Good morning and Happy New Year
I hope that you had a good break and that 2021 looks a bit brighter for you than 2020 did. It hasn't been a great start with the increased lockdown measures here in the UK, but I hope that my weekly missives will give you a bit of help and motivate you to continue to explore what's out there and keep thinking about your teaching, whatever that looks like at the moment. This week, I have a collection of classroom ideas to start off your year and get your learners speaking, a sneak preview of a video on building rapport with your class, and a look around a brilliant website that I think you'll love.
Some classroom ideasLet's start with something from the ELT-Training archives..... Are you looking for a few new ideas to liven up your January classes? This free resource,
Communication Activities, has a range of things to do in a class that require little preparation and will really get your learners talking. Try one out this week and let me know how it goes.
Sneak Preview
I haven't added anything to the CELTA Toolkit for a while (there are already a lot of videos on there) but someone asked me to make a video about building rapport with a class and I thought that this was a great idea and a gap in the Toolkit resource. What do you think is the secret recipe to develop the kind of relationship with a class that will engage and motivate them?
Here are my five top tips- see if your ideas for this accord with mine.
Website
I usually only point you in the direction of free sites, but I'm making an exception here, because there IS some free stuff here and because the things that are commercial are so good. I was asked to review Nik Peachey's new Teachers' App
and I've made a video about it here. It's great because there are so many useful materials and because (in particular) the lessons are so brilliant. They're useful, pedagogically well thought through and they look unbelievably professional. Online or in a classroom, your learners are going to love these materials and think that you are the best teacher, ever!
That's it for this week. If you like the newsletter, feel free to hit reply and let me know. If you're not so keen, there's an unsubscribe button below!
Until next Sunday,
Best
Jo
