teachertalk

The light at the end of the tunnel…

The end of the 3rd week (of 4 altogether) and teachers are tired, some have had to overcome some difficult times: contrasts with teaching models and rationale, personality traits and personal problems in and outside the course. What’s great to see is that all take on board peer and tutor comments from post TP feedback session, and are really developing a more accurate self-awareness which in turn gives them more confidence to give others positive or construcive feedback. Partly as a result, they really see and appreciate the benefits of teaching under obsernation and then talking about it afterwards. Greatly appreciated is also the opportunity to watch experienced teachers actually teaching, helping the more astute to see ‘outside the box’ and possibly beyond. The more organised and confident ones also have a go at different lesson shapes. The course is a time to experiment and stretch themselves as far as they can, even outside their ‘comfort zone’, especially towards TP8 and TP9 and the 3rd and 4th week.

First teaching practice

What a great group! Talents are already shining through. Today’s focus was mainly on classroom management. Tp feedback highly collaborative and constructive! Well done trainees!

Beginning the first CELTA week

First things first: General Admin: Signing and familiarising with the CELTA5 booklet, assignments, observation requirements and TP (teaching practice) structure and record. Creation of each trainee’s portfolio. Then onto some activities: Ice breakers, also with tutors, as models for tomorrow’s first TP lessons, and creation of 2 TP groups and activity allocation. Input sessions : Foreign language lesson and Classroom Management Trainees (Ts)motivated and excited about first TP tomorrow: only 20mins each. Ts really asking some pertinent questions and coming up with insightful answers too, which I’m delighted to see happening right from the first day!!

Book review

If you are thinking of buying the book ‘Lessons from good Language Learners’ edited by Carol Griffiths (CUP2008) you’ll find Darren Elliott’s chapter-by-chapter review enlightening and constructive to say the least. Read his review in Vol 18 n2 of the teaching journal: Modern English Teaching.

It’s great to be able to post directly from my BlackBerry!

teacher training observations and feedback

I’m about to start tutoring an ‘intensive’ CELTA course next week - four weeks through to 24th July - and I’d like to dedicate my blog notes to daily/weekly reflections as the course proceeds, especially about observing teachers and giving feedback, in the hope that you too will offer comments.

…watch this space!

http://www.eteachersacademy.com/

I’d like my first post to be about something simple but essential. Our own learning. I find this time of the year the most tiring - not because I’m rushing around teaching all over the place, but because I’m tired. The scholastic year has sucked almost every last drop of energy, but as I slow my routine, I start twitching, wondering what I can learn. What input, to recharge my batteries, I can have to put to good use?  

Many teachers, like me, are thinking about going into online teaching …. but where do we start to find out about it, how it works, what it is and so on? There’s a lot of information around but many of us won’t know where to start, who to ask, etc. This is when I discovered a brand new site for teachers like us which literally takes us back to the classroom to learn how to teach online and much more…. see for yourself at : 

 http://www.eteachersacademy.com/ 

Quote:

The E-Teachers Academy will offer a 360° program to their students including:

- Using Language Teaching Platforms
- Virtual Classroom Training
- Creating Lesson Material for Online Lessons
- Methodology
- Video Editing
- Graphic Editing
- Podcasting
- Marketing
- Creating Revenue Streams
- Content Monetization
- Product Development
- Social Media

Doesn’t it sound great!!!? It is not free and it’s not cheap…. and that may put some teachers off - not used to paying for information these days seeing as there’s so much free stuff around on the web, like Russell Stannard’s award-winning site,  but I think, as time goes by, this will become the norm… distinguishing quality from quantity….  

This E-Teachers Academy is about teaching both those teachers who are interested in setting up online themselves and those willing to incorporate more technology into their teaching.

The website is extremely new but promising, i think. I’m certainly going to recommend it to my trainee teachers on the next CELTA course.

Let me know what you think!

New beginnings

…and I think this quote nicely sums my feelings up about this project ….

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress,
and working together is success.”

(Henry Ford)