Compiled by Michaela Mozolova

Teacher Development Opportunites

International

• Free Online English Language Teaching Webinar through US Department of State: 6 free webinars beginning on Wednesday, April 17, 2013 from 12noon to 2:30pm. E-mail registration must be submitted by Friday, April 5, 2013
• SPECIAL OFFER: 19th TEA Summer School with Candy Fresacher and Ivan LackoWhen: 19 to 23 August, 2013 (Monday 14:00 to Friday 12:00)
  The Chamber has been offered a ‘5 for the price of 4’ special by our colleagues at the Teachers of English in Austria. The cost for each of the 5 participants would be 176EUR each for the summer school in addition to accommodation costs.
  More info here.
  Contact office@tea4teachers.org if you’re interested.
• TETA [Tuzla English Teachers’ Association in Bosnia & Herzegovina] is holding its 1st international conference
  Proposal submission deadline: March 31, 2013
  When: 15-16 June 2013
  Registration deadline: May 15, 2013
  Plenary speakers:
  Mark Andrews, SOL (Sharing One Language)
  Raymond Kerr, British Council
  George Kokolas, Express Publishing
• Call for Papers: IATEFL-H Annual Conference 2013
  Submission deadline: April 30, 2013
  When: 4-6 October 2013Where: Budapest

National (and international)

• ELTForum.sk Teacher Development Conference 2013
  Ken Wilson will be there – what about you?
  When: 7-8 June 2013
  Where: Bratislava
  Early-bird registration until 31 March 2013.
  Check the website for more info on speakers and registration.

East

• Monday, March 18th, Prešov: Macmillan is holding its annual ‘ELT ideas’ conference.

Northwest

• Thursday, April 11th, Žilina: ‘An Express Way of Learning‘ with  author Steve Lever (Express Publishing and INFOA)

West

• Tuesday, March 12th, Bratislava: ‘Playing with Texts‘ workshop with Ivan Lacko (FifUK & SCET) UPDATE: Registration CLOSED – sold out!
• 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)

Activities and Lesson Plans

• Thousands of free worksheets from School Express. You can even make worksheets of your own.
• Interactive Techno Travels – a great lesson from Paul Braddock.The latest ELT news, views and advice – plus free news-based classroom materials – from the Guardian Weekly’s Learning English section.
• Writing in 2010, Lindsay Clansfield shares his 6 favourite things to do from Penny Ur and Andrew Wright’s classic “Five Minute Activities.” For many of us, it was one of the few resources we had starting out. And if you didn’t know, eltforum.sk is delighted that Penny will be joining us for our conference in June.
• Via Teaching English – the British Council: Speaking has never been more fun!  -Activities to help us get our learners speaking
  -Motivating speaking activities for lower levels
  -Drama techniques to get them talking
• Via Teaching English – the British Council:
  – This magazine is written by young people from the UK. If you and your students want to keep up to date with the latest fashions, music or trends, this is the place to be.
  – Read at your level: The stories and articles in this section are written at three different levels of English, so you can choose one that is perfect for you and your students.
  – Short stories & poems: A selection of short stories and poems written by British authors
• For your young learners on the topic of jobs.
  A lovely story about a boy who’s thinking about what he wants to be when he grows up.
  Children can watch the story and do the worksheet.
• 50 Incredibly Useful Links for ELL Educators –  definitely useful.
• Lots and lots of activities for March from Montessori.

Videos for Class

• Kieran Donaghy’s been at it again: a new lesson for your teen or adult learners (B1-C1), this time on homelessness.
• This is a great site with lots of songs (like ‘Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes’) to use with your young learners. What’s even better, there are videos, lyrics and how to use the song in your classroom.

Stuff from Ken Wilson

• “…an English class full of state-school teenagers who HAVE to be there. They aren’t [language school] students who have paid to be there, nor are they students in a multinational class in Cambridge, England or Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  “For these students, at least for a few moments in your lesson, you have to try to create “The Wow Factor”.”
• Ken’s at the 2012 KOTESOL International Conference in Seoul, South Korea sharing quotations by famous people to help teachers reflect on what they do.

Free Downloadable Books

• Another free downloadable book from the BC – this time on how what we think about our mother tongue might influence how we teach a foreign language.
• March 7th is World Book Day and there’s a lot of reading and storytelling resources for all ages on their event’s website.

Stuff to ponder

• If we wouldn’t give our own children leftovers every day, why should we be comfortable giving our learners the same old thing every day? Patrick Jackson thinks on this a bit.
• What do teachers really need parents to understand?
  “For starters, we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don’t fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer.”
• Every month, Adam Simpson posts a list of excellent blog posts that he’s found. It’s good reading, not only informative but full of practical tips.
• Do you know the difference between ‘things’ and ‘stuff’?
• Chris Tribble analyses the collocations used in articles at the Guardian. Helpful explainations and good reading.

Helpful Tools for Teachers

• So, you know how we teachers keep bookmarking, posting and pinning all these great resources online? And then we can’t find anything when we really want it? Well, there’s an free online tool called ‘LiveBinder‘ that might just help out. We haven’t tried it yet, but we think it looks quite promising.
• Someone over at Edudemic has done a bit of work and sorted through a bunch of free apps that can be used in education. They’re also rated. If you’ve got an iPhone, iPad or other tablet, there’s probably something for you here.

Competitions

If you have a good lesson on Slovak Easter – or want to create one – you could enter in this competition from Mary Glasgow.

Opportunities for Our Students

United World Colleges (UWC) je neziskové združenie trinástich medzinárodných škôl, ktorých spoločným cieľom je šírenie internacionalizmu a medzinárodného porozumenia postaveného na myšlienkovom základe nemeckého pedagóga Kurta Hahna.

Ponuka štipendií na roky 2013/2014 a 2014/2015:

• Red Cross Nordic UWC, Nórsko – jedno plné štipendium
• UWC Mostar, Bosna a Hercegovina – jedno plné štipendium (50% hradí škola, 50% hradí nezisková organizácia )
• UWC of Adriatic, Taliansko – jedno plné štipendium (50% hradí škola, 50% hradí nezisková organizácia )
• Waterford Kamhlaba UWC, Svazijsko – jedno miesto, v plnej miere hradené rodičmi študenta

Štipendiá zahŕňajú školné, ubytovanie a stravovanie, nákup kníh a učebných pomôcok, nezahŕňajú náklady na cestovné a vreckové. O vreckové je možné požiadať niektoré školy dodatočne.