Compiled by Lynda Steyne

It’s been a long while since we posted a recap. All things conference kept us busy and then recovery from the conference has kept us even more busy.

We’ve decided to put teacher development opportunities on 2 pages that we’ll update regularly instead of repeatedly posting the same things over and over. That way, you can also find recordings of webinars and conferences as well. They can be found above in the main menu under ‘TPD‘.

Summer Camp!

Kids aren’t the only ones who get to go to summer camp!SOL Slovakia presents: ‘SO[U]L Camp‘ with Kathy King and Mark Andrews!

• When: 16-24 July 2013
  Where: Cadca, Slovakia
  Hurry! Reserve your spot while there’s still room!

 

 Activities and Lesson Plans

• All kids love the classic running game ‘Red
  

  A great idea for practicing punctuation – and spelling.

  Light, Green Light’.
  Here’s an idea for using it to revise numbers or the alphabet with YLs

• James Keddie has lesson plans, free and ready-to-use. Lots and lots of lesson plans about all kinds of topics
• Just for fun: Witty insults by famous people. Could be used with older teens and adults as prompts for speaking or writing.

• A great – TRUE – story turned into all kinds ofEnglish language skills practice by Sean Banville: Swedish train drivers were forbidden to wear shorts on the job despite the summer heat. They’ve come up with a unique solution.
  • “Train drivers in skirts after shorts ban“
  • A 26-page printable lesson containing listenings and 30+ online quizzes
  • And a 2-page mini-lesson

  

Videos for Class

• From Kieran Donahue. Another amazing video-based lesson plan.  Great with teens. Based on the short film ‘Maybe’.

• Ever wonder why the ‘b’ in ‘doubt’ is silent? Gina Cooke knows. And this animation of her TED talk on the subject is great!

• Vicki Hollett produces some hysterical (and extremely helpful) SHORT videos on English language teaching points. Check out her YouTube channel or her video website.

Stuff to ponder

• Live to teach? Thoughts on work-life balance in teaching: An article in the Guardian on how to achieve some kind of balance when teaching is your life.

• John Arnold ‘figures out phrasal verbs’.

• Foreign subtitles can help comprehension of a second language in a regional accent: the idea behind this article is that it’s better not to turn on Slovak (or L1) subtitles, but the subtitles of the language used in the film or program. Learners remember more and become more fluent.

• iTDi (the organization co-founded by Chuck Sandy, one of this year eltforum.sk plenaries) has a blog. Each time, six people (teachers, ELT professionals) share their thoughts on the same topic, and others comment, like a huge, asynchronous conference dinner. Check out the topics here (scroll down to find the list on the right), then read and comment.

• On Blogging and Social media: This is (some of) what you can learn from Nik Peachey about using social media.

• 12 Principles of Collaboration in Learning: Let’s get out of our own little sandboxes. What would happen if we combined our efforts, complimented each others’ strengths and weaknesses, networked, collaborated, and worked as a team? Oh, the projects we could do, the places we could go, and the things we could change!

• Advent of Google means we must rethink our approach to education: “We have a romantic attachment to skills from the past. Longhand multiplication of numbers using paper and pencil is considered a worthy intellectual achievement. Using a mobile phone to multiply is not. But to the people who invented it, longhand multiplication was just a convenient technology. I don’t think they attached any other emotions to it. We do, and it is still taught as a celebration of the human intellect. ” Sugata Mitra

Free Books & Articles

• Innovations in learning technologies for English language teaching: Lesson ideas for…primary, secondary and adult learners; Business English, English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic Purposes

• 425 Free eBooks to download to Kindle, iPad/iPhone & Nook: So you want to read before bed? Jane Austen, Aesop, Alexander Pope, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, William Blake, free, downloadable, online, mobile.

• Three highlight articles from the April issue of Language Teaching Journal, download free until the 31 July 2013.
  – Forty years later: Updating the Fossilization Hypothesis
  – The inseparability of cognition and emotion in second language learning
  – Advancing research in second language writing through computational tools and machine learning techniques: A research agenda

Helpful Tools for Teachers

• (Only) 40 ways you can use a text: They work with authentic or edited texts, in business or general English. Little prep time needed, but great learning on the other side.
• Stuff English teachers should all at least know about if not use: 10 Online Tools to Master Language Teaching
• Google searches can sometimes be overwhelming with the pages of hundreds of thousands of results that come back. Did you know there’s a way to limit the results so you can find what you need? Here’s how: How To Create A Custom Search Engine For Your Students.

• 27 Ways To Increase Student Engagement In Learning: an infographic with some great ideas to get students involved.

• Alternatives To Homework: A Chart For Teachers: infographic with ideas to replace typical homework

• Shanthi Cumaraswamy Streat gathers all the PD and EFL tips she finds into this one great Scoop it! page – check it out!

• Do you use pinterest? Even if you don’t have an account, you can still check out all the boards for lots of teaching ideas. This one’s on teaching idioms.
• Goodbye Essay, Hello Podcast: We tend to think that new generations of learners lack certain skills due to exposure to new media. Maybe. Here’s how to enhance essay skills with the help of podcasts. Step by step.

• Eva over at ‘A Journey in TEFL’ is hosting the 33rd ELL, ESL, ELT carnival. The theme this time is ‘Songs in ELT Classrooms.’ If you’d like to participate with a great song lesson of your own, check out Eva’s blog.

• If you know anyone (native- or non-native speaker) considering becoming an English teacher, you might want to share this with them:
  MacMillan have prepared this helpful infographic which contains a step by step guide for teachers who want to plan their future as a teacher of English.
  For more advice, there’s the continuing professional development section of the TeachingEnglish site.

 

Scholarships

• IATEFL 2014 Harrogate Scholarship: Onestopenglish Creativity in the Classroom. “This scholarship is funded by onestopenglish and is open to teachers of any level of experience, working in any area of English language teaching.  Its aim is to reward the implementation of new and inventive ways of engaging students in the classroom by giving a teacher the opportunity to attend the IATEFL Annual Conference for the first time and to inspire other teachers through the publication of an article on the onestopenglish site.” You do NOT have to be a member of IATEFL to apply!

• Lead&Learn is holding a contest in which the prize is an all-expense paid Pilgrims course in the UK next year. Write a short creative and inspiring entry in either English or Slovak (no more than 300 words) on the topic “DOES a teacher deserve more..?” More details in the link.