging classroom activities which all use the same photo as a starting point. The ideas can be adapted to work with all ages and levels and are designed to recycle language in
How do you become a better teacher? Being a better teacher has as much to do with learning new ideas as it does with being aware of what is working well in your classroom, and things that you need to improve on. In other words, teachers need to be aware
Project work can be the perfect multisensory learning experience to give students the opportunity to make things with their own hands and experience the language and content in a meaningful context. Children are active learners and learn best through concrete tasks and hands-on activities. They learn by doing and will
Why do we have goals? As teachers, we are encouraged to have goals for our lessons. Some teachers even write the goals on the board at the beginning of a lesson, so students can see them. For other teachers, their goals (also sometimes called aims) are written at the top
Critical thinking is seen as an increasingly valued skill to teach students in the 21st Century, but the first thing we need to ask is what exactly is it? Very often critical thinking can become a complaint that people aren’t thinking like me! Some definitions have a focus on being
Each month in this new blog post series, Katherine offers five practical and engaging classroom activities which all use the same photo as a starting point. The ideas can be adapted to work with all ages and levels and are designed to recycle language in an engaging way while developing
Talk to teachers about using TED Talks in the English language classroom and you generally get one of two responses – “I love using them and my students love them” or “I love using them, but my students find them too difficult”. Often, these statements are followed by something along