Compiled by Michaela Mozolova
We’re a little bit late in posting this week. Time is being spent more on all things conference than anything else, but here’s the recap from FB (which is public, by the way, so you do not need a FB profile to check it out).
Teacher Development Opportunites
International
Sunday, 3rd March 2013, 16.00- 17.00 (CET): A business English teacher’s guide to soft skills training workshop with Ed Pegg (iatefl BEsig)
National (and international)
- TODAY: REGISTRATION for the 3rd annual eltforum.sk Teacher Development Conference in June IS OPEN! Early-bird registration until 31 March 2013.
East
- Monday, March 18th, Prešov: Macmillan is holding its annual ‘ELT ideas’ conference.
Northwest
- Thursday, April 11th, Žilina: ‘An Express Way of Learning‘ with auhtor Steve Lever (Express Publishing and INFOA)
West
- Tuesday, March 12th, Bratislava: ‘Playing with Texts‘ workshop with Ivan Lacko (FifUK & SCET)
- Thursday, March 21, Bratislava: ‘IT’S ALL ABOUT… CHOICES‘ with Anna Sikorzyńska (Pearson and Slovak Ventures)
- Wednesday, April 10th, Bratislava: ‘Blended Learning‘ (Pearson and Slovak Ventures)
- Thursday, April 11th, Bratislava: ‘An Express Way of Learning‘ with auhtor Steve Lever (Express Publishing and INFOA)
Training Centres
- Lead & Learn – Centre of Innovation: There’s something new in Trnava. Check it out.
Programy kontinuálneho vzdelávania sú akreditované Ministerstvom školstva Slovenskej republiky. Sú určené pre kvalifikovaných učiteľov anglického jazyka .
Tieto vzdelávacie programy sú vhodné pre angličtinárov na všetkých typoch škôl, ktorí sa venujú vzdelávaniu a výchove detí a mládeže.
Every teacher (basic school, secondary school and kindergarten) is entitled for a 40% discount on all the programmes in Slovakia and all the trainers (private schools, Universtiy teachers ) are entitled for a 30% discount for all the programmes in Slovakia. When you choose and workshop by 31/8/2013, you get a bonus workshop for free.
Activities and Lesson Plans
- Topical English Activities: Sue Lyon-Jones does the hunting and prep for you so you have free lesson plans.
- Lessonstream: Jamie Keddie put these ready-to-use lessons plans together. You can search by topic, language level and even how much time you have.
- Tiny Texts is a great site with short readings and listenings just for practice. Or for class. This one’s on an e-book library opening in Texas.
- Breaking News English: More good stuff, this time on a controversial idea… “Speaking English may make you poorer” – Pre-Intermediate. A 26-page printable lesson containing listenings and 30+ online quizzes.
- Teach Them English: Adam Simpson again, this time with some good ideas here for teaching subject verb agreement to lower level adult learners.
- This is such a great idea: lesson plans (B2) using ‘Sherlock‘. Thank you, David Nichols! Premier Skills (football): If you’ve got a classroom full of boys, here’s one for you…
- A match report on last week’s match between Liverpool and Swansea on Premier Skills – British Council. Lots of great vocabulary and reading practice.
- Teach This: Writing and speaking activities on count and non-count nouns (A2-B1).
- The News in Levels: A good site for our students…good for reading, vocab and listening at roughly levels A2, B1 and B2.
- A new vocabulary learning/re-enforcing game from Cambridge Dictionaries Online – it’s free at the moment. Seriously good learning tool!
Videos for class
- A fun little video on prepositions for our younger learners – with a catchy tune.
- Film English: Kieran Donaghy has a couple new lesson plans out, one on an Oscar-nominated short ‘Head over Heels‘ emphasizing body idioms and speaking and the other on bullying using the spoken word poem ‘To this Day‘
Helpful Ideas
- Helpful tips for improving listening skills.
- 50 Incredibly Useful Links For Learning & Teaching The English Language
- Ozge’s blog is chock-a-block full of great ideas and digital resources. This one’s for vocabulary – something you can set for your students to do outside of class.
Free Downloadable Books
- ’50 tried and trusted activities for primary school kids‘
- ‘Starting to Teach Creative Writing in the English Language Classroom‘
Blogs for further reading
- ‘8 new punctuation marks that we desperately need’
- How we teach English as a foreign or second language – all those ‘oooh, let’s do it this way!’ – is always in state of flux. Here’s an interactive timeline showing (and explaining – click each method for more info) how far we’ve come.
- Chris Franek discusses whether we as teachers are working ourselves out of jobs. He asks whether we’re using technology for engaging education or just entertainment in the classroom and what that means to our futures.
Competitions
- Get your students involved with writing a cultural reader about their own world.
The winning class will win 30 printed copies of their Cultural Reader book and a class set of Readers (30 Macmillan Readers) as selected by Macmillan Education. http://www.macmillanreaders.com/cultural-readers-competition