Join Macmillan Webinars today!

Have you ever wanted to attend TEFL seminars but:

• found yourself living too far from the venue?
  
• did not have sufficient means to attend them?

Have you ever felt the need to ask the speaker some questions but felt too shy to do so?

If you answered yes to at least one of these questions, you might be interested in what Macmillan has to offer.

Macmillan Webinars allows you to watch live talks by one of the most important people in the ELT world online. You do not need to install any programmes and may watch the seminars directly form your browser. They are all free to view but you have to pre-register to be able to do so.

There is also an opportunity to watch seminars that took place before in the Archive. You may even download them for later use.


The sessions available in the Archive at the moment are:

Pete Sharma "New technology - new pedagogies"
Lindsay Clandfield "The power of lists"
Scott Thornbury "Seven things beginning with M"
Andy Roberts "Pronunciation in Communication: An Aviation Perspective"
Roy Norris "Taking students from Upper Intermediate to Advanced"

Here is a screenshot of the seminar by Scott Thornbury.

The next session will take place on December 2nd, 2009 and the guest speaker will be Carol Read. Her presentation is called "Control or Chaos? Managing classes of primary children in a positive way".

Looking forward to seeing you there! :)

http://www.macmillanenglish.com/BlankTemplate.aspx?id=43108

Freedocumentaries - watch, learn and uderstand

The most common belief about teenagers and young adults you come across these days is that they are easily bored, spoilt and not interested in anything.

It is very difficult to make them express opinions and engage in debates as they have, sadly, very little to say. Sounds familiar?

With the communicative approach knocking on the door of every EFL classroom, it has become extremely hard for teachers to come up with intriguing and captivating material that would eventually make students open their minds and mouths.

A few years ago I was working on a summer camp teaching English to adolescents from various backgrounds. Some of them came from broken families, some from very well off ones. Yet they all had something in common – they did not want to speak English and take part in discussion me any my colleagues were laboriously preparing.

The theme of the camp was Travelling broadens the mind and we really wanted the kids to learn something about the world. Unfortunately, interesting (in our opinion) articles about different countries, colourful pictures of fascinating (for us) places, games and group work did not work for them at all.

We spent hours searching the internet but in the end we found what seemed to be perfect. www.freedocumentaries.org is a website featuring a lot of free and full length documentaries touching upon a great deal of controversial issues. As my students were doing a project about India, we watched ‘Born into Brothels’, a wonderful film about children of prostitutes from Calcutta, whose lives changed after learning how to take photographs. And yes, it worked this time! More than that, it worked like magic!!!

I still have not seen all the documentaries on the website but there are some definitely worth recommending:

·        ‘Born into Brothels’ (take a look at http://kids-with-cameras.org/home/ and use it as an extension to the film)

·        ‘Invisible Children’ about children suffering as a result of abduction during the war in Uganda (also see http://www.invisiblechildren.com/home.php)

·        ‘Jesus Camp’ about religious camps for kids in the US

·        ‘Super Size Me’ about an experiment conducted to prove that eating fast food is harmful

·        ‘Ghosts of Rwanda’ about a civil war in the country

·        ‘India. The Land of Missing Children’ about kids kidnapped and sold as slaves to carpet factories

Be sure that seeing documentaries from www.freedocumentaries.org will enliven your classrooms. They are shocking, thought provoking and will stimulate a great deal of productive discussions. 

Jug, jug, jug, Videojug

With http://www.youtube.com/ blocked in Turkey, teachers are left with a minimal number of websites offering videos to use in their classrooms.



There is one website, however, that I am particularly fond of. Having come across it by chance, http://www.videojug.com/ turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.


There are ten thematically organised categories (Beauty&Style, Creative&Culture, Family&Education, Food&Drink, Health&Wellbeing, Lifestyle&Home, Love&Dating, Money&Careers, Sports&Outdoors, Technology&Cars) each including a vast amount of videos.


Most of them are pretty short, ranging from 1 to 5 minutes and some are clearly inappropriate for kids. That is why make sure that you watch a video before showing it to your students.


What are the advantages of using www.videojug.com in the ESL classroom?

• Videos collected there are an inexhaustible source of authentic language use provided in a compact, concise form

• It is a chance to introduce new, interesting vocabulary or phrases

• Because the videos are short, students are left with no time to get bored while watching them

• The website contains videos to match almost any topic you discuss in the classroom

• Bearing the Multiple Intelligences theory in mind, a video watched in the classroom increases the learning abilities of Visual and Auditory students


How can we make use of the videos in the classroom?

• Let students simply watch. It might be a great opportunity to introduce a topic and set up a context relevant to the lesson you are planning to teach

• Watching something controversial or surprising might be a starting point for a productive discussion

• They may watch and simply answer some questions provided by the teacher

• Students might take notes and later compare them with a partner

• Use it as a dictogloss – the students first watch and listen, then listen and take notes, after that compare with a partner and produce a final version of what was being told

• Students can write a summary of what they have seen

• You may choose two similar videos and ask students to pinpoint similarities and differences

• Try to play only the sound, the students have to imagine and visualise what takes place in the video (what the speaker looks like, what the location and time of the day are); allow time for checking if their guesses were correct

I used http://www.videojug.com/ with my 4th graders last year when we were talking about cooking and practised writing recipes. Having watched quite a lot of videos, they were supposed to write about and present an interesting recipe of a dish they like. The outcome was amazing!

A webiste review

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/more/management/contents02rewards.htm

There are many ways that help us reward our students.
Some of them are useful and some, though effective, negate the very idea of teaching.

The ones I particularly dislike involve ‘bribery’ i.e. offering students sweets, toys or stationery in order to reward good behaviour. Obviously, if we promise a 7 year old a toy for being good, the chances are he will do everything to get the prize. We must not forget however that methods based on behaviourism can lead to a dead end. Namely:

• The student will learn to get a prize for anything good he does and will expect it all the time.


• In case a prize is not provided, a teacher may encounter tantrums or any other outbursts of negative behaviour (in my view, fully justified)


• The child’s focus will be on getting something material not on appropriate behaviour or educational objectives


• Any attempt to change the system into more humanist oriented type of rewarding will have consequences as the ones mentioned above


• It is an unnecessary expenditure as there are other ways to maintain good behaviour in class


Most of us have heard of the Star and Smiling Faces types of rewarding good behaviour. They are easy to implement and require minimal preparation on the part of the teacher.

Some of the attention-grabbing ideas I have found on the website discussed are:

• Behaviour Ladder
• Behaviour Train (similar to the ideas I have discussed earlier but more elaborate)
• Class Celebrity
• Peacock Targets (with a downloadable sheet)

Have fun using them in your classes!

Some websites to use with YLs

My personal favourite is http://www.thecolor.com/ It's very colourful and has plenty of pictures to colour ranging from Aesop's Fables to Zodiac signs. The number of categories is amazing but the pictures are pretty basic. Perfect choice for kindergarten and grade 1 who don't really know how tu use a mouse yet :)


For online coloring, you can also try http://www.myfreecolouringpages.com/ This website also offers printable coloring pages, dot-to-dot exercises and an oline picture maker. The last one is a LOT of fun!


On the http://www.thekidzpage.com/ we can find games, clipart, learning pages, puzzles and more. I personally reccommend the Fun Learning Games. The Math Flash Card Game was really cool and your students will surely like it too.


http://www.coloring.com/ does not really look appealing but has plenty of coloring pages to bring into play.