Exit tickets in the digital age

/ Lesson tips, Teachers, Young Learners

Exit tickets? What are they? When to use them? And how? Let’s see. There are two delicate parts in every lesson: the lead-in and the wind-down. Of course, the main part is about the target language, but its success depends on how you introduce the topic. The same importance needs to be given also to the last five minutes of a lesson: if a student leaves your classroom excited, satisfied, their brain will connect the new grammar or vocabulary to previous knowledge – what’s more faster and with a great number of new connections. Whereas, annoyed and confused students block

TIPS TO SURVIVE AND ENJOY YL LESSONS

/ Teachers, Young Learners

INTRODUCTION: TEACHING YL LESSONS This year I’m on maternity leave, well not officially, since in Italy mothers are requested to re-enter their jobs 3-4 months after their child’s birth, but let’s say, I’ve become a freelance mummy-teacher. What does that mean? In the morning, I started running an English home-nursery, while in the afternoon, I started teaching kids. On Wednesdays, I have lessons with my Mini Heroes, 6-7 year old boys (only boys). Obviously, my lesson planning is completely different from my good old lessons to adults and I usually need a shower after a lesson with them, but being

NOT A BIG DEAL: IT’S ONLY A CONVERSATION CLASS

/ New to ELT, Teachers

WHY TO STATE THE OBVIOUS? In 2006, I decided to go to a language school and study Italian. I had already had a good intermediate level in Italian at that time, but I understood that I needed some guidance. While I could read, watch TV (ergo listen), study grammar or vocabulary at home, I still needed somebody to do conversation with. So I started to explore what language schools had to offer. In Florence, it was no problem to find Italian courses for foreigners. However, this experience turned out to be shocking.

BTW, LESSON PLANNING

/ New to ELT, Teachers

INTRODUCTION One question on my job interviewer list is whether the candidate can handle more levels/age groups and different types of courses in one day. Most candidates answer automatically yes. However, a normal teaching day in our part of the world looks like this: pre-scheduled courses start at 3pm, 4.30pm, 6pm and 7.30pm (e.g. two YL, a one-to-one and finally an adult class) and you might be even lucky to get an individual lesson before that (let’s say 1.30 to 3pm). It can easily get overwhelming to sit down and write four-five lesson plans in a row for the coming day. You may not know

TEACHING OBSERVATION NOTES OF A D.O.S.

/ New to ELT, Teachers

ALIAS DON’T TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED After years of daily classroom routine, teachers tend to do things automatically, without even noticing that they do these things that way. These can be even bad habits (talking to students while continuously wandering about the classroom, using monotonous tone when giving feedback or just repeating ‘good job’ even after a mistake, etc.) and a supervisor after a classroom observation can (and should) help notice and correct them. However, there is a long list of good habits we usually do without thinking about them. When in 2011 I was asked to coordinate 12 teachers