Newsletter #8

Good morning

I hope that you're enjoying this regular missive- I'm really enjoying writing it and getting to know some of you through your replies. It's fantastic that so many of you acted on my Grammar Challenge last week, too- I hope you're finding it worthwhile... I've got another challenge for you this week, but more about that later... First, here's something to share with you.

ELT-Training Resource Library
If you are on a CELTA course, you'll know that for the assignments (particularly the Language Skills Related Task and the Language Related Task) you need to reference some reading that you've done. Now that fully online CELTAs are the norm, it's not easy to access the physical library of books that all CELTA centres have to provide and you might not be sure where to look on the internet for reliable, non-pirated materials and resources. This week, I opened the ELT-Training Resource Library for CELTA assignments - a range of material that I've put together to help you. It's all open source (no piracy here!) and the list is based on suggestions from a range of CELTA tutors. There are separate sections for each of the four assignments. If you've finished your CELTA course already, you can use the library for your professional development- there's lots of great stuff there!

Sneak preview
Onward to this week's sneak preview video. This is the first in a series that's going to be occupying us for the next month. Reflective practice is important and useful at all stages of your career- it doesn't matter whether you're still training, you've just qualified or you've been teaching for years- and it's especially helpful in times of change and new environments (such as going fully online). In this video, I'm asking you to record a class and over the coming weeks, I'll be giving you short, specific observation tasks that will help you focus on some aspects of your teaching that you might find helpful. Watch the first video this week and get ready for an interesting journey into investigating your teaching.

Website recommendation
The web is ever changing and sites come and go so this week I wanted to show you Jamie Keddie's website 'Lesson Stream', because it looks as if he's in the process of changing it. He has put up a new site which works on a paid subscription model but the old site is still up at the moment and has lots of brilliant free lesson plans, many with downloadable materials. They're often based around YouTube videos, and a lot of them use his 'video-telling' model (you can see a model of him demonstrating this here) which I've found really successful with classes. Try a lesson out and see how you get on.

So, that's it from me for now. Hope you have a great week and see you next Sunday.

Best
Jo Gakonga