In the past many people taught in classrooms with no technology, but during the pandemic this flipped to teaching with technology but no classroom. Both situations create constraints on how you can teach.
How do constraints create creativity?
We need constraints for creativity – absolute freedom can make creativity very challenging.
Madagascar – classrooms without technology
This was a situation Jill and Charlie Hadfield taught in. They worked in Madagascar, but there were no books. There might be a cracked blackboard, or slates for children. The solution came from the market. Smallholders there had stocks of large paper to wrap goods in. They got schools to buy lots of these pieces of paper. They put up a washing line in a classroom, with one picture at the front of the room and one at the back. Children sat in pairs back to back and described the picture they could see to their partner. Here are examples of the pictures:
The pandemic: technology without classrooms
Here are examples of the kinds of constraints when working online:
So how did teachers work around these constraints? Here are examples of using classic ELT activities.
Using video and audio
Interview an object
Jill would be off screen and have an object on screen. Students ask questions to the object, and the teacher answers as if they’re the object. Then the students do this.
> Not everybody needs to be on the screen at the same time.
Running dictation
Use email / a link to send to one student before the lesson to print out or put on the phone. Put the phone or text at the end of the room. When the teacher says go, the student has to get up and go to the text.
Participation tools
For example, chat box, emoji reactions.
Longest sentence
> This worked well even if students couldn’t get video or audio to work.
Who am I?
> You can ‘Spotlight’ / ‘Pin’ somebody so that even if they’re not talking, they’re the main screen. It’s like you’re putting them on stage.
> By giving the students the constraint that they can only use the thumbs up / thumbs down button with the video off, it forced students to ask yes / no questions.
Sharing your screen
Art thoughts
> You don’t just have to share PowerPoint slides or websites, you can share many other things too.
Same words, different place
> You can spotlight more than one person to have a dialogue.
For example, in a supermarket, in a city, in a library. Then another slide in the same place but without displaying the dialogue.
Breakout Rooms
Lindsay found that he did fewer pair/groupwork activities but for longer, compared to his classroom. They tended to be longer activities with feedback. There tended to be more open pairwork, rather than closed pairwork.
Dreamtowns
> Getting students to write things on paper and hold it up to the screen meant that others would lean forward to look at it. It seemed to engage others who were in the session as they wanted to see.
This worked well for mini projects.
Clock match
This is a kind of information gap.
> Students can produce their own materials. It might take around 10 minutes to create the materials, but it makes it possible to do interactive pairwork games in breakout rooms.
Zooming Out
> Micro breaks away from the computer.
> Teaching on Zoom drastically reduces the teacher’s mobility, which can be very tiring.
> It also feels like you’re teaching into a mirror a lot.
> Tiring for students too to always be in front of a screen!
Stand up, stretch your arms, walk to the nearest door, count the steps, type in the chat box. Then who was the closest? Who was the furthest?
Go to the fridge, find something which is yellow, come back and tell your partner.
Get up, walk around the room, mentally name 5 things in English, then come back and say what you’ve done.
On 13th November 2021, I attended a truly hybrid conference. 150 trainers attended from around the world, with some of us in the building at IH London, and the rest attending online. All of the sessions were presented via Zoom so that we were all watching the same thing and could participate equally, either via the chat or by speaking to the person next to us. Those of us in the building also had catering 🙂
Here is the YouTube playlist with recordings of all of the talks.
The sessions I attended were:
International skills for better communication – Chia Suan Chong
Challenging CCQs – Yulianto Lukito and Yanina Leigh
Teaching online: construct and methods to give teachers what they need – Alison Castle (mostly about the Trinity Certificate in Online Teaching)
Online teacher training in low resource contexts – Nicky Hockly
Using WhatsApp for teacher development – Danny Norrington-Davies and Khassoum Diop
Meeting local needs in contexts new to the internet – Joe Wilsdon
Raining on prom night – James Egerton and Giovanni Licata
Learning by doing: Replanning a methodology course to prepare for online teaching – Joanna Szoke
A journey through time – Abeer Ali Okaz
Final comments by Adrian Underhill
IH London this morning 🙂
I really enjoyed this conference format. I was lucky enough to be able to attend in person, which meant that I got to see all of the sessions and to discuss them with people face-to-face too. Because the sessions ran online we heard the voices of people from all over the world, including questions by chat and on video from a range of different countries, not just the people who could make it to IH London. I saw talks presented by teachers in York, Sydney, Senegal, Barcelona, Cairo, Moscow, Rome and Budapest. The conference felt really international, and it really did feel like it was talking about the Future of Training and what is possible for us in the future – I can’t remember the last time a conference theme was actually fulfilled as well as this! I’m looking forward to watching the recordings of parallel sessions which I couldn’t attend.
International skills for better communication – Chia Suan Chong
A large proportion of our job relies on us talking and interacting with our students, and helping them to interact with each other as they communicate in English. It should naturally follow that we should be experts at interpersonal skills and communication skills. But we know that that’s not always true. A typical teacher training course might address areas like how to grade our language, how to give instructions or how to respond to students’ errors but seldom do we discuss how we can build trust and rapport with our students, how we can deal with conflict or how we can adapt our communication style to the different students we encounter. In this interactive session, we’ll be reflecting on our range of interpersonal skills and considering how we can develop them.
I attended Chia’s version of this talk at IATEFL 2021 this year. You can find the summary at the end of this post. There were a few extra points in this teacher training version (I recommended you read both posts to get the full picture!):
Transactional Communication v. Interpersonal Communication
T = Focus on information exchange v. I = Focus on building relationships
T = Getting things done v. I = Getting to know people
T = For the short term (results) v. I = For the long term (relationship)
T = Shorter turns v. I = Longer turns
T = Predictable script v. I = Less predictable
T = Often measurable result (Did you get what you needed?) v. I = Not instantly measurable
Interpersonal skills are the skills you need to interact and communicate with people….Interpersonal skills are sometimes referred to as social skills, people skills, soft skills or life skills.
Skillsyouneed.com
As teacher trainers we tend to give feedback/tips on transactional communication, rather than interpersonal communication. This is often easier or more straightforward for us to do this, not least because of the predictability of transactional scripts. Interpersonal skills like rapport, classroom dynamics, building a positive atmosphere are all much more difficult to give advice on.
Chia presents a series of training called Fierce Conversations, created by Susan Scott, who also wrote a book with the same name [Amazon affiliate link]. The idea is that the conversation is not about the relationship, it is the relationship. When we have conversations with others, we’re building relationships – we can’t separate these two areas.
What tips can we give to build rapport?
We came up with these ideas:
Remember names.
Share information about yourself.
Ask genuine questions.
Be sincere and honest.
Remember what they say.
Respect them.
Space in the lesson for relationship building.
Take account of their experiences beyond the classroom/lessons.
When you do an online search for how to build rapport, there are some useful ideas, but we might need to be culturally sensitive with some of them, for example about using humour or laughing often.
Incorporate personal stories and personal experiences: some students might find this unprofessional. They might have a different expectation of what is and isn’t appropriate in the classroom.
Allow students to make decisions on classroom activities: some students might not be happy with what they might see as an abdication of the teacher role. Menus of options might be more useful than open questions – you could also use the contents page of a coursebook to do this.
[My note: It’s also important to maintain our boundaries and our mental health, so be cautious with advising ideas like ‘volunteering your time outside class to support students’ or ‘have breakfast/lunch in the school cafe surrounded by your students’.]
Ultimately, one size doesn’t fit all with how we build rapport.
Why should I trust you?
Good question!
Because we’re teachers.
Because we’ve built up a certain level of knowledge.
Because we trust them.
If you want to read more about trust, Chia recommends The Trusted Advisorby David H. Maister, Robert Galford and Charles Green. It includes the Trust Equation (described in this post). To improve trust, you ultimately need to reduce self-orientation.
Do you ever have people who ask you for advice, but really they want you to listen to them complaining about what other people think of them? That’s one example of self-orientation. Self-orientation is when you put yourself in the centre, rather than having regard for the people you’re talking to.
We should bring trust into the conversation in teacher training courses. What efforts are teachers/trainers making to build relationships in the classroom? How do we build trust? Which strategies do we use?
Ways that we build trust:
Establish competence – I’m competent in this area, you can trust me
Finding common ground (commonality)
Empathy
Openness (information) – what you see is what you get, I don’t have a hidden agenda
Reliability – you can trust me because I’m reliable
Openness (emotion) – showing vulnerability, you have to be genuine about it!
Willingness to trust first – we trust people who trust us
In a high-trust relationship, you can say the wrong thing, and people will still get your meaning. In a low-trust relationship, you can be very measured, very precise, and they’ll still misinterpret you.
Stephen Covey
Here are some critical incidents you could discuss with trainees. How would you react?
Your student arrives late for class. They don’t apologize and they don’t give any reasons for being late. We’re conditioned to believe that justifying behaviour in this way is the correct, so we’re taken aback when our social script for this situation has been disrupted. The student might not have the same social script. Who says that we should give reasons for being late? He might not feel like he’s late – it might be a different perception of time. If you haven’t specified classroom rules from the beginning of the course, then it might be different.
You tell students to address you by your first name and they keep calling you ‘professor’.
You’re telling the class a story and one student keep interrupting to comment on parts of your story and to ask questions.
You could think about your communication style, as well as the communication style of somebody you don’t get along with. What are the similarities and differences? Are your problems with communication a result of the similarities or the differences? It can help people to realise they have different communication styles. Chia has included a series of clines to help you do this in her book Successful International Communication [Amazon affiliate link/BEBC non-affiliate link]
Nothing can be said in a way in which it cannot be misunderstood.
Karl Popper
The illusion of transparency: We always know what we mean, and so we expect others to know it too. There is a tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people understand us.
The ADAPT model (developed by Chia)
Awareness: What’s happened here? Describe the situation in other ways.
Don’t judge: avoid words like ‘picking at’, ‘being negative’
Analyse: can you think of at least 3 interpretations of why this is happening in this way/why the people behaved in this way?
Persuade yourself: align the communication values of the other person with yourself
Try: Me and my style v. Them and their style. If you try and adapt 20% of your behaviour, you might get 80% of the results you want (Pareto principle)
Challenging CCQs – Yulianto Lukito and Yanina Leigh
This presentation deals with CCQs (concept checking questions) as a language clarification technique. Trainees on pre-service courses and new teachers sometimes claim this technique is rigidly based on “the CELTA method” and does not work well in the real classroom where learners desire clear explanations. This session will question the validity of such a claim and propose practical strategies to deal with issues arising in this area.
Yuli and Yanina are asking does “questioning” work? The points below say they don’t:
Observation of trainees in pre-service courses
Lack of use – don’t use them at all
Overuse – asking them when they’re not necessary
Inappropriate use – not asking the right questions
Misuse – ‘If my room is upstairs, is it downstairs?’ (no purpose at all!)
Observation of experienced teachers
CCQs ‘don’t work’ with lower levels
‘Explanation’ is simpler and more time-efficient
Students don’t answer questions, so we’ll have to explain anyway
Learner feedback (anecdotal)
Learners want teachers to ‘explain’ well
Learners expect teachers to ‘explain’
Learners may perceive a lack of explanation as a lack of knowledge
So what can we do as trainers and teachers to help trainees/teachers see the benefit of questioning approaches?
Less CCQs – More CCTs
Concept clarification techniques, rather than questions.
On many courses, CCQs tend to become the technique to be used – in lessons, in assignments. The misperception of CCQs as part of ‘The CELTA method’ could be partly our fault as trainers. Should they be an obligatory part of Language Related Tasks? Is this giving trainees the impression that CCQs are more important than other techniques?
We should assess their ability to select appropriate concept clarification techniques instead. Here’s a selection of what trainees could use as a CCT:
Antonyms/synonums
TPR/mime
Cline and timelines
CCQs
Ask for examples and extension
Visuals/Realia/Audio-visual
Scenario/presentation
Guided discovery
Explanation
Translation
Develop ‘questioning’ skills appropriate to the level
Help trainees become successful in eliciting information. Could becoming skillful at using questioning tehcniques effectively enable trainees (and teachers) to move away from lecturing learners? Explanations can be a comfort zone for many teachers, but this could be because they lack the skill of questioning well.
Focus on purpose first: to get information, opinions, check understanding
Question design and variety e.g. Funnel questions: typical CCQs. We ask quite a few questions to check the core meaning. Probing questions: allows you to gather more subjective data based on learner response. e.g. What are some examples of things which are revolting? Soup. Tell me why soup is revolting. Leading questions: If you ate soup, would you vomit straight away? Recall and process: open-ended questions. Use this promote critical thinking and discussion. Do you remember last week when we talked about….? What do you remember?
Scripting and practising
Rephrasing and adjusting: don’t give up too quickly. If students don’t answer, try to reword the question, provide more clues, though don’t turn it into a guessing game.
Consider waiting time – yes!
Being able to vary question design can help trainees avoid being in the habit of patterns like 2 questions answered ‘no’ followed by one answered ‘yes’.
This set of skills could be more useful fuel for a session than one dedicated to how to write CCQs.
Flipped approach
Trainees plan CCQs for TL allocated. Peer-teaching to get feedback on appropriacy. This can improve teaching quality as trainees have a chance to experiment with techniques.
Video trainees (with permission!) during the lessons – gather a library of weak and strong clarification stages for other trainees to watch and discuss. Trainees aren’t really watching their peers on the days when they’re teaching – this could create a wider library for them to access.
Play games with CCTs. For example, charades. This could give trainees a chance to practise these techniques.
Give trainees the chance to go back and re-teach language to peers and see what they can improve, in a non-assessed, safe environment.
Responding to learners’ expectations – Is there a place for ‘explanations’ in the language classroom?
Yes, there is, as long as we explain well.
The students might have a different understanding of what explanation means to us – we might contrast explanation with questioning, whereas students might equate explanation with clarification.
There are some situations when explanation might be better:
L1 negative transfer – it might be faster sometimes to explain in the language
Universal concepts – just tell them what it is (e.g. banana)
Lack of knowledge – if they don’t know, you can’t elicit it – just tell them!
When students ask a random language question in the middle of the lesson – it can be frustrating if students are questioned in response
Error correction technique – it can be more efficient
Thematic words/phrases – key words for the lesson, tell them what it is and move on. You could use rhetorical questions to generate interest and move on.
[Odd CCQ moment I came across recently, clarifying the meaning of some global problems. “Child mortality. Are you OK with that?” Nobody batted an eyelid at this strange question!]
In conclusion, it’s not about abandonining CCQs, but keeping a balance. Helping trainees to realise when to ask and when to tell. CCQs can be ineffective for trainees, because they haven’t developed and practised questioning skills during the course.
In our discussion at the end of the session, Richard mentioned the idea of using techniques/questions to bring meaning into focus, stopping it from being so fuzzy. I like that idea that the meaning is blurred at first, and you’re using techniques to tighten it up. You could extend this metaphor – how focussed does the image need to be? Does it need to be completely sharp, or is a little fuzzy good enough? What’s the most efficient way to make it sufficiently sharp to move on with the lesson?
Teaching online: construct and methods to give teachers what they need – Alison Castle (mostly about the Trinity Certificate in Online Teaching)
This talk reports on Trinity’s development of a new online course and qualification that supports teachers working in an online environment. We will first review how we arrived at the underlying pedagogical underpinnings and then talk about how these were implemented in the course design. Finally, we will consider data from impact studies to identify lessons learnt for future support.
Some initial conversation questions:
If you have experienced a move from in-person to online teaching, what skills or knowledge did you feel you needed in order to be as effective online as you are in an ‘in-person’ class?
What skills or knowledge do you think teahcers need in general when transitioning from ‘in-person’ to online teaching?
What types of resources are needed to help teachers develop their online teaching skills?
They started off with a webinar series called Transformative Teachers, which has been running for a number of years. At the beginning of the pandemic, they started creating free online learning resources and enable blended and online Trinity courses. This moved on to writing a full courses, piloting and trialling it, and then launching it in the autumn.
It is self-study, convenient, bite-sized, and includes lots of examples of showing how to teach English online. They’re not just perfect classes, but real-life ones with a critique of what did and didn’t work. The support is informed by research and experience. There is a communicative focus, with the learner kept at the centre of the process.
The course is designed to develop the following areas:
Developing teachres’ ability to use online tools effectively
Helping teachers identify online tools that meet learning needs
Using interaction that encourages communicative learning in an online environment
Using online assessment techniques that meet learning needs
Helping teachers create a motivating environment for online learning
Increasing teachers’ confidence in facilitating online learning
There are 10 units of study, divided into 3 modules:
Preparing for the online classroom (intro, planning, classroom management)
Developing language skills
Resources for learning and teaching (tasks and activities, resource adaptation, design and creation)
You can access separate units or whole modules, so it’s flexible. There’s a sample unit on the website. It’s also possible to get a regulated qualification, an Ofqual Level 4 Certificate (CertOT), from Trinity if you complete the whole course.
Some lessons they learnt from developing an online course:
Test, pilot and trial as much as possible. Review content from different perspectives, including welfare experts, not just teachers, schools, academics.
Ensure there is time to react to trials and reviews.
Choose a platform that works globally or for your target area.
Check copyright restrictions for content and learn about Creative Commons.
Be aware of safeguarding.
Lessons learnt about teachers’ needs:
Teachers need to be shown focussed, practical techniques to help their ‘just-in-time learning’.
Videos of real classes are just as valuable as mini best-practice videos.
Teachers need to be directed to consolidate learning, just like ‘non-teacher’ learners
Online learning must have a variety of media to help maintain interest and support local adaptation.
Teaching is a messy business: acknowledge and embrace this.
Teachers want certification for learning just as much as learners do!
Online teacher training in low resource contexts – Nicky Hockly
School closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic have led to learning loss at all levels of education, including for teachers. This talk reports on fully online teacher training projects that TCE have carried out over the last 18 months in data-poor contexts in Africa. Lessons learned about designing fully online teacher training courses for low resource contexts will be shared.
The Consultants-E are members of Aqueduto and take part in research into online teacher training – there’s lots of interesting information on their website.
Through TCE, Nicky has experience of running projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, including English by WhatsApp, English Connects and a project called CoELT.
Some of the challenges to moving teacher training online during the pandemic (AQUEDUTO, 2022 – research to be published soon):
Lack of digital skills amongst trainers
Lack of access to tech
Lack of support for well-being, of teachers and learners
Resistance to working online
Positives found in the same research:
Digital upskilling
Rethinking teacher assessment
Enhanced collaboration and support
Online teacher training is now ‘on the map’ – accepted and recognised as valid
Nicky is telling us about a specific online project in South Africa.
Challenges:
Widespread school closures
Teachers unable to reach learners remotely
Rural / urban digital divide
High data costs (highest on the continent); loadshedding (rolling electricity cuts)
Lack of devices (e.g. one feature phone per family – i.e. with a keyboard, not a smartphone)
Online teaching/training via a VLE and/or videoconferencing not realistic in many SA contexts
Massive learning loss, especially in rural and deprived areas
COELT: Certificate in Online English Language Teaching: done in cooperation with the British Council and the Department for Basic Education (DBE). TCE developed the course, then trained a group of Master Trainers who took the course as participants at first then cascaded the training to teachers. The course was:
40 hours fully online
6 modules over 6 weeks
Aligned to EFAL (English as a First Additional Language) materials for Grades 1-12
Aligned to CiPELT and CiSELT training (teaching methodology certificates)
Course tools:
Self-study materials on a Google site
WhatsApp for teacher reflection and group work
Weekly Zoom sessions (for debrief and reflection)
Mentoring and evlauation:
Group mentoring via WhatsApp
Individual coaching via Zoom – several times during the cascade
Evaluation of online competencies via an evidence-based evaluation framework with indicators
As it was for a low-tech context, they kept the following in mind:
Easy to access materials: Google site, not behind a password protected VLE
Mobile-friendly: designed for mobile first
Low data demands: icons rather than photos, audio rather than video, H5P to create simple interactive elements in self-study materials (e.g. drag and drop, click on ABCD and get feedback)
South African teaching materials and local accents in audio
Downloadable PDFs for each module (many people will find wifi, download materials and take them away to read them)
WhatsApp as the main communication channel for teacher training
WhatsApp for demo live language lessons
WhatsApp Live Lessons – synchronous interaction
Some related research from MIT done in South Africa to train community leaders in rural areas: Mohlabane and Zomer, 2020.
TCE took DBE materials and thought about how it could be delivered via WhatsApp in an engaging, realtime lesson.
The live lesson starts off with rules and routines. 10 minutes/5 minutes before the lesson, they check ‘Are you ready?’ The start of the lesson is reviewing the group rules which were established in the first lesson. There’s a clear signal for when they start: *OK, everybody. Ready, steady, go.* The lessons are very intense and very fast, although it’s important to remember that typing can take longer on a feature phone. The pace of the lesson is slower on a feature phone than on a smartphone.
They demo a live lesson on WhatsApp, with the trainees experiencing the lesson as students. Then there is clear signal that they’re now teachers, and share their immediate reactions to the lesson. There can be a mix of voice notes and text.
They also used WhatsApp for reflective course tasks during the course.
Findings
The digital skills of the teachers was so much lower than they expected. Key digital skills were lacking, for example being able to copy and paste. They added a 6-hour key digital skills to the beginning of the course with these absolute basics.
Tech with low demands in terms of data, but also in terms of the digital skills required.
Videoconferencing might not be appropriate – they used it because the DBE requested it, but not everybody could use it.
They used WhatsApp in RT (real time) and NQRT (not quite real time) – a combination of these interactions was very effective.
The interaction in WhatsApp was with text, pictures and voice notes, but no videos.
They integrated ways of how to use WhatsApp in other ways for education, for example liaising with parents.
Nicky expects that WhatsApp will continue to be used in this way even after the pandemic.
Using WhatsApp for teacher development – Khassoum Diop and Danny Norrington-Davies
In this session we will share our experience of using WhatsApp to offer development opportunities to large groups of teachers or teachers working in different locations. We will offer tips and advice on how to set up groups and set boundaries, encourage sharing and participation, and how to help teacher developers manage their time and commitments. We will finish by offering suggestions on how WhatsApp might be used on teacher development courses.
Danny is a trainer from IH London, and Khassoum is a trainer in Senegal. They ran the session as a Q&A. Danny asked questions and Khassoum gave the answers.
Some initial questions:
Have you ever used WhatsApp for teachign training?
How might WhatsApp be used for training in your context?
Why do you use WhatsApp for training and development?
Lots of teachers in different and sometimes remote locations
Poor internet coverage does not allow for high tech tools
Does not require lots of training/digital skills
Can use text, pictures and voice notes
Less expensive than other tools
How many teachers do you tend to work with?
As many teachers as possible! Locally and internationally.
What do you mainly use WhatsApp groups for?
Social interactions – building rapport and community with other teachers
Sharing materials
Sharing techniques and ideas
What advice do you have for setting up and running discussions?
Set up a clear, focussed question.
Set clear time limits, e.g. the end of the week.
Situate discussions in the classroom so they are more real.
Respond to contributions and ask follow up questions so teacher do more than give lists of ideas.
Summarise and share the discussion at the end – these summaries can become training materials or articles for publication. The summaries are also shared on WhatsApp. Summaries can be written by the co-ordinating trainer, or by a member of the group.
What kinds of topics have you had discussions about?
They tend to focus discussions on a specific topic, for example, the different stages of listening comprehension, or strategies for teaching listening. The discussions can also motivate teachers to explore topics in more depth.
Discussions to develop content knowledge – for example, based on problems a student has, asking for advice, What would you say?
Discussions to develop pedagogic knowledge – for example, pair or groupwork.
Discussions framed as problems/case studies can be helpful to encourage teachers to answer.
How important is it to have rules and regulations on your teacher WhatsApp groups and how do you set this up?
A sample set of rules:
Remember that [this group] abides by these rules:
English posts ONLY
No religious or political posts
Give and take ONLY in [this group]
Do not keep silent, participate as much as possible.
No personal discussions in [this group]
Thank you for your understanding.
Tips:
Set clear rules and boundaries at the start. These could relate to content, tone and times when you can post.
Have a system to deal with transgressions e.g. give a warning before taking action/suspending a participant
Give new participants time to settle before they become active
Talk to the ‘ghosts’ (the people who watch but don’t participate) – make sure people are giving as well as taking, because everybody’s ideas are valid. They find that a lot of people contribute the following session after this.
What advice do you have for encouraging teachers to share materials? What do you have to consider when you share materials?
There is a rule that they’re not there to assess or evaluate materials, but that everybody’s materials and ideas are valid. They don’t want people to feel ashamed about sharing materials. Be clear that the thread is about sharing rather than assessment.
Set a clear task e.g. ‘What speaking activity have you used recently that your students enjoyed? Please share it here saying what the task is and why you think the students enjoyed it’
How do you limit your own time commitments with the number of groups you have?
Khassoum makes sure he has time to rest. He chooses which sessions to attend, rather than attending all of them.
Tips:
Set time limits for discussions.
Share the forum with other trainers if possible.
Have cut off times in the day when the group is closed.
Turn off your phone or mute notifications for set periods.
Make sure you have boundaries.
How do you ensure that the group is democratic rather than autocratic?
They tried to have different people running the sessions, including volunteers from the group. Some people said that they wanted to run a session because they wanted to learn something – you don’t have to be the knowledgeable one.
Tips:
Invite teachers to set discussions or ask questions.
Inform the teachers you will be absent from the discussion for a set period. (Give them space!)
Set reflective questions e.g. ‘What was the biggest challenge you have faced with your class recently and how did you overcome it?’
Question from Khassoum: How do you think these ideas would work on a teacher training course?
Set ‘office hours’ and clear boundaries around topics e.g. no planning questions, no changing the topic mid-discussion.
Create and delete groups through the course e.g. Q&A for each assignment.
Set reflection tasks before feedback and sit out the discussion.
Flip training by setting questions or readings for input sessions. You can also encourage trainees to ask you questions: Tomorrow we’re going to talk about reading skills. What would you like to know?
Set observation tasks and run discussions during TP.
Q&A/Comments
Trainers really appreciated the chance to share responsibility and to learn from each other in the WhatsApp groups.
There is no obligation for people to join groups. Discussions can be weekly, monthly, or at random. In their platform, they have Friday discussions from 4-6pm, though sometimes people share questions at other times. (A little like the #eltchat hashtag on Twitter!)
Reflective elements could be done in L1 if the English level is too low to be able to reflect in English (e.g. A1/A2), even if the trainer doesn’t understand the language.
They can see that the WhatsApp groups are working, because they see people sharing the ideas in other contexts, such as in other groups they are members of, and crediting the ideas back to the WhatsApp groups.
Group work is possible in WhatsApp too – you can have a bigger group with everyone, and smaller groups for teachers/students which you’re part of. [Teaching via WhatsApp is a whole new world to me, and sounds very exciting!]
They share WhatsApp groups organically by creating flyers which can be shared by/with other teachers. There’s a lot of word of mouth.
Meeting local needs in contexts new to the internet – Joe Wilsdon
The internet gains 700,000 users every day. The African Union plans for every individual on the continent to have internet access by 2030. With the assumption that English will remain the global language, how can language teacher training meet local needs in countries and cultures newly connected to the internet?
The internet is gradually becoming available to more and more people. Some initial discussion questions:
How has the internet changed your work as a teacher in your country?
Imagine you were training an online CELTA with candidate teachers from Nigeria, Pakistan and Canada. What, if any, information about their specific, local contexts would you want to know?
When the internet is available to the entire world, will a one-size-fits all course like CELTA be appropriate?
In some countries, internet use is on the phone, not on computers. It’s still possible to show images and short texts on phones around a large group – it’s not perfect, but it works.
The rural/urban dichotomy can often be a bigger difference than that between different countries.
The UN committed itself to as one of its infrastructure and development goals to ‘strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020’ (goal 9C). This date has passed. Access to the internet is now possible from 97% of the world’s surface. But that doesn’t mean that everyone has access. Just 54% of the global population use the internet. In the least developed countries only 19% have online access. 2018 was the 50/50 point – when 50% of the global population had access to the internet.
What does it mean to have internet access? Within global development, it means to be able to access a device at some point that has the internet, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody has it. If one person in the village has a device which they give other people access to, that can mean multiple people count as having internet access.
According to ourworldindata 27,000 people gain access to the internet per hour. One project to help increase internet acccess was Google’s Loon, though it was discontinued in January 2021. Facebook Aquila was another project. One key question is whether we want mega-corporations to be in control of internet access.
What does increased internet access mean? Increased opportunities for girls and women is just one impact.
How does the spread of the internet to more people influence the ELT industry?
In Northern and Western Africa, 141 million people are native French speakers. If only five percent of those people seek and pay for online English classes, that’s seven million new clients for the ELT industry.
More students means more teachers. More teachers means more trainers.
On the other hand, more people online means more choice for the consumer, which means lower prices, which probably means lower wages.
Joe’s advice is to specialise as much as possible. General English may well be coming to an end. By having to become an expert in a particular field, we probably have to become more professional.
What about linguistic imperialism? Philipson (1992 – Amazon affiliate link) argued that the spread of English is already:
Perpetuating native speakerism
Contributing to the death of languages around the world
Perpetuating a model of culture that is Euro-centric
Joe doesn’t say this is wrong, but doesn’t a globalised world need a globalised language? In recent decades, enormous gains have been made in lifting people out of poverty (slowly, uncertainly, hesitantly, but still). Would it be possible to have a globalised economy without a globalised language?
Some thoughts on the next 15-20 years:
The number of EFL teachers will grow rapidly.
The majority will be teaching both online and offline.
A proportion of them will come from countries where English is taught through traditional, teacher-centred methods and not communicative approaches. (Note: it’s not self-evident that communicative approaches have to be the best way to learn)
Exposure to a greater variety of international speakers through internet access will change people’s perceptions of which accents/dialects are considered acceptable.
What might need to change?
Qualifications must adapt.
EFL training could become adaptable according to the region from which the participants hail.
An increasing number of countries are teaching all subjects in English to VYL.
CELTA could pivot to prepare trainees to teach history, science and maths in English? A more CLIL approach.
CELTA could also be more specialised towards teaching adults in their professions.
In the discussion afterwards, there was a discussion of the risk of being colonial in marking speaking/writing exams. It’s a challenge that exam boards need to address. Intelligibility between candidates might be fine, but examiners might not find candidates intelligible and therefore mark them down.
Translanguaging, with the combination of English with other languages, will become increasingly common, so that people will still be able to participate in communication.
It’s raining on prom night – Giovanni Licata and James Egerton
The last 18 months have been momentous for teacher training. The online transition has not only meant reinventing the wheel in some cases, but also facing ever-present teacher training fears that had been more hidden in the 100% physical classroom CELTA. Our session will spin the audience through technical, cultural-educational and organizational moments where it felt like the rain was ruining prom night, but for which moves in the new dance must be mastered.
The idea of this presentation started a long time before COVID. It was about thinking about the problems that teachers have and how to deal with them. What do you do when you’ve been building up to somethign for a long time, then things don’t happen the way you expect them to?
Face to face or Mask to mask? There are challenges to teaching in person with COVID restrictions too, not just to teaching online. There can be restrictions on not moving from your chair, not being able to monitor – all adding extra challenges to initial teaching experiences. [You might find some useful ideas on socially distanced teaching here.]
Giovanni would like to see a lot more experimentation with using different physical environments within the same school, to give you the privacy that breakout rooms give you.
We should try to stop ourselves from thinking that everything was rosy before the pandemic. The pandemic has been an accelerator to the integration of technology in education, not a circuit break. The idea of going ‘back to normal’ isn’t a thing. We need to reconceptualise what is happening in our spaces.
Flexbiliity: We have the choice with the spaces we work in to be able to provide the best possible services for teachers and trainers. How can we combine and integrate these two worlds?
Collaboration: Working with centres around the world. Can we continue to share ideas and innovations in the way we have during the pandemic?
Integration of new ideas
Key concepts moving forward:
Assessment – being flexible
Cognitive flexibility – awareness, confidence and flexibility
Hybrid: Attention can’t be split – all students online or all students face-to-face. Mixed-mode could be better – some lessons of each.
Learning by doing: Replanning a methodology course to prepare for online teaching – Joanna Szoke
During COVID, I had to completely redesign a simple methodology course to give enough practical support to my in-service trainees in online teaching and learning. The aim was to equip them with skills they could use right away. The talk will look at the design principles of this “learning by doing” course and its main takeaways.
Jo teaches pre-service and in-service trainees at a university in Budapest. The course she’s talking about was called ‘Using ICT tools in the ELT classroom’ – it was designed for face-to-face classrooms. [I sympathise – I wrote a whole MA assignment on a two-week ICT course I was really proud of, but which didn’t mention online teaching at all. Doh!] In-service trainees were transitioning into online teaching. Pre-service trainees had their first ever experience of teaching online.
She had to redesign the course completely to meet their needs, expectations and requests. She wanted to provide efficient support to struggling trainees with minimal online teaching experience. Jo believes in learning by doing and the power of passing knowledge on. She thought that the in-service teachers would be able to pass the knowledge onto their colleagues too.
The course design process:
Identify their needs.
Find out what they have to do and how they have to do it. Environments, software, tools they have access to. Done through interviews.
Remove everything from the old course schedule to create a new course!
She wanted/needed to include:
Zoom and MS Teams
Interactive tools like Learning Apps and WordWall
Colloboration online
The course consisted of Zoom and VLE training (Google classroom), with autonomous and flipped components, and formative assessment. They got 5-minute long videos with tasks on Nearpod. They had open-ended questions at the end to serve as revision questions at the beginning of synchronous sessions. Formative assessment:
Flipped videos + required task+ optional tasks
Tasks in sync with the materials e.g. do a flipped lesson on Nearpod, then create a Nearpod lesson yourself; play a game on Wordwall, make one yourself
Option to resubmit improved assignments
Peer feedback
Nearpod allows you to track what people have completed. [There’s a guest post on it here.]
A journey through time – Abeer Ali Okaz
University total closure took everyone by surprise. Most of the training that PUA academics have previously received did not seem to fully help. This presentation focuses on the challenges that necessitated the change in the current training programme. It will take attendees through a journey to adjustment and survival, and provide tips gained from PUA’s experiment with online learning.
The University of Pharos has around 3500 students registered for English each year. Challenges they faced when the pandemic started:
No phone numbers or emails for students, so no way to contact them.
Burnt-out teachers.
Teachers without digital skills.
Connectivity issues.
Lack of access to devices.
Poor wellbeing.
They created 114 Google Classrooms for their students, but not everybody could join them. Teachers were anxious and didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to prepare, they couldn’t write on screen, there was a huge amount of information about possible resources, teachers couldn’t monitor all the students carefully…they had all been through the university’s training programme before the pandemic, including some observed training and peer and formal observation.
The university realised they had to stop and reassess the training programme. They knew blended learning wasn’t going to go away – they had to redesign for the situation and for the future.
They changed their approach to training:
Bottom-up – teachers can create training content and manage its delivery. They could suggest sessions, research and share with each other. The attitude to younger teachers training older ones changed amongst the teachers.
Smaller groups
Asking teachers via WhatsApp and Google Classroom what they needed.
Using Google Classroom and Padlet for content creation and ideas and tools. One team was responsible for each of these tools and collecting information to share on these platforms. The Padlet was open to all teachers to post ideas, comment on each other’s ideas and access them later too.
Helping the teachers to be responsible for their own learning and training other teachers handed over control, in the way that we want learners to be responsible. They surveyed teachers regularly to check that this met their needs.
They scheduled training based on priority and availability. The management was only facilitating – there was more reward for teachers from this approach.
Abeer believes that this approach will continue in the future – there were common goals, there has been a lot more interaction between teachers, morale has improved – teachers are very proud of the sessions they’ve done, and there is enhanced communication between teachers.
Final comments from Adrian Underhill
[This was an excellent way to end the conference – very positive! I may have missed some points, but here are many of them!]
The discontinuity of COVID has led to a huge amount of creativity. It’s amazing how we’ve managed to deal with this situation, and it’s released a huge amount of energy which this conference has showcased. The picture of training has become much more nuanced.
Core values are important – we’re not trying to be values free. We seem to be moving from ‘It works’ or ‘It doesn’t work’ to ‘I/We work’ – a much greater sense of agency and involvement, with a commitment to values and the expression of values.
We’re not just going into detail, but zooming out and looking at the big picture and questioning systems as a whole.
Interpersonal skills, as described by Chia, are the ground out of which everything else grows. We need to build trust and reduce distance. How do we talk about empathy? When Adrian started the TD group in 1986, he meant personal development for teachers. We need to think about How can we be more facilitative in our teaching?
How can we share power? Mentoring…Reflective practice… It’s great to see that in teacher training.
There’s a need for honesty and to be who we are. Sharing real experience, sharing insecurity, learning to forgive yourself and be less judgemental of ourselves so we can be less judgemental of others.
WhatsApp allows accessibility and communication, getting lots of people talking.
Flipped learning/teaching seems to have become more relevant than ever to maximise the use of synchronous time to have discussions and create meaning together, not just to go through facts.
Each can learn from the other: online from face-to-face and vice versa. We may see new potential in being online. It might not replace reading the room when you’re all together, but it might bring other things which we don’t recognise yet.
Leadership in ELT is a key concept too and was discussed today. Adrian gave a plenary on it at IATEFL 2012, but it’s taken a while to enter other parts of ELT. It’s about empowering others.
We can make a difference through training. We can be guided by meaning, values and people. With our ingenuity and energy, we can find ways of making a difference. We are connecting with the whole world. There’s hope for the future.
These are summaries of the talks I attended during day one of the OxfordTEFL Innovate ELT online conference on 1st and 2nd October 2021. Day two is here.
Note: when I’ve included links, sometimes they’re the ones the presenter included, sometimes they’re others which I’ve found. If you’re one of the presenters and would like me to change any of the links, please let me know!
Plenary – Facing forward, looking back – Duncan Foord
What can we learn from looking at the history of ELT? I will be sharing my personal take on how I think we have done over the last 60 years, “Things that went well and points to consider…”
Duncan started by asking us whether we think that ELT is better now than it was 60 years ago, for English teachers or students. 92% think yes, nobody said no, 8% said don’t know (of 37 responses). Some of the reasons people gave:
More communicative
More research
Easier to access support from around the world
More student-centred
English more accepted as a lingua franca
Duncan’s reason for picking 60 years was that the pre-cursor to CELTA started in 1962, giving ELT a practical, hands-on qualification you could do to become a teacher: ‘ELT as craft’. ELT became a professional activity. We become teachers by actually teaching, not just studying it.
Another reason Duncan thinks ELT has improved is ‘the human touch’. We’re bringing humans together by enabling them to communicate with each other internationally. We see teachers and students working together across cultural boundaries that politics may not normally allow (e.g. US and Iranian teachers working together). An awareness of classroom dynamics and increased personalisation encourage learner-centredness, recognising learners as individuals, and making things more democratic through activities like pair- and groupwork.
The third reason is that there is there is a clear framework through the CEFR to make learners of where they are and where they’re going. This framework isn’t a list of grammar points, but a list of ‘can do’ statements.
A counterpoint is (was? around 2010?) a kind of ‘tech fetish’, pushing the craft of teaching to one side. He thinks that has calmed down now and that there is more of a balance between technology and craft, rather than technology taking over.
This gives us 3 C’s. We should aim to keep the dynamic of improving what we do (Craft), keep our strong sense of community (Community), and Coach learners in how to use materials and resources – we don’t have to bring all of the materials in ourselves.
Am I asking the right questions? – Teresa Bestwick
Why talk about questions? I could simply answer ‘Why not?’ but there are so many other reasons which we’ll explore in this talk. We’ll have a critical think about the types of questions we ask our learners, colleagues and the teachers we train, as well as those we ask ourselves.
When we start a session/lesson, we can have some questions on display to give attendees/learners something to think about. Questions can be:
Closed – yes/no
Open
Display – we know the answer, but we want the learners to demonstrate particular language they know.
Referential – I don’t know the answer to it, and I’m interested to find out more.
Convergent – limited number of answers.
Divergent – encourages the use of creativity, critical thinking skills etc.
Closed questions aren’t always bad. Sometimes they can be useful for checking understanding or language. Teresa shared three links to help people improve their ICQs and CCQs:
When we ask students a question, wait time is important. We need to make sure students have thinking time. We also need to give students the language to be specific about ‘I don’t know’:
I understand the question, but I don’t know the answer.
I know the answer, but I don’t know how to say it in English.
Language of speculation: Could it be…? Might it be…? Is it possibly…? allows students space to not have to be correct, and can be empowering.
Questions we ask students:
Questions encourage an answer.
Think about how you respond to content – don’t be insensitive by only focussing on language.
Never underestimate the power of follow-up questions.
Questions can be used as a behaviour management tool – pose a question to help learners notice their behaviour.
Use exit tickets [I’ve done this in the teen face-to-face classroom for the last two years, and it works really well – individual feedback for each learner, and a great way for you to check each person’s understanding.] Here are some more examples of EFL exit tickets:
One question I have about what we did today is…
Write three MCQs about today’s lesson.
Write two questions to ask me/your partner using the grammar or vocab from today.
Questions we ask ourselves:
When you have a problem, if you can turn it into a question, you can start looking for solutions.
Teresa mentioned Heron’s six categories of intervention, which she first came across in Duncan Foord’s The Developing Teacher [Amazon affiliate link / BEBC non-affiliate link]. She also recommend Rachel Tsateri’s blogpost. These are different ways of framing questions when helping yourself or others to reflect. Here are some of the questions stems you might want to use:
It’s important to ask ourselves questions to help ourselves to develop. These are some of the examples Teresa mentioned:
What do I love about what I do?
What am I looking forward to in my career?
What do I want to do?
What’s working for me?
What’s one area I’d like to improve in?
How am I developing this month?
How will this help me?
Teresa recommended two books:
ELT Playbook by me (thanks Teresa!) [purchase links for the whole series]
This is the community which Teresa is a co-founder of, with Simon Pearlman. They have a website and are on facebook. They post a question every Wednesday to get teachers thinking. Whenever anybody posts anything in the Hub, it has to be a question. Their weekly meetings are also based around questions.
A thought we were left with:
Two years ago, I was saying “do you have any questions?”. Last year I switched to “what questions do you have?” It made a difference. Today I tried “ask me two questions”. And they did! And those ?s led to more ?s. It amazes me that the littlest things have such a big impact!
Good storytellers make it look easy. They might lead you to believe that it’s all about spontaneous, improvised performances. But don’t be fooled. Successful storytelling requires planning, reflection and attention to detail. In this workshop, I would like to share some basic principles that will allow you to develop your classroom storytelling skills.
We’re not born being able to tell stories. It’s a skill we can get better at.
Jamie is talking about short stories from the teacher as a way to engage the students and get them doing things. He started off with a list:
Madame Tussauds
The Tower of London
Superman 2
The Egyptian mummies at the British Museum
We had to guess what the list was about, and then Jamie told us the story. Guessing first was a great way to get us engaged. He asked us what we thought he was most excited about – these questions kept us involved all the way through.
One of Jamie’s favourite themes is misunderstandings and miscommunications. He asked us if any of us had a story we wanted to tell about this. I got some useful feedback on my story 🙂 and enjoyed listening to others’ stories too.
He asked us about ingredients for successful storytelling. Often he gets answers related to performance techniques or teacher talk techniques, for example eye contact, pauses, body language. We suggested ideas like framing the story, personalisation, being concise, involving the audience. Jamie thinks we see storytelling wrong: we focus on the performance, rather than the preparation and process that goes into it beforehand to give the structure.
Sometimes we can ask too many questions in our stories as teachers. If we’ve got a good story, it’s naturally involving. Don’t just ask ‘Can you guess what it’s about?’ – give them some fuel to help them guess, like Jamie’s list at the start. Questions like ‘What do you think happened?’ ‘Why do you think he did that?’ – these are much stronger questions. After a good story, the listener might have unanswered questions – this isn’t a problem, it shows they’re engaged.
It’s useful to look for a ‘way in’ to the story, a ‘hook’. We don’t have to go in through the door of the story – we can break in through the window, go down the chimney, steal an elephant from the zoo and crash through the walls 🙂 These hooks can be useful for comprehension and to give the learners some help in understanding the story. It doesn’t have to be something super clever – it can draw attention to some of the content in the story, like giving them a title, key words, asking questions about a concept in the story (mine was about code-switching for example, so asking about this could work), lists…they can all help the students to make connections.
Set up can be very important – don’t neglect it, because this gives the context people need to understand the story. When preparing, think about how to draw attention to the details, and what order to mention them in. This can help to make the story more impactful. How descriptive can you get? Should you add more details? Or remove details? We can draw attention to certain information in the story, for example by pauses or by the order we mention things in.
To manage the time, students can record a ‘talking head’ video of their story, rather than telling their story live during the lesson.
If you’d like to find out more about storytelling and see examples, Jamie’s website is LessonStream. He also runs a storytelling course for teachers.
Teaching, Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Presences in Action – Tyson Seburn
The Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001) identified four aspects of enriching online educational spaces: teaching, cognitive, social, and (most recently) emotional presences. Twenty years later, these were thrust into action for everyone to varying degrees of success. But what are they? We’ll explore them here.
[I missed the start of this session]
Tyson is talking about asynchronous and blended courses.
To increase his teaching presence, Tyson uses:
Colours to show the students to guide them in what they need to do in online tasks. For example, highlighted in blue if they’re working in groups, highlighted in pink if they’re working alone.
Teaching tips to help the students use the medium better.
Emojis to show what is a handout, a recorded lesson, a task to complete etc.
Layout of the tasks – week one is a top-level heading, tasks that are part of week one are indented.
Have a forum where they can ask questions specifically.
Teaching presence can also come from students, not just the teacher.
Have roles for students within an activity / task.
They can answer each other’s questions about concepts / instructions.
Give peer feedback and evaluation.
Cognitive presence is about exploration. How are the students exploring the materials?
Vary engagement type, for example through different interaction patterns or different types of website/tool.
Encourage learners to contribute information.
Create spaces where the students need to make connections between different parts of the materials, and ask questions of the materials rather than just accepting what’s there.
Allow students to come to conclusions themselves, rather than supplying the conclusions to them. A reflective journal could be a good way to do this.
Social presence is about interaction and community. How can we can create spaces where students have to interact and give them opportunities to do so? How can we create a community where students feel bonded together and with the teacher?
Conversation and dialogue: how and where can we create these opportunities? Not just top-down, but students speaking to each other.
How can we humanise the experience of learning? For example, one teacher added a forum that they clicked through to where they were sharing pictures of their pets – this was a reward for those who were actually reading and checking the forums 🙂
Creating bonds and togetherness.
Encourage students to express (dis)agreements.
Tyson mentioned some different tools he’s played with, like Reface for some amusement (though I find this a bit disturbing!), or Padlet. Padlet has a map function to add pins to a map – not one I’d seen before.
Social presence could include giving the students conversational gambits which they can use in forums, for example for agreeing and disagreeing. This helps them to connect with each other.
Majeski, Stover and Valais (2018) added emotional presence to the list. This includes:
Emotional perception – can they recognise emotions?
Understanding – can they understand the emotions of others?
Faciliation – can they use emotions in a constructive way?
Management – can they recognise when emotions are causing disruption in their learning and think about strategies to deal with this?
The final presence is to some extent embedded in the other three presences which were proposed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000). These presences can help you in a range of ways:
These are Tyson’s references:
Demo Lesson – How to approach a text from an eco-linguistic perspective – Daniel Barber
The ecological issues we face call into question the stories we live by. Eco-linguistics offers teachers tools to examine the stories behind classroom texts. Do they teach compassion for the living planet? In this lesson, students will read and discuss a text through eco-linguistic filters to discover the underlying message.
One of the interesting features of Innovate ELT conferences is the live lessons with real students followed by guided discussion, but this is the first time I’ve made it to one. I thought it would be nice to go to something different something when attending this conference. I’ve also never really been sure about how to bring the environment into lessons where it’s not already present in the materials. There were students from all over the world: the Netherlands, Myanmar, Switzerland (but in Russia), Peru and Belarus. It was interesting to see somebody else teaching on Zoom, apart from anything else!
Daniel set up the lesson by showing students a picture of Christmas puddings in the shops in September in the UK. This was a prompt for a discussion about celebrations and the importance of celebrations in different countries.
The next stage was introducing the title of the article: 2021 Holiday Shopping Predictions: 3 Trends to Watch. This prompted a discussion about changes in students’ shopping habits over the last couple of years.
Throughout both of these stages, Daniel had a box on each slide called ‘Vocab notes’ where he added phrases that came up during the dicscussions.
There was a link to the text and a list of questions for the students to answer. I liked the layout of the slide (shown as a thumbnail below), with the text on the left and the questions on the right. Each paragraph of the text had a different coloured background, making it easier to read than if it was purely black on white (or at least, I think it was!)
After the comprehension stage, Daniel asked students to match hidden messages to specific parts of the text which he’d highlighted. For example, the line ‘The store shopping experience adds to the magic’ in the text could be match to the hidden message ‘Shopping is an exciting adventure’. There was also the idea that people were called ‘consumers’ throughout the whole text – we are only seen as people spending money.
At the end of the lesson, we had 10 minutes to chat to the students and ask them some questions about the lesson based around the idea of hidden messages in texts, questioning messages and assumptions we make individually and collectively, and the overall themes of the lesson. This idea of hidden messages in texts was interesting for me, as it’s not something I’ve really thought about working on with students before.
When we came back together as a whole group afterwards, the discussion was interesting with both students and teachers sharing ideas about the lesson. Daniel presented this as one way of encouraging students to think about messages in texts without falling into lecturing them on what they should think.
If you’d like to find out more about ecolinguistics, the Wikipedia article provides a useful starting point. There is a free online course called The Stories We Live By from The University of Gloucestershire and The International Ecolinguistics Association if you’d like to find out more.
This was definitely an interesting format, and well done to Daniel for putting himself out there by teaching a lesson with 11 teachers observing him!
The quiz
Day one ended with a quiz in the ‘Zoom garden’, which is a lovely idea. I’m off to join in now 🙂
It’s a little while since I wrote anything about teaching online, mostly because I haven’t been doing much of it! Having said that, I’ve still been able to experiment with a few tools and techniques which I’d like to share with you.
Renaming participants for grouping
I found this to be a useful technique when trying to organise breakout rooms, especially for big groups. When I wanted to differentiate a CELTA input session, renaming allowed participants to select which activity they preferred. It was also helpful when I’d decided on the groups before the sessions – I read out the list of who was in which group, with instructions for how they should rename themselves. In both cases, I told participants to add the extra information before their name, which meant my participants list was organised accordingly, making it much faster to set up manual breakout rooms.
White text for answers
This works especially well with shared documents. When setting up a document, you can add an extra column to a table, or an extra page at the end of the document, where you put all of the answers. Change the font to white. In the session, either change the text to black so everybody can see the answers at once, or tell participants to highlight the text without changing the font colour to be able to see the answers themselves without revealing them to anybody else.
Mentimeter for surveys and sharing slides
Mentimeter is a presentation tool which allows you to include interactive content. In the free version you can share two interactive slides within a longer presentation. Examples might include scales, word clouds, ranking, multiple choice, or open ended questions. Results are then displayed on the screen immediately. Here’s an example from a CELTA session on CPD, with participants grading each area out of 5. Mentimeter then displayed the average:
To participate, people go to http://www.menti.com and enter the code which appears at the top of the slide (not shown here).
Apart from the interactive tools, you can include (very cleanly presented) content slides. Anybody looking at http://www.menti.com on their own devices will see the next slide automatically as you move through your presentation. This could be an efficient way of sharing resources without people having to take screenshots all the time. It does mean they’re locked into only moving to the next slide when you move on, and they can’t interact with the content slides, only the interactives, but it could still be useful in some situations.
ActivInspire as an online whiteboard
A huge thank you to my most recent bunch of CELTA trainees for introducing me to this, and showing me a whole range of ways to use it in my TP. ActivInspire was originally designed as software for interactive whiteboards, but it is freely downloadable for anybody to use, even without the IWB hardware. All you have to do is tick ‘personal’ at the relevant point in the download process.
You need to do a little playing around with it to find where everything is, and you can’t use the in-built poll feature as this requires the hardware, but generally it’s a very flexible tool as an online whiteboard. The main things I saw the trainees do effectively was having information prepared at the side of the ‘slide’ and gradually adding it to the board as they elicited it from students. They were also quickly able to flick to a pen, drawing or highlighting tool to draw attention to important features – much faster than you can in PowerPoint for example, and it’s got much more functionality than the Zoom whiteboard had last time I looked.
There are templates already available with the software, and there are many tutorials out there. Here’s are 20 steps to using ActivInspire and here are a set of video tutorials.
A new name!
Thanks to Katie Lindley for finally giving me a name for a technique I’ve used from the start in online lessons: waterfall chat. This is where all participants write their answers in chat, but they don’t press enter until you give the signal. When you say ‘go’, all of the answers appear at once in a kind of upside-down waterfall. This stops them from being able to copy each other’s answers. It works especially well for short answers, maybe multiple choice, true/false, or one- or two-word answers.
A bonus idea…
This is one I haven’t tried out, but came up with when chatting to a friend about possible warmers to get sleepy teens moving in online lessons. Each student suggests one thing to find in the chat, based on e.g. collocations, or with a relative clause (or whatever other grammar point they need to revise), then they have 3 mins to find as many as they can. Student-generated, revision, and movement all rolled into one – what more could you want?!
How about you? What have you been playing with in online lessons recently?
This is a super quick activity I suggested to a teacher last week which I haven’t tried out, so please do let me know if it works! I also haven’t created an example because I’m feeling lazy today, so I hope it makes sense; let me know if you need one to help you understand how to set up the activity.
We were talking about how to practise reported speech patterns in a fun way when you can’t play Chinese whispers/telephone, which I think would be pretty hard to transfer online (I’m happy to be corrected if you’ve made this work somehow).
It goes like this:
Set up a Jamboard with a 5 or 6 stickies of direct speech, all in the same colour. This could be before the lesson (easier to ensure all patterns you want to include are covered), during the lesson (using real things students have said so potentially more motivating) or in a follow-up lesson (using real things from a previous lesson and ensuring all patterns are covered – win-win!). Duplicate the frame so that different pairs/groups can work on the same set of sentences simultaneously. Put a different number in the corner of each frame for ease of reference.
In the lesson, demonstrate the activity on frame 1 (your frame!) Choose one of the direct speech quotes. Ask students to help you change it to reported speech – type this version onto a sticky, choose a different colour to the original speech, and move it on top of the direct speech. It’s important that students can’t see the direct speech any more once they’ve written their original version.
Share the link, telling students which frame they should work on. With their partner(s), they write reported speech versions of all of the quotes, hiding the direct speech with their new versions.
To extend the activity/For fast finishers, add an extra stage (or two or three) where students look at the reported speech and try to reproduce the direct speech. They can compare their version of the direct speech to the original version to see what problems they had with tense shifts etc. They can do this flip-flop for as long as you think it will be useful / to give slower finishers more time to complete the activity.
I think the most important thing to point out in any activity incorporating reported speech is that while there are some common patterns, it’s not an exact science. There may be multiple possible versions of the reported speech depending on what the imagined speaker is trying to emphasise when they reproduce the speech.
It’s been quite a year. Sometimes it’s felt like hard going, but there have been a lot of highlights, and that’s what I want to look back on at the end of the year. Here goes…
January
I caught up with a friend who I hadn’t seen for 16 years, then went to the IH AMT conference.
I submitted my assignments for my first NILE MA module in Trainer Development, and got a distinction.
I travelled to the UK for a family christening. That week I managed to meet up with my best friend too (that’s important as it’s the only time I’ve seen her in person this year).
February
My mum’s 60th birthday cake, as made by Amber, my amazing cousin
The following weekend we all got together again for my mum’s 60th. I saw my mum on the morning of her birthday on February 3rd (hope it’s not too much longer before I see her again!)
The aviation museum in Toulouse
I got the train to Toulouse for a few days with a friend, my first time in that part of the world, then carried on to Barcelona for the IH Barcelona conference, where I presented a few ways to tweak speaking activities. The day I arrived I had time to visit Tibidabo for the first time.
I started gardening for the first time, with the aim of making better use of my balcony and perhaps growing something I could eat.
March
We managed to move our school fully online in two days, thanks to the help and support of IH World. I cried more than once at the amazing way that our staff pulled together to make it all happen so smoothly…just one of many times this year I was grateful to be at IH Bydgoszcz and part of the IH family.
I wrote the first post in my series connected to teaching on Zoom, and it’s been by far the most successful post on my blog all year. My blogging generally stepped up a notch at this point, as it felt like there was so much to process – writing about it really does help. Thanks to everyone who’s read and shared these posts this year.
April
I was a bit worried about my birthday, but I needn’t have been. One lovely friend organised a Zoom birthday party for me, and our teachers had a social that evening where we all played games. It was a lovely day in the end.
Our amazing school Director hand-delivered all of the teachers things to help us stay safe during the first lockdown, and a clockwork Easter chick and a traditional Easter biscuit to make us smile too.
I made my first hot cross buns.
I organised games on Zoom for the whole family for Easter.
Two groups of old friends and one group of new friends started to meet regularly on Zoom – I’ve definitely grown closer to all of them this year.
I took part in my first panel discussion, an IATEFL online event about moving teaching online.
May
My baking experiments have continued all year, but these cinnamon whirls were a particular success 🙂
I moved my garden outside and the first flower appeared on a courgette – I was so excited to know I’d grown this!
June
I bought a bike and used it to do a lot of exploration in the forest. I’ve spent more time in the forest over the last six months than I probably did in the 4.5 years before that!
At the end of the month I managed a couple of day trips with my colleagues as Poland opened up again, both to places I’d been wanting to visit for a long time. The first was to Inowroclaw, the site of this fascinating piece of architecture designed to collect salt from the local water.
The second was to Malbork, a castle built by the Teutonic knights, and the largest castle in the world.
July
I did my first online CELTA, and blogged about it with Stephanie Wilbur. It was fascinating comparing our experiences of the course.
I got my first harvest from my little balcony garden – some tiny carrots, beetroot and courgettes.
August
I visited a local beauty spot and saw more butterflies than I’ve ever seen in one place outside a butterfly house. They posed nicely for photos too 🙂
I managed a short holiday to the Polish coast, including a trip on the ‘boat on grass‘ near Elblag…
In Frombork, I saw the grave of Copernicus. This is probably the closest I’ve ever got to having a spiritual moment (I’m not religious at all) – standing so close to a person who moved the world, in a place I know he had lived and worked and stood too. I also fulfilled a lifelong dream: I saw Jupiter and three of its moons, and Saturn and its rings, through a telescope – I’d always wanted to see planets up close.
I had a weekend away in this beautiful place near Bydgoszcz, dancing flamenco and eating amazing food with interesting people who were patient with my Polish 🙂
Most importantly, August was when I met my boyfriend online and we clicked instantly.
September
Our flamenco concert, postponed from June, happened – there were lots of restrictions (rightly!) but we managed to do it. Well done to Dorota, our amazing teacher, for pulling it all together.
We started off our new school year successfully, combining in class and online lessons in case of a second lockdown – it was so good to be in a classroom with students again! Socially-distanced teaching wasn’t too bad either.
My balcony garden was at its peak.
I got to actually meet my boyfriend in person 🙂 My first trip to the UK since February.
October
I managed another quick trip to the UK before lockdowns and restrictions came into force again.
Despite not being able to get on my planned flight to the UK, I managed a relaxed Christmas Day, and have had lots of love and support from family and friends.
Overall
I’ve spent more time outside, learnt to garden done more cooking and baking, spent more time appreciating my flat and balcony, chatted more often to more friends, presented at and attended more conferences, learnt far more about teaching in a far shorter period of time than I ever expected to at this point in my career, and met my amazingly lovely boyfriend. So yes, some things haven’t happened, and I haven’t been able to be in the same place as many people I love (soon, I hope!), but on balance, I have to say it’s been a pretty good year.
Way back in April 2020, I wrote an article for the spring issue of the IH Journal talking about how we’d shifted IH Bydgoszcz online over the previous few weeks. What with one thing and another, the publication of the journal was delayed and it finally came out a couple of weeks ago. The editor, Chris, asked me to write an update on what had happened by the end of October 2020, and you can find both articles along with many others in issue 48 of the IH Journal. For those who read the second article where I say we’re hoping to get back in to the classroom before Christmas, we still haven’t made it and it looks like it’ll be February at the absolute earliest before we manage it.
I was interested in Claire Parsons’ article about error correction, in which she talks about using the acronym SPLAT to help her decide which errors to focus on with her students.
If you’d like to read more about our move online, there’s a whole series of posts on my blog from March to June, starting here.
Quizlet is easily my favourite teaching tool – I use it in almost every lesson. It’s the only website that I pay for, and for the amount I use it and the number of classes I have, it’s definitely worth it for me. Nikki Fortova introduced me to it years ago and I’ve never looked back – thanks Nikki!
At first glance, it’s a simple flashcard tool, but the real reason I go on about it all the time is because of its versatility. I also like the fact that you don’t need an account to play the games, so students don’t need to log in to use it. If you do create an account, it allows you to create your own content, remembers the sets you’ve used, and displays your scores on leaderboards.
If you’ve never used it before, I recommend you pause in your reading, and go and try it out. Should you so choose, you can learn/revise some teaching terminology at the same time by choosing a set from my Delta class. Try out all of the different functions for a minute or two each, and hopefully you’ll feel yourself learning 🙂
Apart from using the functions as is, there are many different ways you can exploit them. Each section below gives you a link to the Quizlet introduction to that function, along with a series of ideas for exploiting it. These were written for the online classroom, but most of them work in the face-to-face classroom too. Remember to demonstrate what you want the students to do before you set them off by themselves.
Students play alone. They can call out their times or not (up to them!), or write their times in the chatbox. (I often use this as a way of introducing a vocabulary set and seeing how comfortable students are with it before we do any exercises in the book.)
You display the game in the main room and type as students call out answers.
One student screen shares in BOR while others call out answers. (I’ll have played it as a whole class at least a couple of times before students work in pairs so they understand how it works.)
Type most of the word, but miss a letter/make a spelling error. Students say what the missing letter is/correct the spelling. (Thanks Mollie!)
You have to identify yourself as a teacher in your settings to get Live to show. You don’t need a paid account to do this.
If a student signs in with a stupid name, click their name to remove them – they’ll have to enter a new one to rejoin. If they’re going to BOR for Live, it’s better to ask them to use their real names
Keep students in the main room calling over each other, or assign them to BOR before you start the game. Give them functional language to play in English e.g. I haven’t got it. What’s this? I don’t know this one.
Review problem vocab after the game has finished by clicking through the flashcards which appear.
Play to 11. Teams stop when they get to 11 points, so that everyone gets a chance.
Set the options to small flashcards, double-sided printing. It will display a list of flashcards in a grid layout.
Show all of the pictures. Students write the words in the chat.
Show some of the pictures. Students write/say what’s missing.
Show some of the pictures. Minimise the screen. Students write what they saw.
(for sets with a sentence half in the term/definition e.g. I like going / to the cinema on Saturdays.) Students have 3 minutes to write the other half of as many sentences as possible.
Screenshot from the list of vocab/phrases in print view (small flashcards, double-sided) into another doc so you don’t have to type them all again, then:
Students see the list of words and define them for each other.
Students write as many example sentences as they can.
Students contextualise phrases – step 1: what’s the conversation/text that this phrase originally appeared in? Step 2: remove the phrase, give the text to another group, they remember what the phrase is.
Students use as many words/phrases as possible in a story.
If you’re in a classroom, these activities from Leo Selivan show other ways of exploiting the Print function.
And then…?
After playing a Quizlet game or three, get students to write as many words/phrases/sentences as they can remember in the chat.
Any game which involves remembering/writing in notebooks from above can be paired with a trip to BOR so students can compare their answers with each other.
Tips for making a useful Quizlet set
Include lots of information in the title, so it doesn’t matter what people search for e.g. Word building – prefixes and suffixes which add meaning (English File Upper Int 3rd ed SB p163 Unit 9B) Name of section from book, book (+ edition), page, unit [This is a personal bugbear of mine – I get so frustrated when I do a search for a really popular book and can’t find a Quizlet set because the title is unclear. Please make me happy!]
You don’t have to start from scratch! Use the search to find existing sets, then copy and customise them. [This is where clear set names are vital!]
Include images whenever relevant – these really help students to remember the language.
Include a definition if the picture alone is ambiguous/no picture is possible.
Include gapped example sentences, where the gap matches the term as exactly as possible (sometimes tenses/articles make the gap and the term different).
Highlight collocations whenever possible, especially for higher levels.
Use bold or colours to pick out key features of a sentence if relevant. Italics changes the shape of the word, so isn’t great for learners with dyslexia. (I think these might be in the paid accounts only)
Remember that Quizlet is useful for grammar too, not just vocabulary. There are some examples of grammar sets for beginners in this class.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ is a good place to find definitions/example sentences if your book doesn’t help or you’re producing your own sets.
How many words should I include in a set?
I tend to go for smallest possible coherent set. For example, if a word bank page has three different sets of vocabulary on it, I’ll make separate Quizlet sets for each of them, then make a fourth set combining them all together.
Combine sets together, e.g. all of the language for one unit, all of the examples of one grammar point (maybe you had + – ? as separate sets). Here’s how.
Combine units together ready for a unit test.
Combine everything in the whole book together for bumper revision.
Here’s an example class for English File Upper Intermediate3rd edition which my colleague Sarah and I compiled a couple of years ago which hopefully embodies all of these principles! You can see all of my classes here. Thanks very much to colleagues, friends and strangers who have added to these sets!
Note: I have no idea how copyright works with Quizlet sets, but if publishers made high-enough-quality Quizlet sets to go with their books I’d be very, very happy. That’s another reason why I think it’s so important to put the book title into the name of the set – I wasn’t the person who originally compiled that list!
Over to you
Do you use Quizlet?
What tips do you have for other teachers?
Which functions do your students most enjoy? Mine love Match, Live (in the classroom mostly), and Gravity (when I’m typing!)
When I attended the Cambridge English Teaching Awards (CETA) symposium on 12th September 2020, I found Kate French’s talk to be particularly useful. There is a recording here. Kate kindly agreed to write a guest post summarising what she shared.
The CETA Symposium was held online and brought together teacher trainers from over 49 different countries. It was an excellent opportunity to share knowledge and experience, particularly regarding teaching and learning during the pandemic.
As with all areas of life during COVID-19, teacher trainers and training courses in 2020 have had to adapt and react to the ever-changing circumstances and follow the sometimes contradictory guidelines emerging on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis in order to save jobs and businesses and satisfy our ‘clients’ i.e. those wishing to complete and/or gain a teaching training qualification this year.
My own session at the conference was about the 100% online CELTA qualification and the aim was to synthesise the aforementioned guidelines and conclusions. The aim was not only to raise awareness for Centres that have yet to take advantage of this exceptional opportunity, but also to offer a review and possibly standardise delivery and ‘best practice’, which is what has always characterized the face-to-face and blended CELTA award, and which has led to its undoubted reputation as the ‘gold standard’ pre-service teaching training course. Therefore, I was very flattered to receive Sandy’s invitation to write a post for her blog to summarise the findings and offer them to an even wider public. It was also very timely, as I have just started tutoring on our second full-time, 100% CELTA course and wanted to make adjustments and improvements to our own course in response to:
recent recommendations from Cambridge Assessment English
CELTA assessor suggestions
previous candidates’ feedback
results of a brief, facebook survey I sent to teacher trainers (60 responses)
but most importantly for the following reasons:
The certificate awarded at the end of the course is exactly the same as for the face to face and the blended formats – there is no mention of the delivery format on the certificate.
The same criteria have to be met by candidates in order to pass the course.
The candidates, although studying and teaching 100% online, need to be prepared to teach in both online and face to face contexts post-course.
Employers will expect candidates to have the essential skills to teach in both online and face to face classrooms.
You can find our conclusions and ideas for achieving these in this table I have compiled:
Note from Sandy: the table is incredibly comprehensive and is an excellent starting point for anybody planning a CELTA course from this point forward, covering as it does all of the Cambridge recommendations for online courses so far, and lots of tips and ideas from Kate’s own experience and research.
Kate French started her TEFL career in Poland, at IH Bydgoszcz, before moving to Argentina two years later. [Note from Sandy – I didn’t know about that connection before!] She has worked at International House Belgrano in Buenos Aires since 1995 where she has been ADoS, DoS, In-company Coordinator, and Head of Teacher Training. She is currently DoS and Teacher Trainer, overseeing the online classes during the pandemic and tutoring on the institute’s full and part-time 100% online CELTA courses. Kate is also a Cambridge ESOL and IELTS examiner, and a CELTA assessor.
CELTA trainers, do you have anything you’d add? Change? Questions you have about the online format? It’d be great to get a discussion going!
This week I had my first lessons with students for this academic year.
On Monday and Wednesday I was the cover teacher the first two lessons of a fully online course. There were 5 students, all A2.1 teens, one of whom I taught in the level below last year.
They were very quiet in the first lesson, but came out of their shells more in the second. I think it might take longer for a fully online group to bond than one which has previously met in a classroom.
One activity which worked nicely was an email with some words displayed only as first letters e.g. I’ve g a b. I like g t t forest. Students worked together to figure out what the full email said. They then wrote a similar email to me for homework, introducing themselves. I sent them the text and the homework instructions after the lesson. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever had 100% success with teen writing homework!
Break time during an online lesson
On Thursday I met my own group for the first time. I have four beginner teens, two of whom I met last year when covering the group before their teacher arrived. They found things challenging and the move online didn’t help, so they’re repeating the year with the same book. Part of my challenge this year will be to keep them engaged with material they’ve seen before but didn’t fully understand, and balance that for the two students who are new to the level, one of whom was very shy and needed a lot of encouragement to participate.
We’ll have odd-numbered classes in the socially distanced classroom for as long as possible, and even-numbered classes online.
With only four students it was a bit of a challenge to vary interaction patterns, especially in a typical first beginner lesson where you focus on greetings and asking for memes. One dialogue which worked in a really fun way was:
Hello Fred.
No, no, no, my name isn’t Fred. It’s Bob.
Oh, sorry!
This also already introduced isn’t ready for later lessons.
We also worked on What’s his/ her name? including students sharing pictures from their phones.
The other group I taught was our Polish beginners class for teachers. We’d decided to run it online to demonstrate various techniques and give the teachers a student perspective on online lessons. Normally in the first lesson I’d focus on names and How are you?, but this time I worked on greetings, ways of saying goodbye, and a couple of other useful bits of functional language. I also highlighted various spelling/pronunciation features.
A chain drill that worked well was gradually introducing two-line dialogues through the lesson, then asking one person to say the first line of any dialogue and choose who should respond, e.g.
Bob, dzień dobry.
Dzień dobry. / Przepraszam, Fred.
Nic nie szkodzi. / Do widzenia, Jim.
Do widzenia.
(Yes, it was an all-male group – my first I think. No, these aren’t their names!) I did intensive correction, and I suspect that the group won’t forget those phrases for a while! There’s a Quizlet set for homework if they need it.
Overall it was great to be back in a physical classroom with real people in front of me, but I enjoyed the online lessons just as much.
I use Feedly as a blog reader to collate posts from the blogs I follow. I love the simplicity of the format, and being able to see at a glance what is waiting for me to read. I generally look at it for a few minutes each day, sharing posts that I think would be useful for others on social media and bookmarking them for future reference using Diigo.
Since I started reading posts on my phone this workflow has become a little more convoluted, and I often end up emailing myself things to bookmark for later as it’s not as convenient to bookmark from my phone. This post is a collection of many of those posts as I clear out my email folder, and could serve as a good starting point if you’re looking for blogs to follow. They show a cross-section of what I read, and demonstrate just how varied the ELT blogosphere is.
On a side note, if you’ve considering starting a blog but think ‘Nobody will care what I write’, remember that there’s room for all kinds of teachers and writers, and your voice is interesting too. You never know what will click for somebody else when they read what you write. The blog is also there as notes for yourself later – I’m often surprised when I come across posts from my archive!
Happy reading!
Health and wellbeing
Lizzie Pinard summarised an IATEFL webinar on Mental health, resilience and COVID-19, adding her own experiences too. Lizzie also recommends Rachael Robert’s webinar on avoiding burnout for ELT professionals, and shares how she has been managing her workspace and mindset while working from home. I’ve been doing inbox zero for about two months now, as recommended by Rachael in a talk I went to in January, and it’s made me feel so much better!
Activities for very young learners and young learners
Chris Roland’s ETprofessional article on Managing online fun is full of activities and classroom management tips for working with young learners online.
Anka Zapart talks about the benefits of online classes with very young learners, many of which are applicable to young learners too. She shares a useful site with online games with VYLs and YLs, and introduced me to colourful semantics as way of extending language production for children. She also has a very clear framework for choosing craft activities which would and wouldn’t work for a VYL/YL classroom, and this example of a very reusable caterpillar craft.
Pete Clements has a lesson plan for young learners (and older ones too!) which combines all kinds of different areas: environmental awareness, drawing, used to, modals of advice…all based on a single student-generated set of materials.
Activities for teens and adults
Making excuses is a game to practice making requests and making excuses, including both online and offline variations, from Mike Astbury’s incredibly practical blog.
Jade Blue talks about the benefits of drawing to learn language, including a range of simple activities that should help students to remember vocabulary and grammar structures, and process texts they read and listen to. She also shares ideas for exploiting authentic materials, both for intensive and extensive use.
Ken Wilson has started to post English language teaching songs he and colleagues wrote and recorded in the 70s and 80s. They still seem very relevant now and could still promote a lot of discussion. The first three are What would you do? (second conditional), It makes me mad (environmental problems) and Looking forward to the day (phrasal verbs / the environment).
Leo Selivan has a lesson plan based on the Coldplay and Chainsmokers song Something just like this. David Petrie using sound effects as the basis for a review of narrative tenses.
Julie Moore has written ten posts with vocabulary activities based around coronavocab. The last one has examples of phrases which learners might need to describe how coronavirus has changed their lives.
Marc Jones suggests ideas for and asks for help with speaking assessments online when your students just won’t speak.
Matthew Noble is writing a teaching diary of his fully online blended Moodle/Zoom courses, with lots of interesting insights and learning shared. Here’s the post from week two (on building group dynamics) and week five (on making sure your computer will work properly and encouraging students to have good online etiquette).
Rachel Tsateri shows how to exploit Google Jamboard as an online whiteboard, including vocabulary revision, brainstorming, and sentence structure activities.
Naomi Epstein describes the journey she went on when trying to add glossaries to reading texts for her students, and the problems she encountered when she was on a computer but they were on a phone.
In my trainings I like to use the example of the students taking a class on how to fold a parachute that will be used the next day to jump out of an airplane. The students tell me “It was a wonderful class—the teacher explained and showed how to fold the chute step by step. Then the camera moves to the students and they are taking notes—very engaged in the lecture. They all pass the written test. The question is, will they now be able to successfully fold their parachutes in a way that they will have a successful jump? What would you suggest that the teacher did differently? I have always loved Michael Jerald’s (my SIT TESOL Cert trainer) question(s), “What did they learn and how do you know they learned it?” Now we are talking about skills, not knowledge—and effective communication is a skill. The parachute teacher had no way of knowing that they would be successful, even though they had aced the written test. So, whether or not face-to-face or by way of video, the nature of student engagement is the most important issue. It needs to be observed!
Zhenya also wrote about a reflective activity called Four suitcases, which could be particularly useful for anyone feeling down about the current state of the world and their place in it.
Distractions can make the writing process much longer than it needs to be. Rachael Roberts offers tips on how to deal with them on the IATEFL Materials Writing Special Interest Group (MAWSIG) blog.
In a guest post on the same blog, Kip Webster talks about the importance of explicitly teaching directness and indirectness, particularly for maintaining group dynamics, and taking advantage of ‘teachable moments’ during lessons. In another guest post, Miranda Crowhurst shares an excellent range of tips for using social media to advance your teaching career. (As you can see, it’s a blog well worth following!)
If you’re thinking about alternative approaches to lesson planning post-CELTA, Pete Clements talks about the steps he went through when moving towards materials-light teaching. This reflects my experience too.
Pete Clements reflects on the differences between an MA, PGCEi or DipTESOL, all of which he’s done. He also hosted a guest post from Michael Walker on the benefits of student and teacher reflection journals, particularly how it worked as an avenue for him to get regular feedback from his students which influenced future lessons.
Philip Kerr’s posts are always thought-provoking. Mindfulness for beginners questions the strength of research behind the attention mindfulness is now receiving in education.
Russ Mayne asks should we use translation software, especially questioning its role in EAP contexts, and how we might need to update our teaching and assessment criteria to assess the inevitable student use of this ever-improving tool. He also writes about retraction in ELT and shares examples of research which has been retracted. (This BBC Inside Science episode has an interview with Stuart Ritchie which I would also recommend.)
Classrooms and coronavirus
David Petrie talks about how he helped his exam students prepare for doing speaking exams in masks.
Alex Case shares ideas for coronavirus changes for EFL classes. While this might be tongue-in-cheek, I’m sure some of them aren’t that far from things we might be seeing in our classrooms/schools over the next couple of years!
Yawen Jin was one of the trainees on the online CELTA course I’ve just worked on. She’s one of two trainees who’s agreed to write about her experience (Nadia’s post will appear tomorrow). I think you’ll agree that this post is useful for anybody doing the CELTA in the future, whether online or off! Thanks Yawen!
My experience
I heard before I started CELTA that I could only sleep three hours a day on average during the four weeks. Therefore, I felt very complicated feelings. I signed up and tried to pass the interview because I had great expectations for CELTA, but at the same time, I was afraid that I would not survive. A friend even told me that on the first day of her face-to-face CELTA course last year, one of her classmates left the class crying because of stress and never went on with the class. Maybe what she said was exaggerated, but after experiencing it, I also felt that the course intensity, homework and lesson preparation content were quite a lot. However, in the end, I did it, and the rest of my classmates also did it. It has been proven that if you attend classes well, participate in discussions, help each other, complete tasks on time and do what trainers suggest you do, you can and you will survive. So, there is nothing to worry about. There will be nothing to lose by taking this course, and there will be a lot of growth for each of trainee.
Now, let’s talk about my experience over the last four weeks. The first two days of the first week I didn’t feel a lot of pressure. I used to feel anxious in order not to feel too much pressure. Therefore, I rechecked my schedule, reviewed the input lessons, confirmed what I had to do, and right after I had done these three steps, i.e. I made a detailed plan, and then the pressure came on me. It took me a long time to prepare for one lesson, often up to eight hours to make a high-quality PowerPoint and write a lesson plan. It was often necessary for me to stay up until three in the morning, sleep for about five hours, and continue on with a full day of classes. Besides, there were one or two assignments (four in total) to be written every week, and the first weekend I had no rest at all. Even when I was sleeping, the dream was about how to prepare for the class and there were fragments of the input classes.
At the beginning of second week, I felt my mental and physical state was very bad, so I asked two classmates to talk about it. Because there was no private communication before, I didn’t know what other students were like and how they felt about the course. But after the communication, I found that everyone was happy to help each other, such as sending me the methods and websites to relieve mental stress and improve sleep quality. In fact, I found my classmates who looked very energetic had to work very late as well, but they had been working very hard. I felt that even though we were attending classes online, we were all in a group rather than a single person. Then I became more and more accustomed to CELTA’s rhythm, and the time for class preparation was reduced. After each teaching practice, the trainer and other trainees need to give comments on each class. Often the evaluation contained a lot of affirmation and encouragement, and also included objective suggestions. In this process, everyone had more confidence. For example, in the beginning many of us felt that they have little strengths, and lots of weaknesses, but after some time we thought we actually had some advantages. For me, when I was in the third TP, I suddenly released myself and no longer felt nervous. Others commented that they found the strength of my personal charm and self-confidence. This is due to my every effort and every encouragement and recognition from my lovely trainer and trainees in the team. (Another important point is that I learned a lot of useful information and skills from the daily input lessons, and then used them in my own TP, which often produced some good responses.)
By the third week, each group had to change a trainer. The new trainer of our group is a very energetic person who loves education and is willing to discuss and solve problems. (The owner of this blog, Sandy :p) Her requirements were more strict than the previous trainer, which made our workload heavier. And in my observation of her classes, I could say that student-centered teaching method achieved the best degree in my opinion. That is to let the students learn by themselves or let students help each other to learn then achieve the learning outcome. When I was learning educational theory in the uni, I knew the benefits of such a teaching concept and thought I could do it if I wanted to. But after the first two weeks of TP, I tried to spend more student-time each time, thinking that I did quite well, and it seemed that STT might not be added any more. But her demo lesson made me stop being self-satisfied and feel that there was so much to improve. For the first TP in the third week, I agonized for three days but still didn’t reduce the TTT much. Then I communicate with her for a while, she found out I give yourself too much pressure, so she gave me some advice on her experience and her, and told me she had also frets about how to reduce TTT in the past and every step grows through experience. The most important point is that this course values the growth of each trainee, so do not be too anxious.
Therefore, I tried to prepare for the class with a relaxed mood. Although it took a lot of time to increase STT, I made great progress. It should be mentioned that after the members of our group gradually got used to the new trainer, everyone’s growth was remarkable, that is, the so-called strict teacher produced brilliant students. And as the team members got more familiar with each other, everyone was supporting each other and cheering each other on. Although the first half of the third week seemed to be harder than the first week, the rest of the one and a half week were very happy. It is no exaggeration to say that up to the last stage, I felt sad for the end of the course, because this praiseworthy experience, the good atmosphere of mutual support and the fact that I enjoyed every day of lesson preparation and teaching, they made me feel happy and fulfilled.
There are a lot of details to remember these four weeks. First of all, the three trainers were very patient and supportive, and they encouraged trainees to deal with the problem actively and they shared a lot of resources. They all have different teaching styles, and we can learn different teaching methods from their courses. It should be mentioned that in these four weeks they were offering help and support to each trainee. Secondly, even if trainees are from different countries, different cultures and different languages, we always cheer each other on. We were happy to share our own stories, sometimes also talked about our own country’s culture, future plans and interesting views. It’s an amazing experience and I’m sure everyone learned a different kind of wisdom. For example, I feel the power of others to believe in their dreams, and also found different life attitudes. It was all fun and gave me courage. Thirdly, it’s important to believe in yourself. At the beginning of the course, it is necessary to adapt to the pace, but after the initial adaptation period, everything will become more interesting. As long as you can find the fun, it won’t be as difficult as you thought. In the end, you will be glad to have taken such a valuable course. I do love CELTA and the people I met in it.
Tips
Do exactly what trainers say
The trainers are experienced teachers, you can discuss questions with them (because there is no standard answer for some questions). But in the general direction, especially the suggestions for improvement must be followed (just my suggestion). This will definitely help you progress faster and more efficiently.
Manage your time and materials
You need to be clear about your goals and plans for each week to help save time. You also need to organize your documents every day, whether it’s printed or in a folder on your computer. It’s important to keep your documents in order!
Prepare the materials you need
I bought books that might be useful (including Teaching English Pronunciation, Grammar for English Language Teachers and Learning Teaching) before the course started. In this way, I won’t be in a hurry when I need materials (in fact, I don’t need to buy any books myself. The trainer has distributed the resources we needed, but I like reading paper books). Prepare white board, white paper and notebook at the same time.
Watch your diet and sleep
When you’re in a high-intensity class, not eating well only makes your body feel more uncomfortable, and you don’t get as little sleep as the rumored average of three hours. The time required to write each assignment is not ten hours, but three to six hours is enough if you concentrate (and even less if you are a native English speaker).
Find some help and don’t be alone
People under high pressure tend to be mentally fragile. If only a person silently thinking and suffering, will only make themselves more painful. Communicating with other trainees will help you solve problems, maybe help you with practical problems like preparing for class, or maybe relieve pressure. People will meet different difficulties, and it’s helpful to try to ask for help. Me, in particular, had planned to learn and digest the stress on my own from the beginning, so I felt extremely anxious. But it’s much better to talk to someone.
I’m Yawen Jin. I have been teaching young learner English in an educational institution for two years. I then completed a master’s degree in Education Studies at the University of York, followed by CELTA in July 2020. In the future, I will continue to engage in the English teaching industry that I love.
If you’re one of my other CELTA trainees reading this, let me know if you want to write too!
On Monday 6th July 2020 I started training on my first ever fully online CELTA course on Zoom. On the same day, Stephanie Wilbur also started online CELTA training for the first time, but on a different course. We’ve decided to compare our experiences. The post below covers week two. Here’s week one.
Do you feel you have bonded with the group in the way that you would on a face-to-face course?
SM: As I am working on a large course and have not done very many input sessions, I feel like I only really know my TP group. This is not that unusual for a CELTA course in my experience, as you spend so much more time with the teachers you are observing.
I observed sessions on the first two days because I didn’t have any input until Wednesday of week one. This was partly to see how online input sessions might work, but also to give me an idea of all of the trainees because I suspected this might be an issue. I have also talked to the other trainers about all of the trainees, so I feel I know a little about them. However it’s nowhere near as much as if it was face-to-face because you don’t have those little chats in between sessions.
I noticed when I was doing the first input session of the week that when I went in to break out rooms for the first group task, the teachers were having a chat about their weekend (input morning, TP afternoon). I think that the first session should perhaps include an opportunity for the trainees to chat with each other as they are missing that on this course – social time needed. ask us for extensions – CELTA is not the end of the world
On the other hand, I feel like I know my TP group better than normal because we are dealing with their everyday lives in the background. For example, we have talked about their children when we’ve seen or heard them, and discussed things you can see in their home behind them.
SW: That was one of my big surprises of the week – we ARE bonding. There’s almost more intimacy because you’re staring at each other’s faces and there’s no escape. We have TP in the morning and input in the afternoons. I normally open up breakout rooms 15 minutes before the first session. I leave my camera on so they know I’m still there but have my mike off. That was especially important this week when I was supporting trainees through the challenges of the end of week two. They can chat together, but they know whether I’m at the computer or not so are aware that I might be listening.
Week two is often exhausting and overwhelming, both for the trainees and the trainers. In one input session towards the end of the week, I gave the trainees thirty minutes to vent and to share with each other. Some of them had got to the stage where they didn’t want to have their cameras of microphones on because they were so overwhelmed. I let them talk to each other, but also encouraged them, and reminded them to wait until they’d slept to make any big decisions about what they’d do next. This point in the course is always challenging, and we were still able to help each other.
How do you stay connected to your co-trainer(s)?
SM: What I miss most is socialising with the other trainers during the course though – I’m normally ‘on holiday’ while doing the course, using the opportunity to explore a new place. My co-trainers are either in the same position, or (adopted) locals who are happy to show me around. However, there are lots of similarities to a face-to-face course. It’s the first time I’ve worked with both of my colleagues, though they’ve often worked together before. As a freelancer joining a course, I always have lots of questions. tech support + making templates, I enjoy the fact that (as in any good team) we’re able to share the different areas of knowledge. My co-trainers have done the course online before and are much more experienced CELTA trainers in general. I can bring my experience of teaching on Zoom over the last few months, and my confidence with technology.
Our trainees are all teaching pre-intermediate using the same TP points. During lessons, we can WhatsApp to discuss the lessons if we need to. This is made much easier because we’re all watching the ‘same’ lessons at the same time – we don’t need to describe the TP points to each other. We’ve also started sharing other things in WhatsApp: photos out the window, bits of information about what we’re doing in the evening, or what we did yesterday – all the things you would normally chat about.
SW: I’ve worked with my colleague on one course before, and I trained him up originally, so we know a bit about how we both work. We have one online meeting a week, and keep in touch on WhatsApp apart from that. This feels quite different to the constant communication you have on a face-to-face course, every time you’re in the trainers’ office before, after and between TPs. It also feels different outside work, as part of the experience of being a freelancer generally includes socialising with other freelancers, as Sandy described above.
What effect has being online had on your input sessions?
SM: In the first week I only had two input sessions and one video observation with a few minutes for a little input afterwards. I did two phonology sessions which I decided to completely rewrite. This obviously took a while! I based it on mistakes I had observed in the demo lessons with the pronunciation of the words ‘squirrel’ and ‘bear’. I think I will share these input sessions on the blog soon as I was very pleased with how they worked – to time, hitting all the important points, and having a noticeable effect in my trainees’ TPs. 🙂
This week I had a session on vocabulary which I had also rewritten because my views on what it is important to know about in the vocabulary session have changed in the last couple of years since I did the input my previous CELTA course. This took me 4 hours on Sunday night, creating new materials for the session, getting bogged down in materials from old versions of it, overplanning it, then boiling it down and writing the handout. Then the first two activities both took twice as long as planned, so I ended up ditching two activities anyway. I still think the trainees came away with most of what they needed as the two things that went were a revision of lesson stages and planning activities from upcoming lessons (though obviously it would have been nice to still have these).
The other input session I have done is authentic materials, and I did that largely as I would in the classroom, using the same presentation, but with breakout rooms for discussions, including a jigsaw discussion. I did this by renaming the breakout rooms (Pros 1, Pros 2, Cons 1, Cons 2 etc.), handwriting a list of names for who they needed to pair up with afterwards and then manually creating the rooms for the second round. Normally I would have a carousel of authentic materials around the room for the final stage and trainees would move from one to the next. We normally have about 30 minutes for this. This week we had 15 minutes because everything takes a little longer on Zoom. I set up a Google doc which you can see here. The trainees could find any authentic materials that they had in their homes or online, and I could give them immediate feedback because I could move from one group to the next and see everything they were writing in the document very quickly without having to decipher handwriting! I could add and highlight comments which they could deal with when they were ready, rather than interrupting the discussions. I think this worked really well, and took a lot less time to plan than the other input sessions.
I’ve been lucky to be able to take my time with my planning because it’s a large course so inputs are shared between three of us. I think it would have been a lot more exhausting on a smaller course, and I’m not sure I’d have had the luxury to change as much (though there have still been some late nights!)
SW: This week I realised that most of my input sessions were entirely paper-based. I’ve often travelled for courses so I took my folder of input sessions with me. I kept thinking of digitalising them, but never did, and now I’ve been forced to. I always had some online sessions, but mostly what I’ve been doing is turning paper versions into digital versions – it’s a lot of work to turn them into something that functions online. It can be a challenge having everything ready for the input in time.
Having said that, it’s been really interesting to try and keep activities like mingles and different grouping as part of the session. You can still make it quite interactive. Sometimes I thought of ways I could do some of these things, but they would be way more energy than they’re worth for the return on them. One thing that worked really well was in the functional language session. Normally I would cut up exponents, functions and contexts for trainees to match in a mingle, then sit with their partner. This time I gave each group one column each, and they came up with the other two. They were really engaged with this.
For me, the whole process has been great because we can get stuck as trainers doing the same session in the same way for a long time, and this becomes repetitive. This is a chance to rethink all of our sessions – we have no choice. The content is still there, but how are we going to make it into something trainees can learn from in terms of teaching techniques too?
What are the logistics of observations, especially using breakout rooms?
SM: I’m using a desktop computer with two screens, so have Zoom displayed on one and feedback on the other. When I join the room I’m the host. I make all of the other teachers co-hosts. I ask them to change their names to ‘Teacher XYZ’ and I change mine to ‘Trainer Sandy’ so we’re all grouped on the participants list.
I hand over the host role to the teacher and they make me a co-host. You lose a host role and become a normal participant when you hand it over. Because it is my room I can reclaim the host role if that is a problem but I don’t normally need to do this.
When teachers make breakout rooms for students they also divide the observers between the rooms. Only the main host can set up breakout rooms. However if you are a co-host, after you join a breakout room you can see the list of all the rooms and move between them whenever you like. Sometimes I follow the teacher to see what they see, and sometimes I stay in the rooms separately to see what problems students have with the activity and whether this is because of them or because of the teacher. By staying in one room with the breakout room list open, you can also get a feel for how long the teacher is spending in each room. We have mostly only had two or three rooms in the lessons I’ve observed.
If there haven’t been many students, I’ve suggested that we stay in the main room, but the teacher switches off their camera and microphone to give the students space to do the task alone. In feedback, we discuss what would happen if you’ve got 10 students and how this would influence the lesson, for example how feedback stages need to be different on returning from a breakout room.
During the break between each lesson, the teacher hands over the host row to the next picture. Teacher to then makes teacher one a co-host. At first I needed to remind them to do this but by the end of this week, they were doing it confidently without my intervention.
SW: I’m observing on a tablet and using my laptop to type feedback. I think the functions are more limited on a tablet, though I’m wondering if I can change that and will try again to move around the groups next week.
Trainees always put me in a BOR to see what the students are doing. I stay in the same room because of my tablet. I’ve noticed that trainees are monitoring well and coming in and out regularly to check in with students. When our class sizes are quite small, we have conversations about dealing with limited numbers of students. I suggested that teachers put students in breakout rooms as private time, but pop in and see how they do. Maybe next week I could suggest that students stay in the main room but the teacher puts themself in a breakout room to give the students space.
I didn’t specify what to do with the other trainees while teachers are first learning what to do with Zoom. It cant be overwhelming thinking about what to do with breakout rooms when you have so many people to deal with. I told teachers to put TT in capital letters after their name to help teachers see who is and isn’t a student. I think the mid-course changeover is a good time to change this, and get them to start putting observers into rooms too.
What good things have happened this week?
SM: Because everything is typed on our course, preparing stage 1 tutorials was very easy. I normally type them anyway, adapting them from my typed feedback. On this course I could make a single table with strengths and action points and copy things across from TP feedback ready to edit them. Instead of trying to make them fit into the little box in the CELTA 5 booklet when you print them out and mess about with scissors and glue, it took about 5 minutes to copy and paste all of the information across to the portfolio on Moodle.
Over the course of the week, the trainees have started to hand over control more to the students. This normally happens at this point on a CELTA course, but I still think it’s worth mentioning because of a comment from one trainee in TP prep. She said ‘But I just want to teach them!’ when we were discussing how to help students with new vocabulary without presenting each item one at a time before doing an exercise (something which I’ve never seen suggested as an approach on CELTA, but which about half of trainees do themselves despite being explicitly told not to!). This reminded me again of the long shadow that the apprenticeship of observation casts over new teachers. We talked about how there are many ways to teach and lecturing is just one of them. The TP prep group reflected on when it is they learn best, and whether this comes from having something explained to them or trying it themselves, finding solutions, making mistakes, and getting feedback. The conclusion was that the latter is better, and I started to see the effect of this towards the end of the week. I think one problem is that the teachers haven’t seen very much of other models yet, because they’re only in week 2 of the course and they probably have thousands of hours of lecturing to contend with. This is an area I want to continue to think about.
The final interesting thing from this week and the one I’m most impressed by on the part of the trainees came from a 10-minute discussion about the use of the word ‘good’ at the end of feedback on Tuesday. During TP feedback, they have been writing notes about each teacher from that day. The word ‘good’ appeared 24 times in about 450 words of comments in our Google Doc on Tuesday, including 5 times in consecutive comments for one teacher. We discussed how as feedback it’s not very useful because it’s not specific enough. We also talked about what kind of comments you would make if that was a problem and contrasted the two approaches, and also talked about the value of specific feedback for students. Their feedback has always been pretty great for the stage of the course they were at, but the next day the difference made me so excited I jumped up and down at the computer. 🙂 On Wednesday, it appeared 17 times (12 from one pair of teachers!) in about 620 words of comments from all six trainees on three lessons – it had been replaced by really valuable, insightful feedback. They had noticed so many specific things, and were able to describe them in a beautiful level of detail which I have rarely seen even at the end of a CELTA course. They also inevitably noticed things I had not seen. We discussed this change afterwards and the trainees said that because they knew that they needed to put specific examples and not just write ‘good’, they were paying much closer attention throughout the lessons.
SW: The way the trainees supported each other when one trainee was talking about quitting mid-week was amazing. The chat lit up – they were all sending her fantastically supportive messages.If that had happened in person, I’m not sure everyone would have said something to her. Everyone can join in, including the quieter people. The online element could allow for more communication between trainees in difficult situations. The bonding and the support and commiseration over where they all were and how they were all feeling on Thursday continued on Friday – they opened up and were really greeting each other at the start of Friday’s sessions.
The other great thing that happened on Thursday and Friday was the moment in the course when you see trainees break bad habits they’ve been getting feedback on, something clicks and they succeed. This is not unique to being online – it always happens at this point in the course. There was so much of that at the end of the week. Watching them gain confidence because of that, contributing more, growing and transforming as people and teachers is fantastic. It’s difficult to understand if you don’t experience or see it, and trying to persuade potential trainees of this at interview and earlier in the course can be a challenge. As a trainer, you have to keep trainees with you and encourage them not to give up, trying to convince them that the stress and struggle is normal for this point in the course. Other people have done this before, and you can do it too. And the trainee who was thinking about quitting? She taught an amazing TP on Friday. She’d got some of the stress out of her system, received an outpouring of support, and came back super strong with a great lesson.
What problems have you had this week and how have you solved them?
SM: Last week I mentioned that I was surprised at how few technical problems I had had. I spoke too soon! This week I had a power cut at the end of feedback, luckily when I was only speaking to two teachers about assignment questions and we’d pretty much finished. However I’d made a recording of the feedback session for a teacher who had to leave earlier and I thought I had lost this. Zoom recording only converts into a file when you close the room. I was very happy to find that when I restarted Zoom the next morning the recording was still there. Thank you Zoom!
I also got kicked out of Zoom randomly for two or three minutes during one TP. I didn’t miss anything important, but it made me realize that I could end up missing quite a lot. I told the trainees that if any of them noticed that I’m not in the room, they should press record straight away. Only a host or a co-host can record a meeting, and you have to have this function turned on in the settings. Luckily the meeting doesn’t end if you get kicked out and it’s your Zoom room. Somebody else is randomly allocated the host role if you are still the host. When you rejoin the meeting, you need to ask the teacher to make you a co-host again.
A couple of students have dropped out because of internet, but normally immediately come back. Some have to leave early because of work – but slightly changing numbers during TPs is normal on any course.
SW: I tell trainees to sit closer to the router if they have a connection problem. One trainee has to sit next to the router as it was on a different floor in her house. That seems to be working.
Another trainee has had technical problems and has been finding workarounds to avoid excessive teacher talk. For example, she has somebody else play the listening and/or downloads the listening so it’s not using as much bandwidth. This is reflective of the kind of real-life problems trainees will have to deal with in the classroom and online after the course, and at least now they have the support to help them resolve them.
My internet kept dropping out in one particular input session and I have no idea why. I sat by the router and it was much better. It’s the same as in the classroom – when there’s a problem, you give the trainees something to do while you try and resolve it. I was setting up an assignment, so told them to keep reading it if I dropped out again and ask me questions whenever I made it back.
What other tips do you have?
SM: Write down all of the Zoom codes that you need in a clear table on a piece of paper which you can keep next to your computer. This is invaluable when moving quickly between rooms, for example when input has finished and TP prep is about to start. The main course tutor sends out links for TP each morning to all the trainees.
I train my trainees on any course to name their files consistently. When you have a lot of computer files appearing in your inbox every day you can waste a lot of time trying to work out which generic plan belongs to which teacher. The formula I always use is TP1 Bob lesson plan, TP1 Bob materials, TP1 Bob feedback, etc. It keeps all of the files together in a logical order, and makes it easier when sending them back to the trainees. Shared screen to show them why this is useful/important to me
SW: I have all of the Zoom codes on a post-it notes. Going into the week 3 changeover, we’ll send out one email with all the links so everybody has the links in one place
Get as much done ahead of time as you can. This is particularly true of planning input, especially if you’ve previously done things in a paper-based way.
Above all, enjoy the process of thinking about and discovering new things, and rethinking old things in a new way. Don’t try to make the course exactly what it is face-to-face. Keep the integrity and standards of course, but remember that it’s a different environment. Just as you would as a freelancer moving between schools, you’re doing the course in a different place, each of which has pros and cons. You ask yourself: How does it work in this centre? When you teach somebody else’s timetable, you look how things change when they’re in a different order. So treat this in the same way: look how things change when you do them online. It really refreshes your practice. Enjoy the advantages – they do exist!
WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU LIKE US TO TALK ABOUT?
Thank you to those who commented on last week’s post here and elsewhere – I hope we’ve been able to answer your questions. Let us know what else you’d like us to discuss in the comments below.
On Monday 6th July I started training on my first ever fully online CELTA course on Zoom. On the same day, Stephanie Wilbur also started online CELTA training for the first time, but on a different course. We’ve decided to compare our experiences over the next few weeks. This is a long post as it sets the scene, but hopefully the others will be a little shorter!
What’s your previous experience with CELTA?
SM: I’ve been a CELTA tutor since August 2014. In 2014-2015 I did courses full-time around the world, and since then I’ve just done courses in the summers in between my other job as a Director of Studies. I didn’t do a course last summer as I started my MA, so my last course was in July 2018. All of the courses I’ve done have been full-time, four-week, face-to-face courses.
SW: I became a CELTA tutor in June 2015and I’ve have been working as a full-time trainer since then. I worked as a Teacher Training Manager from 2016-2017, when I did a course every month. Since then, I have been a freelance teacher trainer working on CELTAs and other training courses in the Middle East, Latin America, Central Asia, the US, and Europe. In that time, I have worked on full-time and part-time CELTA courses, but they have all been face-to-face up to now.
What’s the context?
SM: My course has 18 trainees based in a wide range of locations: the UK, Italy, Andorra, Poland, Romania, Jerusalem and Gibraltar; they’re from the UK, Ireland, China, Italy, Russia, Poland, Romania and Germany. Our students are also from many different countries: Turkey, Brazil, Chile – some living at home, and some based in the UK now. It’s one of the most international courses I’ve worked on. As I’m based in Poland and the course is run from the UK, time zones are a little confusing, and we’ve definitely had one student who’s arrived an hour early because of this! The other two trainers are based in the UK and have previously run online CELTA courses, so I’m definitely benefitting from their experience.
SW: I’m based in Slovakia and working on a course run from Gran Canaria. There are 11 trainees, all based in Gran Canaria as far as I know. They’re from Gran Canaria, Morocco, Poland, the UK, Ireland, Ukraine, and Argentina. Our students are all Spanish from different parts of Gran Canaria, mostly lawyers who are also participating in online courts sometimes have to miss some lessons. They’re mostly in their 30s and 40s. My co-trainer is in Gran Canaria.
How did you originally feel about online CELTAs?
SM: When I first heard about online CELTAs back in March, I was really worried that they would not maintain the standards of the face-to-face course. It’s hard now to put my finger on why, but I think I was worried that the technology was new to most of us as trainers, and we wouldn’t know how to train teachers to use it properly if we weren’t fully confident with it ourselves. I was concerned about how CELTA criteria designed for a physical classroom would map onto an online environment, and I also wasn’t sure how the extra layer of dealing with technology would impact on trainees who already have a lot to get their heads around. I originally felt like CELTAs run fully online should be a separate course with separate certification. As a recruiter, I was concerned that CELTA graduates from online courses would not be ready to stand in front of a classroom full of people and confidently teach them, and that as a school we would have to do a lot of extra training to get them to that point.
SW: Initially, I wasn’t completely sure about whether trainees who’d done courses online would feel fully prepared to teach in a classroom. I feel like a lot of trainers initially thought that online versions of the course wouldn’t be as high quality and we were biased against it. When we realised things weren’t going to change overnight and the world was changing, we started to open our minds more and we started to see what opportunities this situation has to offer. I’m still deciding how I feel about this, but in the near future current CELTA trainees will certainly be more trained for the environment we will probably have to teach in. There’ll be a much more blended world afterwards – we don’t know what level of safety there will be, but more people will teach, work and learn from home. However, the success of the online CELTA will depend on who the trainers are and what they’re bringing to trainees’ attention. Employers need to know what training they have to do after an online course to get teachers ready for the classroom. As trainers, we need to make it clear to trainees how it’ll be different face-to-face.
How do you feel now? Why?
SM: Over the past few months I’ve followed a lot of discussions between CELTA trainers who have been running courses online. I’ve also built up my own experience with Zoom, and learnt a lot from my colleagues at IH Bydgoszcz and other IH schools. I’ve completely changed my mind about CELTAs run fully online, and now know that they’re here to stay. They’ve offered so many people the chance to do the course who wouldn’t normally be able to.
The trainees I’ve seen this week are already better at giving and checking instructions and demonstrating activities than some trainees in week 3 of face-to-face courses I’ve worked on before. Their reflection is already deeper and more productive. They’re more aware of the students right from the start of the course: normally they’re so focussed on what they’re doing as teachers, that they forget the people in front of them. As on every course, the trainees are immediately taking what they learn from observing each other into their lessons the next day, but I feel like it’s happening across the board with the whole group, instead of just the stronger teachers doing this. These are all things I’ve seen reflected in discussions with other trainers.
There are a few possible reasons for this: not having a commute or having to get used to living somewhere new frees up time to focus on the course. Everyone being in their homes means trainees are relaxed, and therefore more able to take in what’s happening in input and feedback. When we observe lessons, our cameras and microphones are off. That means that if you need to stand up and move around, or have a snack, or have an emotional reaction to what’s happening in front of you, you can do it without fear of distracting the teacher. This makes it easier to maintain concentration when you’re observing. Trainees aren’t spending ages cutting things up, fighting with a printer or a copier, or worrying about where *that* bit of paper has disappeared to, so they’ve got more mental space to focus on what’s actually happening in the lesson and what the students are doing. Trainees are also not as aware of or distracted by the other people watching them – instead of looking for the trainer’s reaction to something they’ve just done, they just get on with it. Students might feel more confident too as only one teacher is obviously focussing on them, rather than a rather intimidating seven!
I’ve also really enjoyed the input sessions I’ve done, as I’ve been able to demonstrate various ways to use Zoom, and have also been able to incorporate technology much more easily. For example, when I asked trainees to look at a couple of websites which are useful for learning phonetic symbols, they didn’t have to find and start their laptops before they could explore the sites. Another benefit has been how easy it is to observe my colleagues. I’ve been able to watch a couple of their input sessions and they’ve watched mine, while still being able to get on with other work in the background.
SW: We know this is likely to continue for a long time. The reality might be that these trainees are more prepared for the next year of teaching than traditional teachers who are adjusting, fantastically but have old habits to break. New teachers don’t know any other way of teaching. What we’re providing them with on an online CELTA is a good thing for the future.
Technology skills are a big factor – logistical things like which link to use to go to TP (teaching practice) or input can be quite confusing. Trainees fresh out of university are generally not having a problem as they already have the technology skills and their study skills are fresh. They’re very supportive with those who are finding it harder. I emphasise that the trainees are there to support each other, as I do on every course. We have a couple of people who were unfamiliar with technology before they started and that’s been very challenging for them and us. They weren’t completely prepared for the learning curve of moving to an online environment and the pressure that adds on top of CELTA. Dealing with Google Docs, learning to use breakout rooms, understanding where to find all of the documents – we had one person drop out because of this learning curve. Some people might feel like they have to do a CELTA course because they want the qualification and now there’s time to do it. There’s pressure on them, so they dive in without being fully prepared. On the other hand, some people love all the online courses they’re able to do and get really into it. One person really enjoyed learning all of the technology that was completely new to them, and now knows how to talk about it and use it in the classroom after just one week.
Our trainees all had a 45-minute unassessed TP with feedback before they did TP1. That meant they’d had more lessons and some feedback by the time they got to TP1 – they’re further on before they got assessed for the first time. They were more insightful already at this point, and trying more challenging things. For example, some trainees were already negotiating meaning with their students in TP1. The pressure is off, and it’s not so scary by the time you get to the assessed part. I’m meant to be running my first face-to-face course since the pandemic soon, and I’d like to carry this over from the online CELTA so that they have unassessed TP before they get the pressure of assessment.
Observing lessons is much more comfortable and relaxed than in a classroom. 2.5 hours of TP always feels like a long time to sit still and observe. At home, we can move around, stand up, or stretch, and it doesn’t look awkward. I’m using my tablet to watch the lessons, with my laptop open to type everything up. Trainees aren’t watching our reactions all the time, they’re just thinking about teaching.
What are the challenges of the online CELTA and how have you dealt with them?
SM: Our course had extra sessions the week before the main course to introduce some of the functions of Zoom, particularly breakout rooms. We sent out a short tech questionnaire before the course, asking how familiar trainees were with Zoom, word processing software, presentation software, and internet functions. We also checked what kind of computer they’re accessing the course on and whether they have any recurring tech problems. This was a very useful needs analysis to help us find out who needs what tech help straight away. Trainees also had a 20-minute unassessed TP to familiarise themselves with managing the tech while teaching.
There was a big storm here yesterday and I thought I’d have a power cut, so I asked a trainee who was observing to start a recording if I dropped out of the lesson so I’d be able to watch it later. I think I’ll prepare a trainee to do that each day regardless of the weather from now on.
When trainees have had internet or other tech problems, I’ve had to decide whether their TP should be extended for a few minutes or not to compensate for this. Luckily our TP is at the end of the day, so I have the flexibility to do this.
The strangest thing for me is that I don’t feel like I know all of the trainees after a week. We had a very short getting to know you activity on day one, but then had to show them the Moodle where they’ll upload all of their documents. I can’t chat to them in breaks or just before and after input sessions as easily, so although I know the six trainees in my TP group well, I’ve only had limited interaction with the other twelve in the two input sessions I’ve done. I observed sessions run by the other trainers on the first two days so I could see the trainees in action, but haven’t interacted with them much at all.
SW: Our course had an extra day the week before when trainees had a Zoom tutorial and watched demo lessons. I taught my demo from where I was on holiday, so didn’t participate in the rest of the day, which was run by my co-trainer. That meant that I missed out on getting to know you activities, so my first input session was a challenge as it felt a bit awkward, but this was much better by the end of the week. I’ve made a real effort to pair trainees up with those from the other TP group (as I do face-to-face too) so they can all get to know each other better. At first the trainees thought I was Slovak with a really good American accent. They didn’t realise I was American until my phonology session later in the week!
One teacher had internet issues during her lesson. The video and audio were breaking up, and she was worried that if she put students into BORs, they’d disappear. She decided to keep them in the main room, but this increased her teacher talking time and reduced the student-centred activities. It’s a challenge deciding what to do in feedback in this case, as she’d clearly made a decision based on the circumstances, but that meant students got less speaking practice.
What have you learnt this week?
SM: These are the tips I’ve picked up this week.
When I was teaching on Zoom before, my students all had course books. On the CELTA course, they don’t have any materials, so they have to take a picture of the activity before they go into breakout rooms (BORs), either on their phones or by doing a screen shot.
When students are doing a reading, display the reading text on the screen and get them to take a picture of the questions. If they’re doing this task in BORs, they need the reading text in a document which one of them can share (e.g. a Google Doc link for the reading, and the questions on their phones).
When monitoring in BORs, switch off your camera and microphone to make it less intrusive. (Thanks for the tip Rebecca!) Scott Donald called this ‘ninja mode’, a term I’ve already stolen!
I’ve found I’m spontaneously interrupting trainees more to help with tech problems, for example when a reading doesn’t display or when their video is off (if the students haven’t told them). Normally I would only interrupt during TP if a trainee asked for my help. I think it’s OK to do this at the start of the course while trainees are familiarising themselves with the platform, but I’ve told them I’ll only do this in TP1 and TP2, and after that they should ask for help if they need it.
SW: I hadn’t been teaching on Zoom before, apart from one small conversation class, so I’m learning as we go as well. It can be a challenge sometimes, but it’s really beneficial learning from our trainees as well – they’re more familiar with some aspects of the tech than me. Because of lockdown, trainees know we’re probably new at the technology. This has levelled the playing field as we’re all learning from each other. You have to be open about learning along with them. I’ve found the Teaching English Online course from FutureLearn and Cambridge really useful. Here are some things I’ve realised this week:
Put all the links for rooms in one place to simplify things for trainees.
A Zoom tutorial before the course starts is essential.
Remind trainees that sometimes students should switch the camera off. This is the procedure I’m teaching them for reading lessons to students them some space.
You can move from one BOR to another directly, rather than going back to the main room each time.
How do you organise TP feedback?
SM: BORs are great for reflection on TP! I’ve adapted an idea from CELTA trainer discussions. I set up a Google Doc with a table for trainees to write strengths and action points for each teacher they saw. Above the table I display the criteria we’re working on at this point in the course, so they know what to focus on.
I did this in pairs in BORs, one teacher from that day and one observer, so there were three sets of criteria and tables in the document. I told them to start with other people’s lessons and finish with that of the teacher in the pair, i.e. if ABC taught and AD are discussing the lessons, they discuss B and C’s lessons first, then A’s. They have 15 minutes to complete the document and I look at their notes while they’re doing this but leave them in peace in the BORs.
For the other 15 minutes of our feedback, they read each other’s comments, then I talk about general strengths from all of the lessons and one specific strength and action point for each teacher. I also add any Zoom tips based on problems that day, and perhaps demonstrate one or two techniques trainees should find useful in future lessons.
Afterwards, I send them the link so that everyone has access to some written follow-up to the feedback from that day, not only the teachers.
This is different to how I’ve done feedback on face-to-face courses, when I often feel like we spend a lot of time on what problems there were because I set up more of a carousel, with each teacher getting individual feedback from each of the three observers, and having little time to reflect on the lessons they saw, instead talking about their own lesson three times.
I feel like this approach to feedback has been incredibly positive. Around 20-25 minutes of our 30-40 minutes are focussed on strengths, with only about 5 minutes on action points, and another 5 or so on how to work on the action points. Trainees are learning from and focussing on each other’s strengths, and I’ve seen them putting this into action straight away.
SW: I think it’s important to give trainees space to talk about things together without me being there. I leave them in the main room and tell them I’ll be back in 10 minutes. We also talk about the importance of trainees giving the students space, for example through activities with the video off, which creates a different dynamic. By removing yourself from the discussion by switching the video off or leaving the room, you’re not tempted to keep stepping in and solving problems. I used a Padlet I set up as their observation task. I started columns of positive points and constructive criticism for each teacher which trainees added to as the lesson went on. I could watch who was participating and what was happening, keeping trainees active in our morning TP.
What else would you like us to talk about?
Over to you: if you’ve got this far (thank you!), what questions would you like us to answer in the next three weeks?
This is the last of my weekly posts, started when the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools in Poland. I still have a couple of weeks of work left, but my teaching is done for the year and life outside the classroom seems to be opening up again, so this is a general reflection on what I’ve learnt since lockdown started.
Personal stuff
When we first went into lockdown I thought that it was going to be very difficult for me because I live by myself. I thought I would get lonely and depressed because that’s what’s happened to me before when I didn’t have friends I could easily meet. However, it was the complete opposite. I don’t think I have ever felt more connected to the world and to my friends and family since I started living abroad. As we all discovered the power of Zoom and how easy it is to connect groups of people for all kinds of different reasons I started to have regular group meetings with three different lots of friends as well as regular conversations with my mum and with two other friends. Together with professional conversations and online events, my social life has been very full, including games afternoons, pub quizzes and just having conversations on every topic under the sun, starting with the inevitable “What it’s like for you there now?”
Apart from the social side of things, I have continued to work on my cooking and baking. I can now confidently bake with live yeast, and have added a range of meal options to my menu, including pizza and experimenting with chickpeas. I have had more time to cook and bake than previously and I hope to maintain this to some extent when life opens up again completely.
Health-wise, it was a challenge not having physio for so long and since I went back a couple of weeks ago it has been quite painful, but nothing I haven’t had to deal with before. I have bought a bike and started to use it in the last couple of weekends and I’m really enjoying the new places it can take me to, including where I am standing right now. I dictated most of this post into my phone while standing in the forest taking a break from a bike ride. 🙂
I have hugely enjoyed all of the cultural offerings which have been made available to us during lockdown. I have watched almost all of the productions from the National Theatre and have learnt to notice staging in a way I never had before because of their simple but incredibly effective productions. I have filled a lot of gaps in my Shakespeare knowledge, watching at least five plays which I had never seen before, and appreciating all over again why he is such an amazing playwright. I’ve also seen a few musicals, and other plays and productions I would never have considered watching if it wasn’t for lockdown. I have given money a few times and hope to continue being able to support the arts in more ways after this.
Final lessons
My final two lessons with my groups were a grammar, vocabulary and writing test which involved me making sure they could all access the test successfully, then waiting for them to finish and providing activities for the fast finishers.
In the final lesson I shared the test results and we looked at websites that the students can use to practice English over the summer.
In the last Polish beginners lesson we did general revision from our 20 or so hours of lessons this year. We started with an ELTpics image of a person which my students had chosen and they answered simple questions about the person in a Google Doc. To help them do this we had Quizlet breaks, replaying set from earlier in the year including demonstrating the Gravity function. Pat way through the lesson we added a second image to the document and they answered more questions about that lesson. The lesson was only 1 hour long, so we didn’t have time to create conversations between the two people set in some of the locations we have practiced language for this year, for example the supermarket, the train station, or the police station. I think the structure of this lesson works nicely, particularly for the small group of three students I had, and it’s a lesson that worked very well in an online setting because we could move smoothly between the documents and the Quizlet sets.
My teaching
Like pretty much every teacher in the world, my teaching has undergone a huge transformation over the last 3 months. I have gone from knowing nothing about Zoom to being able to run a range of lesson types on it and integrate lots of different types of activities and tools to make sure that my students benefit from the lessons. I have learnt that it’s an incredibly versatile tool, and I know that it will be a part of my teaching from now on. I have also been able to incorporate many things that I probably could have used in a face-to-face classroom but never had the incentive to do so, or tried once a long time ago and never used again. There is no doubt in my mind that my teaching has developed a lot due to the challenge of the last few months, and I have found it very exciting and interesting to try to work out how to teach in this different way. I wish that it didn’t need to have happened in this way but I think that education will be richer for it.
Training and conferences
Today I attended the #excitELT conference online, which was a great format – 15-20 minute presentations, followed by 20-30-minute discussions in small groups with Google Docs, followed by a 5-10-minute round-up and a short break before the next session. This is just one of the new training formats I have been privileged to take part in over the last three months. I previously wrote about the IH Moscow event which I attended which had short presentations by lots of different teachers, and I will shortly be sharing a post by Alastair Grant about the weekly We’re all in this together meetings which features very vibrant chats run via Zoom based on prompts or guest speakers. If you know of any other interesting new training formats, please let me know.
All of this has come about out of the need to provide training and support with the sudden move to online teaching, and it has yet again demonstrated the innovation of the teaching community. A lot of conferences have had to move online and this has broadened access to these events, and enabled a wider range of speakers to take part. I hope that these models are maintained when the pandemic is over, and we can continue to look for new and innovative ways of supporting as many teachers as possible.
I have had to learn to be more effective with my email communication, as in the beginning there was so much information which needed to be given to the teachers, and the only way to pass it all on seemed to be via email. I tried to speak to every teacher over the phone or on Zoom at least once a week. While this was not always possible I know I managed to speak to people at least every two weeks. I created a virtual staffroom on Zoom so that people could meet me easily and I could remain as accessible as possible, as I would in my office at school.
We continued with weekly meetings and workshops, and I tried to maintain the social aspects of this by having some time for us to have a chat at the beginning of the meeting before we started the main event. I’m not sure how successful these things were, and the last three months have shown areas where our admin needs to become more efficient, as it’s not possible just to pop into another room and have a quick chat with somebody if there’s a problem. When you have to make an appointment or send yet another email, it’s all more screen time and shows up the holes in the system.
We now have two weeks at the end of the school year to try to work out some of these problems before the summer, and I have time during the summer to think about what I can do to improve the situation. The fact that we will inevitably enter some new mode of working in September gives us the chance to have a kind of reset. I’m not sure we would have done that without the need to work in such a different way during the pandemic.
Reflection
Writing weekly posts since the beginning of the pandemic has allowed me to really think about what has happened to me and to our profession and lives over the last 3 months. I have thought about my teaching more deeply than for a long time. Overall, I know that I have been very lucky to always have a little bit of freedom during lockdown, to continue to have work to keep me busy, to have a range of challenges, and to not have to deal with the challenges of having children suddenly at home. I have been very grateful for the support and comments I have received in response to my posts.
Thank you for joining me on this journey, and I hope that the end is in sight for you as well before too long. I hope that the end is really here for us in Poland too, and that it’s not a false sense of security before a second wave comes. As always with these major events, we are reminded that life is short and we never know when it will change dramatically, so we should continue to live every moment to the best of our abilities, including when we are in lockdown. Good luck and stay safe.
Tips and useful links
If you need to present from PowerPoint via Zoom, go to File > Set up show > Browsed by an individual (window). (Thanks Kelly Cargos)
If you’re having trouble downloading the chat now, there’s been a setting change in the latest version of Zoom, which you may need to change back. (Thanks Ruth)
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
100 ideas for exploiting activities, a webinar I did for IH Bucharest, including ideas for the physical and online classroom, none of which should take longer than 5 minutes to prepare
This is my penultimate post in this series of weekly reflections on the current goings-on, as I finish with my groups next week. This week my two lessons were both tests: the first was reading and listening, the second speaking. In this post, I’ll describe how we ran the tests and what I’ve learnt about Zoom this week.
Before I start, I’d like to stress that systems we’ve been using to test our students are the cumulative thought process and reflection on experience of the teachers and management team I work with at IH Bydgoszcz, and we’re refining it all the time! Thank you to my colleagues for all of their input and feedback!
Testing listening and reading
Before the lesson:
Create a Google Doc with your questions. Check that these are relatively easy to complete on a computer even if you have minimal technical skills, particularly for the listening.
Make one copy per student, with the student’s name in the file name, plus a demo document.
Create an extra document. In this document, make a list of all of your students’ names, with the edit link for the document under their name. Leave a space after each name/link pair. This makes things easier during the lesson!
During the lesson:
Have all of the students’ listening or reading tests open in a single set of tabs.
Remind them to put all phones, books etc, away from their device (unless they’re using a phone of course!)
For reading, tell them that you would like to check their reading, not Google’s, and therefore they shouldn’t copy and paste the text or any of the questions (this happened in a couple of my colleagues’ lessons!)
Show students the demo document, particularly any question types/exercise types which they might not immediately be able to work out how to complete. This includes how you want them to complete e.g. a True/False question. Should they underline it? Highlight it? Delete one? The last is probably the easiest by the way!
Put the list of links into the chat box. Students click on their link. If students aren’t logged in to Google (they don’t need to be), you should see a little coloured circle in the top right corner saying ‘anonymous wombat/ifrit/walrus’ etc appear when they’re in.
Ask students to type their name at the top of the document when they get in. This helps you to check that the right student is in the right document. Go through each test and check it matches the file name.
Ask everybody to mute their microphones. Mute yours too.
For listening, tell students that if they can’t hear or there’s a problem with the audio, they should say ‘Stop, help!’ as soon as possible. One or two colleagues had students who got to the end before saying they couldn’t hear anything!
Start the listening – make sure you’re sharing your computer audio! It’s best to have the file on your desktop, rather than streaming it, if possible.
While the students are completing the reading or listening, flick through the documents to see whether they’re filling it in correctly, as in completing the tasks in the way you want them to. Help students if they’re having problems. Create a manual breakout room to move a student to if you need to speak to them.
We had some lessons where the teaching did the testing, and others where there was a guest examiner. In all cases, the students worked in pairs in breakout rooms on a revision activity throughout the lesson. Mostly this was them creating a game, and they then switched games with other students to play in the second half of the lesson. I saw various types of game:
Creating a Kahoot.
Creating virtual board games in Google Docs or using Tools for Educators. Thanks to Ruth Walpole for leading me to that website.
Completing a list of challenges which each have points values, with the aim of getting as many points as possible.
The teacher set up the main activity at the start of the lesson, then put students into breakout rooms. The speaking examiner dropped in to each breakout room to test the students, then moved onto the next room. If it was a guest examiner, they could put up their hand so that the teacher knew it was time to move them to the next room. This system seemed to work pretty well. 🙂
The personal stuff
Things seem to be returning to some level of normality here in Poland. You no longer have to wear masks outside, though I still generally do, apart from when I’ve been on my bike far away from other people. It’s almost like nothing happened in many ways, which seems quite strange!
Useful links
Edutopia has an article about how to reduce the likelihood of teacher burnout during the pandemic, as a lot of us seem to be working a lot more hours now (though luckily mine are pretty similar).
I’ve listened to three episodes of TEFL Commute Who’s Zooming Who? this week: Realia, Guests and PowerPoint, all full of useful ideas. Find the full back catalogue here.
Anka Zapart has great ideas for teaching YLs on her Funky Socks and Dragons blog. Here’s a whole list of ways to work with songs, both online and off.
Jacqueline Douglas talks about all the things she’s noticed about running CELTA online.
THE REST OF THE SERIES
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
100 ideas for exploiting activities, a webinar I did for IH Bucharest, including ideas for the physical and online classroom, none of which should take longer than 5 minutes to prepare
Stay healthy. Stay safe. Stay kind. And stay at home (if you still have to!)
I chose the title of this week’s post because over the past ten weeks teaching on Zoom has become normal, something which is no longer worthy of comment when planning or teaching. My students understand how to use every feature of Zoom I use in the lessons, including screen sharing in rooms. They use Google Docs with ease, and ask for favourite activities again. When I don’t make instructions clear, they ask me: chat or notebooks? We’ve all settled in to this new way of teaching and studying. And this week was the end of that: I’ve got four lessons left with my groups, three of which are test lessons, followed by our final round-up lesson. So no more normal teaching with them any more!
Having said that, this week was also the one where I had the most number of connection and technology issues since we started on Zoom, so it wasn’t completely normal.
In group one, one student appeared six or seven times in the waiting room but couldn’t get in – in the second lesson she finally managed to connect by borrowing a different device. I started with 10 students and was left with only 7 as people lost their connections in the first lesson. In the second lesson I started with four students I could see and hear, one I could hear but not see, and one who we could only connect with through the chat box. Another student was an hour late due to connection problems. In the second class we had fewer connection issues, though two students dropped out multiple times and one dropped out fifteen minutes before the end of both lessons. Another student was fine in the main room, but his microphone wouldn’t work in breakout rooms. I’m lucky to have escaped for so long without all of these tech problems!
What shall we do today?
Our first lesson introduced some verb phrases which I thought my groups might already partially know, so we looked at them quickly at the start. Students had a few minutes to play with the vocab on Quizlet, then matched vocab and pictures in their books, then wrote what they could remember in the chat box.
We listened to two cousins discussing what to do and when and where to meet, with students guessing what they might do and listening to check their predictions the first time, completing a table to check understanding of specific information the second and third time, then filling in gaps in the conversation with target language phrases the fourth time.
I elicited the phrases for suggestions by writing gapped sentences onto my mini whiteboard and holding it up to the camera. These phrases had already appeared in last week’s story. I tried to show that “Shall we play tennis?” “Why don’t we play tennis?” and “Let’s play tennis.” all have the same idea of suggestions/the same meaning, but not sure how clear that was at first. To practise, students completed a transformation exercise in their workbooks where they saw a suggestion in one form and had to change it to the other two. With the first group, we ran out of time at that point because of all the technical problems. The second group had time to write their own version of the dialogue and perform it to the class.
What do you remember?
We had one full revision lesson before our tests start on Monday. This was particularly important for me to see what the students could remember as they’ve had lessons since September, but I’ve only taught them since February. There was a puzzle to start the lesson, which my students really got into once they’d figured out how it worked:
Jude created a quiz with a couple of short exercises for each unit of the book. This was on a master document. During the lesson, we copied a couple of exercises at a time into a running document. Students worked in teams in breakout rooms, with one student sharing the screen with the questions on it. They wrote their answers in their notebooks. They had about 7-10 minutes to complete each round, after which we returned to the main room, checked their answers and added up their scores. This worked really well with both groups: I managed three rounds with group one and four with group two, and it showed up really well that they still have trouble with irregular verbs and choosing direct and indirect pronouns, but are fine with everything else from the first half of the year.
Jude also included some brain break challenges, though my group didn’t do any of these. This was partially because I forgot about them, and partially because they were so into the quiz and there was enough variety in the format that they didn’t seem to need them. I think they’re great ideas though! Here are two of them:
This week I discovered two things you can do with videos: hide non-video participants (thanks Ruth!) and hide self-view. The first is useful if you are being observed and you want to forget the observer is there 🙂 It’s also useful if somebody has to connect on two different devices: one for video, one for sound – you can hide the non-video/sound-only box on your screen. Hide self-view is great for any time you don’t want or need to see yourself, especially while in gallery view! I found it useful for meetings and chats with my friends.
To use these functions, hover over your video. Click on the three dots which appear in the top-right corner to see a menu. This should display both options.
I wouldn’t use either of these during lessons as I find I have to consciously remind myself to include students who are sound only when I can’t see their faces, and I think it’s important to see what your students can see in your videos, especially if you’re trying to show them something.
The personal stuff
Tomorrow (Monday 1st June) Poland enters the fourth stage of our four-stage post-lockdown plan. That means that masks are necessary on public transport, but not in open spaces. When I went out on Friday and Saturday there were already a lot of people not wearing them, or not wearing them properly (covering their mouth and not their nose: what’s the point?!) Kujawsko-Pomerania, the region I live in, had it’s last new confirmed case on 25th May, so six days ago. We’ll see what kind of second wave there is, as many people don’t seem to be paying much attention to the rule that you should stay 2m away from others.
I’m still staying at home a lot, but I went out on three consecutive days this week: first to my flamenco class, then to physio followed by a meal at a restaurant, then to pick up some shopping which I can’t get online. The meal was nice because I didn’t have to do any washing up 🙂 but I realised again how much my cooking has come on over the past six years! Restaurants for me are about eating in different places, and perhaps trying different combinations of food, but I’m so much more adventurous in my cooking now anyway that that side of restaurant eating is much less important for me now.
Useful links
Anna Loseva describes her experiences of teaching on Zoom without any prior training. The post is full of useful tips for anyone new to Zoom. I especially like the idea of having a running document for students to type questions into during lessons. Her university in Vietnam has now returned to face-to-face classes.
10 minutes of listening to this episode of TEFL Commute, and you’ll have plenty of warmers for your upcoming lessons.
Rachel Tsateri is linking classes together through Flipgrid, and is looking for volunteer teachers to join her.
Cristina Cabal shows how she’s used ClassroomQ in her classroom. It looks like a simpler version of Mentimeter in some ways, where you’re able to ask a question and see the order your students answer it in.
James Egerton has tips on how to consciously build your post-quarantine habits. Habits are something that I’ve worked on a lot over the last few years, and they’ve made my life a lot more positive through the small gains building up over a number of years.
Sue Swift talks about the value of task repetition/repeating activities, and shows how a little challenge can be added in future lessons. This applies equally both online and off.
THE REST OF THE SERIES
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
A week ago I wrote about how frustrated I got every time I went outside my flat. After a relaxing weekend, a chance to talk over my feelings with friends and family (thank you!), and a chance comment on Tuesday about case numbers in our region being pretty low (10 cases in the last 7 days as I write this), I started to feel a lot better.
I’ve been for three walks in the last week, and while I still got frustrated with people, I was able to calm myself down much faster. This was easier when I closed my eyes and waited until they had gone past, in the manner of a small child: if I can’t see them, they’re not there 😉
After those small steps, there were two huge ones.
Our flamenco teacher is allowed to have classes with up to 5 people, so that’s how many of us were in the room on Thursday night. I live by myself and have been getting shopping delivered, so being in a room with actual human beings for an hour was an adjustment. It felt normal quickly, but I wanted to notice it and remember that feeling. The lift home which my friend gave me was also strange: the first time I’ve been in a vehicle of any kind for about 10 weeks.
The other step is something I’ve been meaning to do for a very long time: I finally got around to buying myself a bike. That means I now have the freedom to go further afield if I want to without having to rely on public transport. I just need to motivate myself to carry it down and up three flights of stairs every time I want to use it!
So as you can see, I’m in a much better place this week. Thank you to everyone who sent me a message after last week’s post!
My Zoom lessons
Our teen elementary lessons this week were extra practice of ‘have to’ and a break from all grammar!
Do we have to do this all again?
The concepts of ‘have to’ and ‘don’t have to’ really challenged our students last week, so Jude and I decided it was worth dedicating another lesson to it.
We also wanted to do a bit more work on adverbs, so for the warmer students worked in teams in breakout rooms to add sentences to Google Docs to describe pictures. For example, She acted badly. He shouted loudly. This activity showed that about 80% of the students have got the idea of adverbs, and none of them remembered ‘suddenly’ from last week.
The homework check showed that both groups continued struggled with the form of ‘have to’ or avoided it completely.
With group 1 the rest of the lesson went:
Dictation (see below).
Rewrite the text in groups in breakout rooms, replacing ‘I’ with ‘she’ and making other necessary changes so the grammar agreed.
I highlighted the question and negative forms again and they copied them into their notebooks.
Go back to your homework, try to correct it, then we’ll confirm if the answers are right or not.
5 minutes left: in the chat answer the question: What jobs does your mum/dad have to do in the house?
With group 2, they’d got enough of the homework right to check it then, and I’d prompted them while they were comparing answers in breakout rooms to deal with the remaining problems. Their lesson went:
Dictation.
Rewrite text.
Question and negative forms again.
Write sentences about a mystery job for other students to guess (they only had 10 minutes for this, so the guessing happened next lesson).
For the dictation, they all wrote this text in their notebooks.
To help them manage the process, I said I’d read each sentence three times and held my fingers up to show which repetition it was. They could then ask me to repeat it again if they wanted me to.
In hindsight, we should have done some kind of pre-listening gist task, raised interest a little more first, had some elements they could change…but hindsight is 20/20.
In general, the lessons seemed fine when we were planning them, but when we taught them they felt uninspired and only partially engaging. The students seemed to enjoy the challenge of the transformation and they concentrated during the dictation, but I’m not sure how much they’ll remember this in future. On the other hand, they needed this focus on the grammar to fully understand (yes, I know that’s not ideal).
Look, it’s a penguin!
After lots of consecutive grammar lessons, it was time to take a break. We had a tiny bit of grammar at the start, with group one playing a wheel from wordwall. They read the prompt, then wrote the sentence in the chat box. They really enjoyed it and asked for more.
Group 2 read their sentences from the end of the last lesson in groups in breakout rooms. The other students guessed which job it was.
We used a story page for the basis of the lesson. We started with a couple of screenshots from the story, with students writing ‘I see…’, then ‘I think…’ sentences in the chatbox – a routine they’re familiar with. I encouraged them to use adjectives and adverbs, make predictions using ‘going to’ and say what the people ‘have to’ do. A couple of students got very into this.
I played the video for them to check their predictions.
In breakout rooms, they completed a gapfill comprehension task in groups where they had to finish the sentences by reading the story.
With group 1, I did a memory challenge. They saw frames from the story with words blanked out which they had to remember. Then I played the video, paused it, and they told me what’s next. They then went into breakout rooms to practise acting out the story in groups of 3, came back and performed it. However, they weren’t listening to each other as they were all telling the same story.
With group 2, I skipped the memory challenge. Instead I walked them through the story and got them to change details. For example, instead of a lost penguin, they chose another animal. Instead of going to the park, they went to the zoo/beach/mountains. In breakout rooms they chose their favourite idea for each bit of the story, then rehearsed it. When they acted it out, the others were a bit more engaged because every story was different.
Teacher training
Friday 22nd May was the 12th IH Teachers Online Conference, 10 hours featuring 30 talks from teachers across the International House network. You can watch all of the talks on YouTube. My favourites were by Chloe Pakeman-Schiavone, Shannon Thwaites and Danny Coleman. Here’s the full programme. My talk was on making and using paper fortune tellers. I got so many ideas from the talks, and only have a couple more lessons to try them out in before the end of the year! Thank you to everyone who gave talks, and to Shaun Wilden for putting it all together.
On Sunday 24th May I took part in an event organised by IH Moscow (thanks for inviting me Anka Zapart!). I really like the format, which is manageable :
10 minutes of house rules
three 20-minute presentations
10-minute break
three 20-minute presentations
10-minute general Q&A session
Each presentation featured activities teachers had tried out in class, and there were a few bonus activities in between. There’ll be a recording which I’ll also share. Lots of the teachers use Miro.com in their lessons, which I hadn’t seen before. It looks like a very versatile tool. You can have three virtual whiteboards with the free account. Vita Khitruk has compiled an example board with different ideas for games – I love the idea of ‘climbing’ a mountain with little challenges.
Some of the other things I learnt about/was reminded of were:
Playing noughts and crosses with an image behind the grid. To win the square, students have to describe that section of the picture. (Anka Zapart)
Duckiedeck.com/play has lots of games for young learner classes, for example this costumes game which you can use to get kids to describe what she’s wearing and practise words like put on/take off, or room decorating. You need Flash. (Tatiana Fanshtein)
Sesame Street has a restaurant game that kids enjoy too. (Tatiana Fanshtein)
WheelDecide can be used for lots of different ideas – here’s an example for present simple questions. (Tatiana Fanshtein)
WaterAid has some topical games which you can adapt to the classroom, including Germ Zapper, which you can use to practise objects in a room and prepositions. (Tatiana Fanshtein)
SentenceDict allows you to get good example sentences for any word, including being able to search for simple sentences only. (Vita Khitruk)
A reminder that Tekhnologic templates are very versatile and easy to adapt. (Irina Chan-Fedorova)
Kids can be very motivated by habit trackers, such as ticking a box for each of four challenges every time they do them: do homework, use Quizlet, watch a video in English (Masha Andrievich)
Use a ‘discourse clock‘ to help very young students say a lot more when doing mini presentations. (Anka Zapart)
Nik Peachey has a one-page interactive summary of six areas teachers need training and support in to successfully teach online.
THE REST OF THE SERIES
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
It was the 12th IH Teachers Online Conference (TOC) on Friday 22nd May 2020. Nearly 40 people presented for 15 minutes each on the theme of online teaching.
For my presentation, I decided to go for something low-tech that you could still do online, and what’s better than making a fortune teller. It’s a very simple origami project, one I think most of us have probably made in the past. Here’s a video of how to make one:
My decision maker
As a lot of us are working on our mental health while we deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, my fortune teller was a way to choose your response to different people in different situations. The three sets of choices are:
Who are you talking to?
your boss
your colleague
your student
a parent
What are you talking about?
an activity you tried
how you feel
your plans tonight
something you’ve read
the news
IH TOC 😉
your lesson
your day
What do you say in that situation?
I give up!
I need chocolate!
Thank you!
That’s great!
Tell me more.
Help!
What should I do?
(Don’t say anything…take a deep breath!)
Other ways to use them
You could also use fortune tellers for:
predictions
practising spellings
practising lexical sets
question forms
making decisions in a role play
choosing with activity/game you’ll do next
And they’re not just for children: you can use them with teens and adults too with the right topics. Most people like to make things 🙂
What else could you use them for? Have you tried them out with your students?
Here’s the video if you want to watch the whole presentation:
We’re very lucky that in Poland that coronavirus case numbers have been relatively low. That means our lockdown is being lifted, and phase 3 begins on Monday 18th: restaurants and cafés will reopen, as will hairdressers. More people can travel on public transport, and some sports facilities will reopen.
The night before reading about restrictions easing, I read a reminder that coronavirus may never go away. I knew that, but it’s different thinking it and seeing it written down.
Those two sets of information played against each other in my mind.
If a problem or unpleasant situation smoulders, it continues to exist and may become worse at any time.
– Cambridge English Dictionary, accessed 16th May 2020
I couldn’t help but think about my stress levels every time I go outside my flat. I get frustrated and angry at people not wearing masks, or not wearing them properly, at those not distancing or moving away from me or others. I’m not particularly worried about catching the virus – I know there’s a very slim chance of that, and I’m doing what I can to protect myself: wearing a mask and gloves, washing my hands, using alcohol rubs, keeping away from crowded areas. But there’s no cure for the actions of other people. I can’t control any of that and it makes me very stressed, and means that going for a walk is not particularly relaxing right now.
These are natural feelings right now, and they’re things I know that I need to face up to and deal with. I can’t stay in my flat forever as Poland begins to open up again. I can’t avoid people completely when I’m outside. I don’t have the option of leaving my flat, hopping in a car and driving to somewhere quiet. To get to ’empty’ places like the forest, I have to walk through populated areas.
All this going around in my head led to a complete breakdown on Friday morning. 30 minutes of tears and overwhelming emotion with my very understanding director, as I worked through my feelings about reopening after lockdown and how I will deal with that.
I hadn’t put any of that stress into words before, but it was all there under the surface, waiting to emerge.
If a strong emotion smoulders, it exists, but is prevented from being expressed.
– Cambridge English Dictionary, accessed 16th May 2020
I feel much better now, but it’s not problem solved yet as I do need to start to get out more.
So how will I deal with it?
I’ve found a way to get groceries delivered from a local shop, with fantastic fresh fruit and veg. I’ve even had ice-cream delivered from a business I would like to stay open. That means there’s no need for me to go to supermarkets or shopping centres.
Each weekend, I aim to go out for a longer walk early in the morning, at least a couple of hours and preferably somewhere in nature like the river or the forest.
The Botanic Gardens across the road from my flat is open 9-1 Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll go down for at least 30 minutes at 9am on both days before other people really start to arrive.
Just doing those three walks should be the first steps towards getting used to being outside again. And at some point cinemas will reopen, and I really miss them, so that will probably push me a little more…watch this space.
Management
Today is our two-month anniversary of teaching on Zoom – we started on 16th March. It feels simultaneously much longer and much shorter than that! This week has been a longer week than usual, which probably contributed to my state on Friday…I’d tired myself out, and need to keep an eye on this in future weeks.
I’m very proud of the beautiful spreadsheet I produced working out the details of the end of our school year, when lessons end (so many groups were interrupted in the shift online), and various other bits and pieces – I do like a good spreadsheet!
We’ve been working on the details of how we’ll run our end of year tests, and starting to prepare them. Fingers crossed it all works out!
It was also the week of PDIs, Professional Development Interviews. We normally do them in March or April, and they’re a chance for me to have individual meetings with each teacher and help them reflect on their progress over the past year and look forward to their future careers, either with us or elsewhere. I love these interviews because they help teachers realise just how far they’ve come, and this year they also showed me just how much effort many of our teachers have been putting into their professional development beyond what our school is offering. They were also a chance for me to personally thank each teacher for all the amazing work they’ve done in the shift to online teaching, and praise their enthusiasm and creativity. We’ve been teaching on Zoom for exactly two months today, and they’re like pros now! I’m so proud to work with them.
My Zoom lessons
This week our two teen elementary lessons (mine and Jude’s) were revising adjectives and adverbs, introduced last week, and introducing ‘have to’ for the first time.
A partially successful lesson
We didn’t have much time to practise adjectives and adverbs last lesson, so we wanted to give students a chance to use them this time.
With group 1, my lesson went:
Warmer: Simon Says (e.g. dance slowly, eat carefully, drive dangerously)
Homework check (with a nomination chain for questions like What do you do carefully? What do you do well?)
Correct the mistakes (one sentence at a time in the chatbox)
Copy the corrected sentences into notebooks (they were still having problems with a few areas)
Sentence expansion (see below)
With group 2, it went:
Sentence expansion
Homework check
Correct the mistakes
Copy the corrected sentences into notebooks
Expand your own stories (written as homework ready for last lesson)
Sentence expansion is laying out a sentence vertically, then asking students to add to it to make it as long as possible, while still remaining logical. For example, the sentence below might produce ‘The tall thin old man and the short young lady walked slowly and carefully to the beautiful sunny beach.’
This took ages with group 1 because I tried to elicit their own basic sentence first for all of us to expand on, i.e. eliciting nouns and a verb. I then used the annotate feature to show how to make the sentence longer. That meant when they went into breakout rooms they all thought they should create their own sentence from scratch and didn’t really use adjectives and adverbs. With group 2, I shifted it to the warmer as they don’t really get into activities like Simon Says, and I gave them the sentence shown on the slide, meaning the activity worked much better.
The lessons went OK, but they still need a lot more practice with this. Adjectives aren’t really a problem, but adverbs confuse them because the word order is generally different in Polish, and they sometimes overuse the adverb form.
On a technical level, I finally managed to persuade both groups to click ‘Ask for help’ in breakout rooms when they had a problem instead of waiting for me to turn up (it’s only taken 8 weeks!)
What do I have to do to get your attention?
For the second lesson, we started with a word cloud of adjectives and adverbs for students to write their own long sentences in the chatbox. This showed up very clearly which students still need extra practice with differentiating adjectives and adverbs, and with adverb word order. I did a lot of verbal correction and getting students to rewrite sentences.
We played Quizlet live with film genres which they’d looked at for homework. They asked to do it in breakout rooms, and this worked really well. They were actively working together, and in the first group each of the three teams won one round each 🙂
To introduce the grammar point ‘have to’ and link back to films, we showed an image of The Rock and told them he’s making Jumanji 3, reprising his role as Dr Smolder Bravestone. Here’s some of his smouldering intensity in case you haven’t seen it:
They had to come up with things he has to do each day. In the first group I tried to do this verbally, which worked to some extent, but not really. We then moved to them listing two things in their notebooks which they thing he does every day when he’s working. A few students protested they hadn’t seen the films, but I said they should write what they think any actor does every day. (If you too haven’t seen the two new Jumanji films, please do. Thank me later.)
During breaktime with group 1, I had a flash of inspiration, which resulted in possibly one of the funniest classroom experiences I’ve ever had 🙂 I changed my profile picture and name to The Rock.
I quickly installed the voice moderator Connor told me about last week. This allows you to change how your voice sounds to other people. With the free version, there are random voices available. I chose the deepest one, and when the students came back from break The Rock was running the lesson. It was hilarious, and I had to try not to giggle and destroy the illusion 🙂 The look on their faces was brilliant, and there was much discussion (in Polish!) about whether it was me or not. One student even went on Wikipedia to try to quiz me by asking The Rock’s age. But they did get into it, and were asking me questions as if I was The Rock. This is something that absolutely wouldn’t be possible in a physical classroom! (Tip: if you use this voice mod, you may need to delete it from your computer afterwards – it kept switching itself back on again during Jude’s PDI the next day!)
The actual aim of the activity was for them to ask questions starting ‘Do you have to…?’ to find out about The Rock’s day on a film set. They used the notes they’d made and quizzed me.
I had a slide prepared to elicit language into:
Once they’d remembered some of the things The Rock said, I checked the meaning by asking the questions on the right and doing gestures – finger wagging for I have to… and two hands upturned and moving (so hard to describe!) for I don’t have to. I dragged the boxes with the summary onto the slide.
I highlighted the relevant parts of the structure using the annotate function.
They wrote a couple of examples of things they have to/don’t have to at home into their notebooks, as well as copying the rules. They wrote their sentences in the chatbox so I could check and correct them. ‘Don’t have to’ is a particularly challenging concept, and students also confused ‘have to’ with ‘have’ as in ‘I have to a cat.’
With the first group we ran out of time to focus on the question/third person forms, so I wrote it quickly in the chatbox at the end for them to copy into their notebooks ready for their homework.
With the second group we had a few minutes to do that, and they also had time to imagine they’re a celebrity and write their own sentences. In breakout rooms, they quizzed each other asking ‘Do you have to…?’ and had to try and guess which celebrity it was.
This lesson really showed up how challenging it is to take in lots of new structures in quick succession: despite us spacing out our lessons to provide extra practice with ‘going to’ and adjectives and adverbs, the students were trying to combine them all here and getting very confused. Some of the sentences they wrote were things like ‘I have going to the garden.’ When they wrote their own sentences, they asked me ‘With adjectives?’
I’d like to space this all out more, but we only have a few lessons left before we reach the end-of-year tests. Some students can take it all in, but it’s too much for a couple of them. Luckily we have one or two lessons for revision at the end of the year, though we do need to look back over the whole year. (Yes, I know, coursebooks. Tests. Yes. But that’s how are classes work.)
Zoom problems
Two of our teachers had new problems with Zoom this week. Nothing that’s going to stop us using Zoom, but things that are useful to be aware of:
One had a 121 who couldn’t join the Zoom meeting. Apparently he was just sat in the waiting room, while from the teacher’s perspective nobody was there (meaning he couldn’t admit anyone). This problem stayed after he’d re-started the meeting too!
The other kept getting removed from the meeting despite being the host. All students who weren’t in breakout rooms were also removed from the meeting.
Useful links
Last week saw the Cambridge three-day At Home event (summaries of day one, two, three). Skimming through the programme, I like the balance of practical ideas for the classroom, stories being brought to life by famous readers, and things to help our wellbeing, such as a workout for beginners and a cook-along. I watched this ‘inspire session’ by David Valente on using songs with young learners, and it’s probably one of the best webinars I’ve ever seen: practical, clear, fun, and instantly usable. Rachel Tsateri summarised some of what she learnt from it in this post.
Pete Clements talks about settling into a new job at a new school when you’re meeting everybody online for the first time.
TEFL Commute did a 10-minute podcast episode about how to use pictures in the online classroom. TEFL Training Institute spoke to Russell Stannard about what you need to put in place to help learners become more autonomous.
I remembered the existence of Telescopic Text, which is very simple to use and allows users to play around with sentence structures. Make sure you sign in if you want to save your work – access old texts again by click on your username. Here’s a strangely fitting example I produced for my students a few years ago.
THE REST OF THE SERIES
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
Last weekend my colleague Ruth shared a poem by her friend, Jenna Edmondson. It made me laugh and I think a lot of teachers can empathise with it right now. Jenna kindly agreed to share it with the wider world on my blog. Thanks Jenna!
TEFL (Online) Tantrums
Just a second, I’m logging on
Teacher can you hear me?
Oh no, what’s wrong?!
I didn’t realise I was doing a hearing test today
Teacher can you see me?!
Yes I can, go away
I’ve 2020 vision of how this will pan out
Now please be quiet, no need to shout
Wait a moment are we all here?
Maria was signed in, now she’s just disappeared
Pablo please, can you unmute your mic
I can tell you’re not listening, you’re playing fortnite
OK class, cameras on please
I want to check you’re not watching TV
Great, now Maria’s back let’s begin
Teacher I can’t see you
(Honestly it’s fine)
Have you tried logging out and back in?
Let’s not waste any more time.
Can we check the homework? Page 52
I haven’t done it teacher, I didn’t know what to do
Well, the instructions were there in the chat and classroom
I had too much work
a project
a test
Ok class, just give me a rest,
Teacher Maria’s in the list twice
Great, I don’t know why
Maria is that your evil twin
Perhaps one of you
could speak or type?
I don’t mind which
ignore the glitch
Just please join in
Teacher Can I go to the toilet?
Yes…you are at home
You can do what you like
Just don’t take your phone
What’s that sound
Quick run for cover
Oh you’re just eating your mic
Or were you fighting your brother?
Maria, Question 1; oh, where has she gone?
Can you please tell me the answer, anyone?
Teacher you’re muted
We can’t hear what you said
OK, I type, let’s do some speaking instead
Can I work with him
Can she work with me
Teacher Sara can’t talk
OK you can work in 3s
5 minutes, great off you go
Pablo click on the link
Leave me alone
Give me time to drink a tea
Give me strength
For my headache to leave
I join the room
SPEAK ENGLISH please
And what is this you’re drawing
All over slide 3?
Answer the questions,
That’s all you’ve to do
Or there’ll be no more games or breakout rooms.
TEACHER kahoot!
Is that my name now?
Right let’s try
Everyone-phone’s out
I’ve got no data
The wifi’s gone
What’s the code
My battery’s run out
(Turn down the kahoot theme tune
This is torture, can we end this soon?)
Teacher I’m bored
Thanks, me too
I’m trying my hardest
What about you?
Time for a video
Let me share the screen
no, mute your mics,
just listen to me
now there’s an echo
I can hear myself speak
God I sound awful
I can’t hear myself think
Let’s stop this now
It’s time to say goodbye
Oh Maria, you’re back!
With your parents… hi!
No I can’t go through her progress with you right now
If she was here the whole class we’d have something to talk about
Teacher it’s the time
Teacher bye
Bye Teacher
WAIT I haven’t given you the homework yet
Now half the class has gone
and we’re back to square one
I’ll mute myself before I say something I regret
The Teacher Show has come to an end
I’m slowly going round the bend
I’ve planned for hours and taught for less
Please believe me, I’m doing my best
I can see my flaws on the screen for six hours straight
I’m not a vain person but this angle’s not great
I struggle through when the tech is down
And try to ignore family in the background
The reality is that the time goes quite fast
I think most students enjoy this virtual class
As I do too, now and then
But I can’t wait to be in the classroom again!
Dear Class,
With each day we’re closer to the end of term
And I hope there’s a lot you’ve learned
Hopefully patience; to be kind to others and yourself
To know you’re resilient and to appreciate good health
That the book doesn’t have the answers
Maybe your parents or teachers don’t too
If you want to learn something it has to come from you
Go from these few months knowing you can cope
And see you back in the classroom soon, I hope.
My name is Jenna Edmondson and I’ve been teaching English for 13 years. I’ve worked in Hong Kong, Sydney and now Spain. In my free time I love writing poetry (and occasionally performing it) painting and making silver jewellery. I really enjoy teaching and the connections we make with people, and putting these small observations into words. I studied English Language with Linguistics at the Uni of Sheffield and have always been interested in word play and sharing a love of the language with other people. I currently teach at ELI (English Language Institute) in Seville.
On Thursday 7th May I did a 60-minute Zoom training session on how to use Zoom…meta! I worked with about 20 teachers from Urban School and other language schools in Barcelona, showing them how to use Mentimeter and word clouds in their online lessons, and in the process answering questions on a few other aspects of using Zoom. Thanks to Urien Shaw for organising it.
Mentimeter
We started by playing with Mentimeter, which is interactive presentation software.
I used an open-ended question displaying a flowing grid so we could get to know each other a little:
To answer a question, participants go to http://www.menti.com and type the code from your presentation.
Here is a full list of all of the Mentimeter question types and how to make them. The Mentimeter blog has lots of ideas for how to use the different types of questions which are available, including lots of examples.
Here are some ways you can use Mentimeter in class:
Multiple choice
Which (form of this) activity do you want to do? Gist reading/listening questions. How much time should I give you?
Word cloud
Vocab revision, what vocab do you already know, word association as a lead in (i.e. what do you associate with this topic), produce examples of a grammar structure, what do you know about this person/thing/place, what do you remember from last lesson
Open-ended
Brainstorming ideas, get feedback on your lessons, getting to know you, lead in to a topic, what do you remember about…, create example sentences using this grammar structure/word, correct the mistake
Scales
Do you prefer X or Y? To what extent do you agree with this statement? How much do you like/enjoy…? For feedback on your lessons/particular activities…
Ranking (participants can only choose one option)
Class survey of most/least popular anything (food, book, animal…)
Image choice
Which holiday type/item of clothing/animal/celebrity/computer game… do you prefer?
Q & A
Brainstorm questions for a guest speaker/the teacher/other students, what questions do you expect this reading text/audio/video will answer, what questions do you still have after watching/listening, what would you ask the person in the video…
Select answer – scores appear after these slides
Any closed multiple choice quiz questions
Type answer – scores appear after these slides
Open quiz questions where any answer is possible
The free account allows you to include an unlimited number of PowerPoint-style presentation slides, two ‘questions’ and five ‘quiz slides’. You can have an unlimited number of presentations, so if you need more of these slides in a single lesson you can just make more than one presentation.
Students can make their own questions, though they need to open an account to do this.
Word clouds
Next we used a word cloud to discuss ideas for doing feedback or error correction in online lessons. The ideas in this word cloud were taken from a workshop at IH Bydgoszcz a few weeks ago (thanks again to our great staff there!). I then showed how you can produce very different word clouds using the same input data with the simple insertion of ~ between words to keep them together. So these two things appear differently in a word cloud:
highlight problems and they rewrite
highlight~problems~and~they~rewrite
Words which appear more frequently in the source text appear larger in a word cloud, as can be clearly seen in the second word cloud above. www.wordclouds.com is my current favourite tool to produce word clouds.
Here are some ways you can use word clouds in the EFL classroom (the links take you to lessons on my blog using this idea):
As a lead in to a reading/listening, put the text/transcript into a word cloud and students predict what they’re going to see/hear.
Use the same word cloud afterwards for them to remember what they saw/heard.
Students make their own about a particular topic/place/person/thing.
Tips:
Make sure the words are spaced out as much as necessary for them to be clearly visible.
Use a legible font.
Ensure the contrast between text and background is clear.
Use a theme with various colours in it, rather than just one or two.
Check that words don’t run into each other if you need students to write them out in some form (for example, with the word cloud below one student wrote: crowdedsunny, more crowdedsunny, the most crowdedsunny, highlighting the mechanical nature of this task beautifully!)
I have lots of bookmarks connected to using word clouds: https://bit.ly/sandywordclouds and it’s one of the first things I ever presented about and wrote up on my blog, way back in February 2011. Writing this post was a trip down memory lane!
In these difficult/challenging times They’re as difficult/challenging as you feel they are, this differs for everyone, and nobody needs to be reminded.
The new normal Yes, I know I wrote a post called that a few weeks ago. Normal is what you decide it is.
As soon as this is over, I’m going to… / I wish I could… These phrases frustrates more than help. There is no end date on this thing, but one day we’ll look back and it’ll be in the past. It’s like growing up: there’s no fixed point when you become an adult, but you definitely look back and you’re not a child any more. Why not say ‘Next week, I’m going to…’ and give yourself things that are manageable now to look forward to? And create a jar of post-lockdown plans.
Things that frustrate me when I see/hear them:
Now that you have all of this time on your hands… An assumption that is not universal. My workload has stayed pretty similar, and I know others who are busier than ever and are not necessarily taking breaks as they would have before. I know we are lucky to still have work and things to do that are similar to pre-coronavirus times, but you are lucky to have a different range of stressors than previously (I’m not going to say to have nothing to stress you out, because I know that’s not true either). Yes, we might not be able to do all the things we would like, but there are so so so many things we can choose to do.
We/I don’t know what’s going to happen. We never do. Now is no different. We need to change what we can and accept what we can’t.
I entirely realise you may not agree with this, but that’s why it’s the personal stuff…it’s how I feel, and you’re allowed to feel different. We’re all allowed to deal with this in our own way.
However, one thing is always true: if you’re finding it difficult to deal with, please don’t do it alone: ask people for help. You are absolutely not alone, and this is more true than ever before. COVID-19 affects the entire human race and, quite literally, none of us are immune to it or the side-effects of restrictions that it brings along with it. Look after yourselves, and don’t bottle up the frustration.
Here’s some fantastic advice from Stephen Fry on dealing with anxiety and stress whilst self-isolating during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s 2 minutes and 39 seconds of time well-spent to listen to him talking. And here’s Phil Longwell’s post on Covid-19 Mental Health and Wellbeing for teachers.
My Zoom lessons
This week our lessons with elementary teens introduced a story, the longest text they’ve read so far, and worked on adjectives and adverbs.
Are you sitting comfortably?
I decided it was finally time to teach my students how to use annotation themselves – previously only I had used it. We had 10 minutes at the start of the lesson where they could write or draw whatever they wanted on a blank slide. I turned on ‘Show names of annotators‘ so I could check who was doing what. We were going to play a game, but it took so long to figure out the annotation that we didn’t bother!
They’d finished 8 sentences for homework where they wrote about things they and their family were (not) going to do. In breakout rooms, the students compared their plans and helped each other improve the grammar if needed. As a mini writing assessment, they copied the sentences in the chat box. I told them I was testing their writing and I wanted to check their work, and only one student complained slightly 😉
By this time, it was break time – a prime example of how everything takes so much longer in Zoom!
The story we were using came with pictures to put in order. Before listening, students wrote sentences starting ‘I see…’ (e.g. I see a boat. I see a boy. I see a computer.) then ‘I think…’ (e.g. I think he’s good. I think the computer is important.) in the chat box to engage them with the story.
The first time they just read and listened to it, then showed thumbs up/down/in the middle on their cameras to indicate whether they liked it or not – the first time I’ve included a pure enjoyment reading/listening task in my lessons!
In breakout rooms, students put the pictures in order. They underlined the part of the text which went with each picture. I had to go to the rooms a few times to clarify how to do this as we’d never done this before (the readings we used were never really long/challenging enough in the rest of the book, or were far too hard and we skipped them!)
The final part of the lesson was a reading assessment which we did using a Google Form. There were seven three-option multiple choice questions, with images to support their understanding of the options.
With the first group, we had just enough time to manage this. With the second, we had a few extra minutes but not enough time to do anything else, so I told them their scores and encouraged them to keep resubmitting. This was very quick and easy because the form was self-marking (yay, multiple choice!) and they all submitted it at least three times in the time we had available, some more, focussing on the questions they had problems with. The image below shows only the resubmissions, not the original ones – there are 8 students in the group!
I used conditional formatting to show problem questions (thanks Ruth!) so I could tell the students which ones to retry quickly.
As you can see, question 5 was a particular problem. By the way, this is a rare example of some coursebook reading which provided a good level of challenge – most of the ones I come across are either far too easy or far too hard!
Making things interesting
The homework from the previous lesson was to write a very short story, around 3-4 sentences. Whenever I’ve set non-workbook homework before, only one or two students have done it. This time, only one or two didn’t in each group 🙂 One girl wrote two 1.5 page stories – I know she used Google Translate to help her, but I don’t really care – I’m so impressed at her motivation!
The lesson started with them in breakout rooms reading their stories to each other. The ones who hadn’t written one were in a separate room and had to write something very short: who went where to do what. The aim was to use the stories at the end of this lesson, but realistically I knew that probably wouldn’t happen, so they’ll be used on Monday instead.
To set the context, students looked at the pictures from Monday’s lesson and retold the story. In both this activity and the one where they told their own stories, I only heard a couple of adjectives and no adverbs, so I knew the lesson would be useful 🙂
We looked at four sentences from the story with and without adjectives. I asked if 1 or 2 is better in a story and why (2, because it’s longer and more interesting. I get a better picture in my head.)
I was pretty sure the students wouldn’t know the names for parts of speech in English, but would in Polish, so I had a list of the translations on my plan. I showed them the ‘2’ sentences with adjectives and nouns highlighted, elicited the parts of speech, told them the English word, then asked them to write down ‘Adjectives talk about nouns.’ and colour it in as on the following slide.
This was the beginning of a very staged process to give them a really clear written record. In a physical classroom or with older students, I would probably give them a worksheet to go through and fill in the gaps working at their own speed alone or in pairs, but this was the only way I could think of to keep everyone with me in a Zoom lesson.
We worked through four different adjective sentence structures and they wrote then read out their own versions of the sentence, and colour-coded it. This gave them the chance to personalise the grammar point. Fast finishers could write extra sentences.
After break, I showed them three different things from my flat. They had to ask me questions using an adjective and a noun e.g. What’s that brown bear? Who’s that cute baby? I answered with an adjective and a noun too: That brown bear is my favourite teddy bear. That cute baby is my friend’s daughter, Megan.
They then got three things of their own and played the same game in breakout rooms.
We repeated the grammar introduction process with adverbs and different colour-coding, but didn’t have time to practise them in this lesson.
The students were generally engaged in the grammar introduction process because it was broken down so much. I probably got them personalising the language a lot more than I would have done in a lesson I’d taught in a physical classroom previously. This is definitely something to remember later!
Zoom thoughts and tips
When using the annotate tool, students on phones and tablets only have the ‘pen’ option. They can’t type, stamp, draw boxes, or any of the other fun things those on computers can do.
On Thursday I did a Zoom training session which I’ll be sharing later. Dan, one of the participants, suggested assigning each student a question number from an exercise. They type the answer to only that question in the chat box. Can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this before 😉
My colleague Connor has been playing with the free VoiceMod software with his young learners. This allows you to change how you sound with a huge range of effects. He used it to add some fun to pronunciation drilling, with the kids trying to copy the way his voice sounded. It’s Windows only at the moment, with Mac and Linux versions in development.
I’ve been trying to get my second teenage group to consistently have their cameras on because it makes a huge difference to how the lesson feels. This recent Twitter thread made me frame my thoughts differently (click this tweet to see the whole thread):
People who are teaching online: opinions on students who don’t want to turn their webcam on in a group class? About half of one of my classes are reluctant to do so (internet issues, feeling shy, and still wearing pyjamas are the issues they’ve mentioned…).
It might be worth showing reluctant students that they can use speaker view and pin the teacher’s video. When using full screen they can hide the rest of the students, including their own video. It may just be that they don’t want to see themselves – I get it, I tend to try to minimise my video when I’m just chatting to one or two people on Skype or similar.
Useful links
Scott Donald has a thought-provoking post about why you shouldn’t necessarily ‘hover’ in breakout rooms when students are doing activities, but instead give them some space to get on with it.
Jane Maria Harding da Rosa’s blog is back 🙂 In her most recent post, she shares personal anecdotes about chanting and how it helps students remember new language. I’d highly recommend her articles called Creating Chants and Don’t Drawl the Drill if you’re looking for ways to improve your drilling and help students remember new language for longer, both in the online and offline classroom. If you’re teaching asynchronously, you could do this through recordings.
The Virtual Round Table conference happened on 8th and 9th May. I attended Graham Stanley’s session demonstrating how to set up an escape room in your online classroom. The recording is here:
There’s lots of useful information on escape rooms in ELT on this blog, including the definition of an escape room if you’re new to them: https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/
Hana Ticha is teaching asynchronously (i.e. not via a video conferencing tool like Zoom). She talks about the pros and cons of synchronous and asynchronous teaching, and how she aims to overcome the cons of asynchronous teaching in this post.
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m absolutely privileged to work at International House Bydgoszcz. Our staff are motivated, engaged, and creative, and always willing to share their ideas. Everyone really cares about teaching and doing the best for our students.
For the last couple of weeks, our Friday workshops have become brainstorming sessions. We start a Google Doc on a specific aspect of teaching online, then head into breakout rooms to share ideas and add to the document. They add their names, and when we return to the main room we ask for clarification or explanations of anything we don’t understand. So far we’ve covered warmers, feedback and error correction, and now movement.
In just 30 minutes on Friday 8th May, IH Bydgoszcz teachers past and present produced this fantastic list of ideas for adding movement to online lessons, and they agreed to let me share it on my blog. I’ve organised them into categories and removed school-specific terminology, but apart from that, they’re as written during the session. Thanks to everyone who added to this list! If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments.
Please note: if you share this post (thank you!), please credit ‘IH Bydgoszcz teachers’, rather than me!
At the computer
Flash card, touch body – two flashcards on PPT or in hands. T says – word. If it is one flashcard – SS touch nose. If it is other flashcard, SS touch head. = receptive stage (Flash and touch – Jodie??)
Debate – They show you how much they agree/ disagree with a statement physically i.e. how much they stand up. Then, you group them with people who have the same/ or very different points of view in BOR for activity. (Jodie)
Body parts vocab: students stand up, T says show your ankle, S .. (Lotte)
Using mime to revise body / sports vocab using mime and the others guess. (Ranmal)
Use standing up/sitting down for feedback e.g. stand up if you agree. (Ranmal)
Storytelling- Ss suggest actions for parts of the story/ characters particularly repeating words that they do while you tell the story (Helen)
Alphabet actions- do an action for each letter of the alphabet (Jude G)
Mime a TV programme scenario to revise TV vocab (Jude G)
Simon says (Jude F)
True/false game (with kids): Come up with a random movement for true/false, e.g. stand up and wiggle for true, pat your head if false. The teacher or a student says a sentence about a picture. Ss do the movement for T/F. (Char)
“Board” slap > notebook slap – Ss write/draw words in notebook and touch. Or on post its to stick on walls in the house (Shannon, via Sandy a few weeks ago)
One student goes outside/behind the computer for 30 seconds with their sound off – the rest of the students make a shape/start doing an action. That student comes back and has to guess what the word is. You can do it with the waiting room function too, but this is potentially more fun. (Sandy)
Play some music for everyone to dance to. When it stops, they need to make a shape that represents a recent piece of vocab. Everyone then calls out what they can see: James is an elephant, Sandy is a lion, etc. (Sandy)
Away from the computer
Scavenger hunt- items, vocab, fun (Lee and Ash)
Mute mic and run – T has list of vocab on the board. Class is in 2 teams. T says ‘which one is…. + def’. Then, says two SS names. The ss run (by which I mean walk sensibly) and start the microphone and say. Fastest = points. (Jodie)
Vocab: Find something you can describe as ‘______’ i.e. ancient. (They go find one of their many ancient artefacts at home). (Jodie).
Ask students to get something from different rooms in their house – practicing rooms in a house (Ranmal)
Let students get a book or another prop from their room or house. Give them a time limit (Lotte)
Birdwatching. I taught young learners the names of some birds & some bird vocab. Then they could go to their window/balcony, do a spot of birdwatching, and tell each other what they saw. (Gareth)
Show us your garden! Connections and gardens permitting (Helen)
Run and get something to introduce to the group related to grammar vocab for that lesson – this is my dog which I…, this is my sister who.. (Jude G)
Give Ss 3 mins to run and find something to explain a concept from the lesson. In my advanced adult group they had to find something to explain the concept of time (Katharine)
Go and find something to tell a story about and other Ss have to guess if it’s true or false (Katharine)
Find an object to describe using new vocabulary e.g. pretentious art adjectives (Katharine)
Go on Pet Safari to practise present continuous. Follow a pet around the house and narrate what they are doing. Can use a stuffed toy if they don’t have a pet (Ruth)
New vocabulary such as films or books – (adjectives for or categories) get ss to get up and find as many examples as they can in their house and show to each other on the camera. (Monica)
As mental breaks
Star jumps etc. as a little break for young learners. (Lotte)
Random brain breaks (for kids): (Char)
rub your belly and pat your head
try to lick your elbow
pinch your nose with your right hand and touch your right ear with your left hand, then swap
find something (green)
be a (cat, chair, rock)
‘Yoga for kids’ – share video via YouTube and Ss do at home (Shannon)
Click your fingers: one hand click a triangle, one hand click a line (Lee)
Laura Edwards talk on teaching online at the IATEFL Global Get-Together a couple of weeks ago was one of my highlights. If you’d like to watch the talk, it’s available to IATEFL members in the member’s area. Find out how to join IATEFL. She’s kindly agreed to share her ideas here.
This month I was part of the Global Get-Together, an online conference run by IATEFL. I was asked to present by telc language tests and I thought I’d talk about something connected to my work there in test development. But everything I came up with seemed irrelevant when most conversations with my teacher friends and colleagues revolved around coronavirus and their anxiety and frustration at having to suddenly teach online. I knew those feelings were completely valid. I have a Master’s in Education and Technology and ample experience with online teaching and I still felt overwhelmed. I also noticed that many articles and blog posts about teaching online explained the merits of various video conferencing tools, but few mentioned actual teaching. The implication seemed to be that once you get the hang of the tool, everything will fall into place, but that’s not the reality, which is why I decided to talk about how we teach when teaching online.
With schools suddenly shut, we find ourselves having to design materials suitable for online learning, change our assessment techniques and find new ways to manage student interactions, with very little preparation time. We’re also dealing with the stress of the situation, concern for our students’ well-being, and for self-employed or freelance teachers, there’s the potential loss of income to consider.
Overwhelming really is the word for it!
Adapting to the situation
I started my talk with a few inspirational quotes. This one from H. Jackson Brown, Jr. seemed particularly fitting.
As well as effort and perseverance, we need patience, hope, humour and plenty of self-compassion to help us face this challenge.
It’s unfortunate that many teachers see teaching online as something to suffer through. Of course, it’s difficult to be positive about something that’s forced upon you. I can rave about how it creates great opportunities, frees us from geographical limitations, allowing us to learn whatever we want, wherever we are. But we’re human – we require time to grow accustomed to new ideas, technologies and teaching methods. The habits and biases we develop during our lives can cause us to reject alternative ways of thinking or acting. We face what’s known as the Adaptability Struggle. Change is difficult and some may question the appropriateness of a tool or initially dismiss something that doesn’t fit their perception of learning. Talking to students about their feelings and discussing the benefits of online learning definitely helps. If there’s a moment when your students aren’t reacting as you’d hoped or you’re feeling frustrated, remember it could be the Adaptability Struggle.
How learning happens
When it comes to actual teaching, the first step is to consider how learning happens in your classroom.
I teach large groups of mixed-ability adults, who are returning to education having worked for several years. To tap into their knowledge, deal with the differences in abilities, and make sure that in a group of 30 students everyone has a chance to speak, I incorporate a lot of pair and group work, projects, and peer feedback into my lessons.
Make a list of the activities or approaches you use in your physical classroom and refer to it for guidance when planning your online lessons.
Exploiting the technology
Then think about the tech tools you have at your disposal. The SAMR Model helps us evaluate our use of a technology. SAMR stands for
Substitution: Tech acts as a direct tool substitute, with no functional change
Augmentation: Tech acts as a direct tool substitute with functional improvement.
Modification: Tech allows for significant task redesign.
Redefinition: Tech allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable.
The first two refer to the enhancement of learning, the second to transformation.
One example of the SAMR model is …
Substitution: Instead of writing texts by hand, students type them out.
Augmentation: Students type their texts using word processing software, with spell check and formatting tools.
Modification: Students use Google docs to share their texts with classmates and get feedback, perhaps even working simultaneously on the document.
Redefinition: Students use their texts to make video presentations which they share online.
The goal is to move beyond merely replacing traditional tools, tasks or resources with digital ones, to a situation where technology is facilitating new ways of learning. Of course, under present circumstances, we may not be ready to think about transforming our teaching just yet. We might be thinking at the enhancement level, which is fine.
The SAMR model helps us reflect on how we can use the tools we have to help our learners best reach their goals.
Exploiting video conferencing
Many of us are using a video communication tool now. How can we change our lesson design to take full advantage of the tool? Can the tool offer an improvement?
One idea is inviting a guest speaker to join the lesson (if allowed by your school). This is something you couldn’t do as easily without the video conferencing tool. As you and your students are online anyway, it’d be easy to add a friend, colleague or family member to your meeting to be interviewed by the students. Even 10 minutes would be sufficient for them to talk about their job or industry, answer questions about their daily life, or give people a quick tour of their house (ideal if you’re teaching things in the house). It can be informal, even fun, while involving multiple tasks for students:
Researching the speaker, for example using LinkedIn
Writing an email inviting them to join, explaining why you are interested in speaking to them
Preparing questions
Planning who asks what
Conducting the interview
Writing a thank you email, outlining what you enjoyed or found useful
Preparing a post-interview report
If the conversation was recorded (with the guest’s permission, of course), the video can be replayed for comprehension and vocab activities. So much learning from just a short video call!
Recording your lessons or parts of your lesson is another example of using the tool to transform learning. Students can watch the videos as often as needed, the repetition helping them notice things they didn’t catch initially. This also helps them reflect on their own contributions. We’re often so focused on expressing meaning, we’re not as aware of our language. Students could transcribe short sections of their speech and reflect on their language.
The SAMR model reminds us to be open to the opportunities that teaching online offers us, rather than seeing it merely as something to tolerate until we return to the classroom.
The downsides
Moving to online teaching isn’t without its issues. In some cases, students’ verbal participation decreases, causing you to wonder if they’re paying attention at all. There are many reasons why this might happen. Students may be shy, uncomfortable with the technology, distracted or having tech issues. But they might also be unsure about when they should speak or trying to avoid the situation where everyone is speaking at the same time.
What can we do about this?
Start with Small Talk
Begin each lesson by greeting students individually and asking them how they are, giving each a chance to say something. Then ask students to write something in the chat box: what they had for lunch, what they did yesterday. This easy warm-up allows you to check that everyone’s equipment is functioning. It also allows students to try things out, get accustomed to the situation and connect with their classmates.
Create and discuss guidelines for communication
This is a must. Should students mute their mikes? Should they raise a hand (visually or using the function in the tool, if it exists) or type something in the chat box to indicate they want to speak, or can they speak at will? Do they have to turn their video on, or can they participate by voice only? Are they allowed to record the video call? (Consider privacy regulations.) These things should be communicated clearly in the first meeting or beforehand. It’s also helpful to explain why you set each rule.
If your expectations are unclear, you risk intensifying the adaptability struggle, resulting in some students initially rejecting the technology. We cannot expect students to participate the way we want them to if they don’t know what that is. This may sound logical, but we’re all guilty at times of assuming students understand our intentions and motives when, in fact, they don’t.
Try chatting
A lot of interaction in the classroom is spontaneous. The frowns indicating which students haven’t understood the task, the rolled eyes at your jokes, the groans when you announce an upcoming test, the witty comments. So much impromptu communication gets lost online if everyone’s on mute or has to wait their turn before speaking.
One way to facilitate this valuable communication is by encouraging written communication. The chat function in video conferencing tools is often used by teachers as a place to type corrections, but that shouldn’t be its only use.
Instead of asking questions to students individually, ask the group to respond in writing in the chat box. Give them enough time, then tell them to hit send. You can go through the answers to compare responses, ask follow-up questions and point out improvements.
You may consider moving some of your discussions to the chat box altogether. This takes a little getting used to but works essentially like a group chat on whatever messaging app you’d use on your phone. A written discussion gives everyone time to think up a response and prevents discussions being dominated by more confident or out-going students. This would also benefit the less confident speakers among our students who just prefer writing anyway.
It can be a bit chaotic but it’s worth it, as the use of this function not only helps increase participation but, going back to the SAMR model, we see it is transformative in that it allows for greater inclusion.
Using forms
Further ways of increasing interaction would be to use tools like Google or Microsoft Forms to share listening or reading comprehension questions with students. As the students complete the activity, you can assess in real-time how well each understands the material and quickly discover where misunderstandings lie. Questions can be multiple choice or open-ended, students can see which ones they get wrong or right, and you can display the results to the group for discussion. Gaps in knowledge are quickly identified, and you can deal with these questions without wasting time on the ones everyone got right.
Use the same tools to create feedback forms for your students to be used at the end of the session or week. Find out what students like most and least, and if there’s anything else they’d like to cover in the lessons. This gives students a voice, increases their engagement and aids your own development.
Many teachers find that once they move their class online, they suddenly become the centre point, through which all communication flows. They feel pressure to keep things moving and teacher talk time increases. The use of chat and survey forms can help prevent that.
Promoting engagement
What else can we do to ensure student engagement and interaction? Let’s return to the question of how learning happens in your classroom. If you were in the classroom, what would you be doing that you’re not doing online?
My big challenge teaching online is pair work and peer feedback. For me learning is a social activity and communication and collaboration with others are essential. Although some tools allow for break-out rooms, it’s not always practical. If your students can’t conduct pair work during your live session, how about moving that to outside the allotted class time? Give students a task to complete for the next session and assign them a partner. During the following lesson, the pair can report back to the group.
Peer feedback is another collaborative activity that increases students’ engagement and self-awareness as learners. The key to making it effective online is sharing the task rubrics with the students. Explaining to students what they have to do to complete the task successfully brings transparency to the evaluation process, and helps them effectively evaluate and help others. To really enhance the reflective process, students can create the rubrics or evaluation checklists with you. This further helps them develop a common language to use when giving each other feedback.
Students can also give feedback more informally. During speaking tasks, those listening could use pre-assigned emojis or a comments sheet with short sentences like ‘I agree’ or ‘Good vocabulary’. These could be quickly copied and pasted into the chat box, helping students give feedback faster while eliminating typing errors. The added advantage of this is that it builds community among learners, which is even more important when we are not all sitting in the same room together.
All of these things take practice, which I guess was the main message of my talk. We’re in a difficult situation, and it takes time to adapt to any change so we need to be kind to ourselves. I hope this post gives you a few ideas to help you along the way.
After university, Laura left Ireland to work as an English teacher. Now in Germany, she teaches adults and creates content for digital and print language tests. She has Master’s degrees in Education Leadership and Education Technology. She tweets as @edlaur. In her free time, she turns all devices off to read a good book.
The title of this week’s post is inspired by Zhenya Polosatova. I’ve just read her post comparing the current situation to being in a boat – you can’t decide how the sea behaves, or what the weather conditions are, but you can decide what’s happening in the boat. I feel like this is the first week that’s been anything approaching a standard 5-day work week since the middle of March when all this started. The seas are definitely calmer now.About 90% of what I did was what I’d normally be doing at this time in the year: teaching, helping teachers, admin work for this point in the year, and some forward planning for next year. I feel like most of us have now reached the acceptance stage of the change curve, and some are moving to the problem solving stage.
Away from work, I’ve been going back to some of my favourite books in the past few weeks. I read Winnie the Pooh again after a gap of at least 20 years. I’d forgotten how full of wisdom it is. Here’s my favourite, a reminder not to worry about things you can’t do anything about:
My Zoom lessons
Testing times
Our first elementary teen lesson this week was a test lesson as we’ve reached the end of the unit. Revision was creating sentences from pictures using all the different forms we’ve studied, and a few minutes playing collaborative Quizlet Live with a bumper set of vocabulary (I described how to play this on Zoom here). The test was done through Google Docs, as described in the ‘Testing’ section of last week’s post. These were some of the problems I had and how we resolved them:
Before they started, I shared my screen and demonstrated how to fill in the test.
One student couldn’t copy and paste the link, then was pasting it in the search bar, not the address bar (she’s 11). The other students explained to her in Polish, and I managed to get her to share her screen to check she was pasting it in the right place.
Another student couldn’t open the link at all. I sent her a version of the link I’d shortened using bit.ly so she could type it out more easily. (Top tip: you can edit the link so it’s words instead of a random string of letters and numbers. Don’t use capital letters as the links are case sensitive.)
The same student then couldn’t edit the document. She hand-wrote the answers in her notebook. I saw her notebook and know she did this, but am waiting for her to email them to me!
Speaking to students to solve problems disturbs the others. For the second class, I created three breakout rooms. You can rename rooms, so I called them ‘Doing test’, ‘Problems’ and ‘Finished test’. Once all students had their tests open, I moved everybody from the main room into ‘Doing test’. You can move students from one room to another as needed during the test by clicking ‘reassign’ next to their names. This is also a good way to keep fast finishers engaged.
I had all of the tests open in separate tabs so could see that everyone was working, and roughly how far through they were. This is a low stakes unit test, so I’d asked them to put their books and phones on the other side of the room, but wasn’t too worried if they cheated – at least they’d learn something that way (I know none of mine did though – the test was well within everyone’s capabilities!)
With the first group, dealing with the test problems meant it took almost the whole lesson. With the second group, they had a few minutes at the end. When asked what they wanted to do, they said play Quizlet. Half of them played Match, posting their fastest time in the chat box, and the other half played individual Quizlet Live. This worked really well for 10 minutes, and I know they were all actively engaged, though I wouldn’t do it for much longer than that in a lesson as both of those are receptive, and there’s no productive practice there. It was a nice reward for getting through a whole unit of the book while being taught online 🙂
Pacing makes all the difference
We started a new unit in the second lesson, Entertainment. The first set of vocabulary is TV programmes. I thought that since the students enjoy Netflix, this would be very motivating for them. This was true, but it was too much so in the first group! It felt like chaos at certain points, when they all shouted over each other debating which shows are good and bad entirely in Polish. This was entirely my fault: I’d let test feedback drag on for too long in the first part of the lesson (20 minutes instead of the 10 I managed in the second lesson), and they’d lost interest, which meant that it was hard to get their focus back, and chaos ruled for most of the rest of the lesson. One student out and out told me he was bored!
As part of the test feedback, I experimented with annotation tools for the first time, having seen a teacher use them successfully during a drop in observation on Tuesday (thanks Ash!). I only realised I could do this once I’d already lost the first group, so it wasn’t very efficient as I tried to work things out on the spot. With the second group it worked like a dream, and I could hear them asking in Polish ‘What’s teacher doing to the screen? How’s she doing that?’ 🙂 I’ll definitely use annotation tools again, but plan more carefully how and when.
To introduce 12 items of vocab, we broke it down into 4 groups of 3, with the following sequence:
Look at four pictures on the slide. What kind of shows can you see? Call out.
Reinforce any they already know. e.g. Yes, well done! 4 is a reality show.
Fill the gaps by introducing the other words, combined with the drilling below. If they were confused, elicit Polish examples of each type of programme.
Drill the words a few times. Go backwards and forwards to keep reminding them, in as fun/pacy a way as possible. e.g. word 1, 1, 1, word 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, word 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1 2, 3 2, 1 3, word 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2 3, 4 3, 4 2, etc.
They copy the four words into their notebooks, along with an example of that kind of show (in Polish if necessary).
Repeat the cycle for 5-8. When drilling flick back to the 1-4 slide sometimes and re-elicit some of the words. Then repeat for 9-12, going back to 1-4 and 5-8 sometimes.
This kind of sequence works well in a face-to-face classroom, and I think it was passable in Zoom, but I feel like there are probably other more efficient ways to introduce these words. Let me know if you have one!
I held up a mini whiteboard and demonstrated step-by-step the creation of a TV guide, inspired by another drop-in observation (thanks Jodie!). The students made their own in their notebooks as we went along, ending up with something like this:
They then copied two questions into their notebooks: ‘What’s your TV channel?’ ‘What’s on at 6?’ This enabled them to go into breakout rooms and get a fuller TV guide. I realised afterwards that I should have added ‘What’s that?’ to give them a clear question for the genre. Both groups were engaged with this task, and there were some very creative TV programmes.
With the second group, there was time to drill this conversation and for them to practise it in breakout rooms:
This is their first encounter with the grammar we’re going to (!) study next week. Thanks to Jude G for suggesting the use of pictures and colour-coding to make the turn-taking clearer and to brighten up the slide.
Polish
In our Polish lesson we had a similar short dialogue between a victim, a police officer, and a thief. As well as using pictures and colour-coding, I also held different toys up to the camera who was speaking as I introduced then drilled the conversation. We all agreed that this made it much clearer which student (there were only 3!) should be speaking at each point.
Bydgoszcz bear (the victim), an IH money box (the police) and the penguin from the Wrong Trousers (the thief)
Mini reflection
If nothing else, teaching on Zoom has finally got me into the habit of providing very clear functional language and making sure students write it down, something I’ve only ever done sporadically before.
However, yet again there was no movement in any of my lessons (apart from at break time!). I’m finding it challenging to incorporate movement seamlessly with these groups, and the activities I’ve used previously involving movement meant me speaking a lot, and the students not really producing much (an 80-20 ratio according to the observer who saw me run it). Something to think about more for next week…
Management
The only major thing that came up this week was figuring out a way to test the youngest students’ progress (beginner/elementary 7/8 year olds). We realised that if you display the questions one at a time on slides, the students can write the answers in the chat box and you can then download the chat to mark later. For students with minimal literacy, they can be given two options and just type 1 or 2. To push them a little, you might have a choice of words for an item, or you show them the vocab and they type the word. (Thanks Char!)
Of course, this is also an excellent time to re-consider the place of testing in our classrooms, and decide how necessary it actually is. This ‘long read’ from the Guardian is worth it to see what one family have learnt from two months of home schooling in Italy, and how it’s changed some of their attitudes to education.
Useful links
Lots of teachers are sharing their reflections on the current teaching situation. Here are a few I know about:
Rose Bard in Brazil, teaching small groups in Brazil
Hana Ticha, teaching secondary in the Czech Republic
Emma Johnston, teaching private language school students in Chile
Rachel Tsateri, teaching private language school students in Spain
Naomi Epstein, teaching deaf and hard of hearing students in Israel
I’ve linked to one post per blog, but it’s worth exploring: there are lots of useful things on all of their blogs. It’s interesting to hear how different people are adapting to the situation, and what they’re learning in the process.
If you prefer to listen rather than read (well done for getting this far down my post!), TEFLology created a podcast episode with the reflections of Anna Loseva (in Vietnam), Rob Playfair (in the UK) and Mustafa Nazari (in Iran). TEFL Commute have started a new series of short podcasts called Who’s Zooming who?
THE REST OF THE SERIES
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
Last weekend IATEFL offered a weekend of free professional development for the ELT community in place of thre IATEFL Manchester face-to-face conference. I was privileged to be part of the final panel discussion which was called Moving Teaching Online. IATEFL have kindly decided to share the recording of the discussion for free on their YouTube channel.
Recordings of all of the other sessions are available for IATEFL members in the members’ area of the site. Highlights were Laura Edwards’ tips for online teaching, Alex Warren talking about using TED talks, and Tammy Gregersen discussing teacher wellbeing. Here’s how to become a member if you’re not already: https://www.iatefl.org/get-involved/membership
Thank you to Shaun Wilden and Ros Wright for organising it, and to everyone whis given us such great feedback on the discussion.
Katie used to work with me at IH Bydgoszcz. She previously appeared here writing a guest post about DIY festive homework, and is back now to explain how she’s teaching in a student-paced way using an asynchronous model, a great contrast to the fully synchronous model I’ve been working in, with only live lessons. Here’s what she’s been doing:
A bit of background
Much like everyone else on my Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds I have had to move my classes online. Unlike most of those people, I don’t have a class full of students who have reliable internet access and regular schedules at home. Although a few of them are sitting at home with wifi and no work to do, a lot of ESOL students are what our government has started calling “key workers”. In my classes I have shop staff, factory workers, warehouse workers, care assistants, cleaners, and of course, full-time mums.
I have a university lecturer who almost always uses a website called Nearpod in her lectures with us, and we follow along on our phones, seeing class results immediately on her screen at the front. She mentioned off-hand once that it was a useful website for setting work to be done at home, as it also has a function for “student-paced” lessons. Unfortunately, as I discovered when I tried to use it, you need an upgrade to use the student-paced lesson function. Fortunately, Nearpod is currently offering a free upgrade! It was a bit fiddly to get one, but it was eventually sorted out. I had to fill in a few forms, and even had a Zoom call with someone about what I needed. There was an option to become a “school” account, and link other teachers to mine, but I went for a simpler option to have the upgrade just to myself.
How do you use it as a student?
The easiest way to introduce you to the site is probably by using a demo lesson, so I’ve made you one (be warned, it’s not remotely professional in tone) Access is very similar to the Kahoot process.
Type in this code: JTOGF (this code expires on 16th May 2020, so get in touch if you miss it and you want to give it a go)
Put in a name or nickname
How do you use it as a teacher?
I’d say that once you get over the initial hurdles of getting an upgrade, you only need a little while to find your way around the website. If you have done the lesson above you will know a few of the possible features, but of course there are always more. If you want different classes to do the same lesson but keep their results separate, you can launch it more than once with different codes. This is helpful if you have many classes of the same level with different teachers.
Giving feedback
Once you’re ready, scroll down on the left side until you see “reports”. Each lesson is listed, and on the right there is a house-shaped icon with a pen on it. When you click on that you’ll be taken to a summary of your students’ results. At the top of that summary you can select “downloads” to view the results either by the whole group or by students individually. I download the student reports and email them individually to each student with feedback or suggestions of particular things to practise. This is very time consuming!
Pros and Cons
Although feedback takes longer, you are obviously not spending any time actually in class, so that does sort of balance out. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of options for students using phones to respond with audio, so they tend to spend a lot of time writing. After the Easter break we’re going to have a go at doing a mixture of Zoom and Nearpod.
Has anyone else tried asynchronous online teaching yet? What tools have you been using?
Katie is an EFL teacher back in her hometown in the UK, teaching ESOL part time at the local council and studying for her MA TESOL part time at the University of Warwick.
We were lucky to still be able to take our Easter break – I know that some teachers had to work, and I hope that you’ll be able to recover that time at some point. We were off from Thursday to Tuesday, so working for only three days this week, with one English lesson and one Polish lesson. I used the time off to blog, catch up with friends, play Jackbox games with family and friends, and watch some of the fantastic online cultural offerings that we are currently privileged to be able to access, like Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and shows from the Royal Opera House.
My Zoom lessons
As we’re at the end of a unit, we wanted to do something a bit more project-based to pull everything together. I got inordinately excited (genuinely, I was jumping up and down and clapping my hands after I finished the plan!) at the Top Trumps lesson I planned, involving the students creating their own cards. Needless to say, the students were nowhere near as excited as me. It also only worked up to a point, but we live and learn…
The warmer worked excellently, with students writing a range of sentences about superheroes using all of the structures we’ve looked at in the unit, and asking for any adjectives they didn’t know, all based on this slide:
After a quick homework check, these two slides introduced Top Trumps. I asked a couple of students who were familiar with the game to explain how it works in Polish, then demonstrated using the number of pets the two presidents have.
To create our own Top Trumps cards, I first wanted students to come up with their own categories. I gave one example, highlighting the adjective ‘strong’ and not worrying about the noun for the moment.
They had 2 minutes to write 2 ideas each in their notebooks, then copied this functional language into their notebooks.
I demonstrated using the language to negotiate choices, then students went into breakout rooms in groups of 3-4. As they’re elementary students, I expected them to need to translate a few ideas, and told them this was OK, but found my group actually stuck to quite basic ideas. In their group they had to narrow down their 6-8 ideas to 2 ideas. When they returned to the main room, they wrote their ideas in the chat box. I then created a poll out of their suggestions:
Go to https://fast-poll.com/ (there are lots of different free instant poll creators, but I liked the ease of this one)
Copy and paste the question: Which Top Trumps categories do you want?
Copy and paste possible answers from the chat box.
Tick ‘Allow multiple votes’
Click ‘Create your poll’
Copy the link into the chat box for students to vote. Share the results on screen.
It was break time, but only took 2-3 minutes so if you have it prepared you should be able to make something similar quite quickly in your lessons.
As the students were voting I screen shared the results, and they were spontaneously calling out to the others which categories they wanted their classmates to vote for.
I copied the winning five categories into the categories slide, either as nouns or adjectives, depending on what the students had used. I added nouns/adjectives to the other side, and students copied all of the nouns into their notebooks.
Next I wrote each adjective into the chatbox, with the students suggesting the comparative and superlative structures they’d need to say to play Top Trumps. In hindsight, they should have made their cards first, then done this afterwards, but I planned it this way to help their understanding. I actually think it confused them more. The final slides from our four groups (mine and Jude) looked like this:
You can spot Jude’s groups by the much more creative categories they chose 😉
Then students had 5 minutes to create their own cards. They already had the categories written down.
They produced beautifully drawn cards, with the template carefully copied into their notebooks in most cases. The points scores were quite confusing in the first group (it originally said ‘You have 100 points’), and I should have given an example of how to divide 100 points between the six categories. Most, but not all, of the students interpreted my instructions as 100 points per category, so I updated this for the second group. This confusion meant we didn’t have time to play in the first group.
The second group went into breakout rooms in small groups to play the game. I wanted them to say how many points they had in the category they chose, then make a comparative/superlative sentence, but when I dropped into the rooms this wasn’t happening at all, despite having done what I thought was quite a clear example with a couple of students in the main room first. Instead they were just saying ‘Coco, speed, 20’, ‘Wonder Woman 2, speed 40’, then moving onto the next set of scores. I think I need to have clearer functional language for them which they could copy into their notebooks again. I’d be interested in any other suggestions here, as I’m planning for this to be the fast finisher activity in our test lesson next week.
Overall the students were engaged in the lesson, and we revised the structures to some extent. They had the chance to be a bit creative (something that’s been lacking somewhat in recent lessons), but I don’t think I was able to push their language as much as I wanted to.
Management
One of the privileges of being a manager is that I can observe other teachers. Watching the lessons has highlighted how good teachers are at giving clear instructions, supporting them by showing things on the camera and making notes in the chat box. They are using the technology confidently and in a range of interesting ways. There is a variety of activities and interaction patterns. The biggest problem, and one I’ve had too, is the feeling that we need to fill the silence, especially when students are writing in the chat box or working in their books. I’ve started to mute my microphone, or put my finger on my lips to stop myself from speaking at these points. I also try to make sure that comments add value, for example by giving named students specific feedback on what they’ve written in the chatbox.
Testing
Testing has been the other major topic of the week, conducting my first online placement test, discussing testing and assessment with IH DoSes from around the world, and building on the work of Jude F at our school who came up with a strategy for us to run tests for adults and teens. This is what we’re doing at the moment:
Create a test in a Google Doc.
Make one copy of the test per student with their names.
Put the tests into a single folder.
During the lesson, when it’s time for the test remind them to go to the toilet and get a drink before they start (thanks Lucie!) They put their books/phones somewhere out of reach of the computer (if they’re using one) to make it a little harder to cheat.
Then share the folder link with edit permissions. You can share the whole folder, or if the group is small enough send a private message to each student with their link (prepare these before the lesson).
Students can switch off their microphones while doing the test. If they have a question, they can come on the microphone or type in the chat box.
When they finish the test, they tell the teacher. The teacher makes the test view only, then puts the student into a breakout room with a fast finisher task.
We can never be completely sure if students are cheating or not, but as long as the test is low stakes, we need to trust them. If we’ve been assessing them throughout the year, formally and informally (as our school does), we’ll be able to see if there are any huge differences between their offline and online scores. This has worked well for teen and adult students, and we’re currently working on assessing young learners. If you have any ideas, please do share them.
Here are a couple of tips:
If you upload a test containing pictures into Google Docs and the pictures don’t show, right click and choose to display the picture ‘in line’ – this made them reappear when I did it.
Don’t use activities which involve spotting a mistake. The red/blue underlining of the checkers will give away the answers!
Make sure that students will be able to manipulate the test easily, even on phones. For example, ask them to underline words in a multiple-choice activity, rather than circling them.
Teacher training
Our weekly workshop was very different this week, based completely on sharing. Teachers suggested ideas they’d tried for conducting error correction, post-activity feedback, and revision activities. As they did this, I added everything to a Google Doc. There were lots of useful
Beyond our school, another shift I’m watching with interest is in how CELTA courses are being run, with many fully online courses now taking place, including online teaching practice. CELTA trainers are actively discussing the impact of this shift, a discussion I’m trying to keep up with. Because I only work on one course per year, I can’t see how this is affecting CELTees directly. As a recruiter of many CELTA graduates, I’m currently considering what extra training we might have to provide to CELTees who have never stood in a classroom before. So far I think we’ll need to work on:
classroom presence
ability to use classroom space
monitoring a group speaking simultaneously (not in breakout rooms)
including consistent pair/peer checks
What else would you add to that list?
Zoom learning, tips and activities
To share sound only (for example for a listening activity), click on screen share > advanced options.
If you’re sharing a video, make sure you optimise for video. Otherwise it skips frames and is very jumpy from the students perspective.
The classroom timers from Online Stopwatch are a great way to help learners keep track of their break times, though you may want to stick to a more basic one for in-class activities! (Thanks Char)
Useful links
If you’re concerned about security on Zoom, this guide has comprehension information about how to prevent ‘Zoom-bombing’ and keep your meetings as secure as possible.
General Plan IH Shanghai are just starting to emerge from the other side of the COVID-19 lockdown. Their Academic Director Simon Cox explains how it has affected them and what might happen next.
The IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group (TDSIG) produces a regular podcast called Developod. The latest episode includes tips for teaching online.
The IATEFL Global Get-Together took place on Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th April, two days of sessions on a wide variety of topics. The recordings are available for IATEFL members after the sessions. Sessions I found particularly useful were Tammy Gregersen talking about teacher wellbeing, Hala Ahmed talking about working with second language learners who have experienced trauma, and Laura Edwards on how we teach online, all of which included practical tips and activities. Here’s how to become a member if you’re not already.
THE REST OF THE SERIES
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
This is a short post I’ve written from Cambridge University Press summarising four things I think it’s key for online teachers to do (not just of teens!) The short version is:
Yesterday marks one month since the day I first used Zoom, when Shaun Wilden trained IH DoSes in the basics, and tomorrow it’s a month since we trained our teachers to use it. It’s amazing just how quickly life has changed. During my crazy year of CELTA, I realised it took me three weeks to settle into a new place, and from this situation I now know it takes me three weeks to settle into new habits of any kind. I wonder if it will be that quick to settle back into ‘normality’ again afterwards? Or how long we’ll feel we need to keep 2m away from other people for?
Thanks to Lesley Cioccarelli again for this entertaining video from Wellington Paranormal, and shared by the New Zealand police, on how to get people to stay 2m away from you:
My Zoom lessons
I teach two groups of elementary teens, in tandem with Jude, who has two other groups at the same level at the same time. We plan our lessons together, and share the materials making. In the last few lessons, all on Zoom, we’ve looked at comparatives and superlatives, and words for features in a town (see links at the bottom of this post).
Quiz time
In our first lesson this week, we worked up to the students making geography quizzes.
As the students entered the lesson, I displayed this word cloud of all of the adjectives we’ve studied recently, made with wordclouds.com.
They had about 7 minutes to write as many of the adjectives in the chat box as they could, along with their comparative and superlative forms, while we dealt with tech problems and late arrivals.
After checking their homework, which included some quiz-style questions from the workbook, students played Quizlet Live in teams with the ‘My country‘ vocab. This is one of their favourite activities from class, and worked really well online too. I have 8-11 students in regular attendance, so we played in the main room on Zoom. Everyone put their microphones on. They got K points (our classroom management system) for speaking lots of English while playing, with phrases like ‘I’ve got it.’ ‘I haven’t got it.’ ‘It’s [cliff].’ While they played I had a screen share with the Quizlet scoreboard and a Word document which had the useful phrases and a copied list of who was in each team (I have two screens, but you could arrange everything on one equally well). They enjoyed it so much that it was the first thing they asked for in the next lesson! [Tip: mute the annoying music or they can’t hear each other! If you’ve forgotten to do it before the game starts, on Chrome you can right-click on the title of a tab and choose ‘Mute this tab’.]
Next up: error correction. I copied each of the following sentences, one at a time, into the chatbox, with students writing the corrected version. I told them the information is good, but the English is bad. Again, the group were really engaged with this.
Asia is biggest continent.
London is more expensive Warsaw.
Cat is smaller than horse.
Polish is the most easy language to learn.
The next part of the lesson didn’t go very well for the first group, as I didn’t make it clear enough that we were going to make a quiz. It reminded me that my expectations need to be clearer than ever. With the second group I told them straight away and it went smoothly. On a slide, I showed them an example of a quiz question about the UK for students to answer:
The highest mountain in Great Britain is in…
a) England
b) Wales
c) Scotland
Then I displayed the question structure and students copied it into their notebooks:
The [superlative] XYZ in Poland is…
a)
b)
c)
The [superlative] XYZ in Poland is in…
a)
b)
c)
We then looked at how the structure mapped onto the example question. Then we repeated this for a comparative question:
London has got a bigger population than Scotland.
True / False
…with the structures…
ABC is ___________ than DEF.
True/False
ABC has got a ____________________ than DEF.
True/False
To set up the task, we had the instructions on a slide:
Make your geography quiz!
Work with your team. What’s your team name?
Write in your notebooks.
Minimum:
3 questions
1 superlative
1 comparative
Good luck!
Once they were in breakout rooms, I copied and pasted the instructions into the chatbox in each room. They had 10-15 minutes to make their questions.
Being online has forced me to think much more carefully about the support that I give students before they complete a task, particularly in breakout rooms, because I know it will be harder for them and me to spot and remedy any problems. This is good for me and them!
With the first group, technical problems meant everything had taken quite a long time, leaving only 10 minutes at the end. One student from each group chose a question to ask the whole group, who wrote the answers in the chat box. In the second group we had about 35 minutes, which meant they could quiz every other pair. I put them into breakout rooms with the following pairings:
AB / CD
AC / BD
AD / BC
After each round they came back to the main room and I added up points to give us an overall winner.
As a filler for the last couple of minutes, we had a slide of pictures of various things in groups of 3 (e.g. Mars/Venus/Mercury, or elephant/hippopotamus/rhinoceros – thanks Piotr!) Students wrote sentences with comparatives or superlatives in the chat box using these items, and some of them spontaneously made them into quiz questions.
I think this was the most engaging, varied and interesting lesson we’ve had so far on Zoom, mostly because it’s the first time there’s been plenty of time for them to play with the new language with a real purpose. Everything takes so much longer to set up and run on Zoom, and I haven’t been great at prioritising having a purpose for practising the new language so far: definitely something I should continue to work on.
Also, that was 6 activities for the whole lesson, 5 if you count the quiz setup and making it as a single activity. That’s a lot fewer than I would probably include in a plan for a face-to-face lesson – I’m learning to take my time a little more and not try to squeeze too much in.
As blue as the sky
The second lesson this week introduced as…as… comparisons through a range of similes like ‘as white as snow’ or ‘as big as an elephant’. Our warmer was Piotr’s pictures from last lesson, with students making quiz questions again. The context was the camping story from last week. Here’s how we clarified the structure:
I also clarified with a few more examples from the things around me at my desk.
They had time to complete the matching exercise in their coursebooks, then to play Quizlet match and send me their fastest time (another favourite game in class, including trying to beat my time), then to test each other in breakout rooms, one student with their book open, one with their book closed. To round off, they wrote the phrases they could remember in the chatbox.
So far, so normal.
Then, we tried a movement activity which was more thought-through than last week, although with the same general idea. One student selected an as…as… phrase from the book. Everybody had 1 minute to find an object which matched that description and bring it to the screen. As they brought it, I told them what they had (if I could work it out!) and wrote it in the chatbox. They then wrote a sentence using their item and the phrase. Two of my favourites were ‘My watermelon is as big as an elephant.’ and ‘My foot spa is as white as snow.’ 🙂 They produced lots of language, and because they had to hold the phrases in their heads while they found the items, they will hopefully remember them for longer.
Management
We did our first Zoom drop ins this week. It was fascinating to see how other teachers (who now all have far more experience than me!) have adjusted to the new medium. As in a physical classroom, it’s immediately obvious to students that somebody new has arrived, so it’s important for the teacher to introduce the observer, and for the observer to briefly come on the camera and say hello so that the students know who’s watching. Apart from that, being able to sit in the background with camera and video off is fascinating. Thank you, teachers and students!
I also attended two lots of international training via Zoom. The first was a session for IH DoSes run by Barrie Roberts, the DoS at IH CLIC Seville, about online placement testing. This is something I’ve wanted to instigate for years, and now we have no choice. About time too!
The second was run by Giovanni Licata and Michael Haddock for AISLI, the Italian language school association, about including every student in our lessons. We looked at examples of how materials can be inclusive to different identities, and accessible to students with different SEN. Key tips were to remove time limits that might create extra stress for students, to provide choices whenever possible, and to include a wide range of different activities (my favourite was how many times could our group jump on one leg/hop in one minute) and interaction patterns, both of which I’ve been trying to do anyway. If anybody else has tips on working with students with SEN via Zoom, I’d really appreciate them.
I really hope this kind of training format becomes more common after the current crisis is over. I really like the fact that we can share our ideas internationally on an equal footing.
Zoom learning, tips and activities
When you’re a student/participant and someone is sharing a screen, you can switch the video and the screen share. You could tell students to do this briefly if you need to draw attention to something on the video but don’t want to wait for the screenshare to stop and start.
If you’re sharing your screen but need to see the participants’ videos, share the window, not the whole screen. Resize the window to make it fill half of the screen, then use gallery view on the videos to see everyone’s faces. I’ve also just discovered the side-by-side mode, which I think will do the same job.
To stop yourself from talking when the students are working, put your fingers on your lips. This helps to combat the feeling of awkwardness when everything has gone quiet and you can’t see what they’re doing.
Get students to put them thumbs up, either literally or digitally, when they’ve finished what they’re doing, or when they understand the instructions. I use this a lot, especially when they’re copying things into their notebooks.
Lesson planning tips
It’s more important than ever to avoid unnecessary presentations of language that students already know, as things generally take much longer on Zoom. Assume that they know at least some of the target language until you find out that they don’t. Use tasks that prioritise eliciting/using language before you move into presentation mode. Simple examples for low levels would be ‘What can you see?’ with a slide of all of the items that you’re going to work with that lesson. For higher levels, try out task-based learning. At the very least, use a controlled or freer practice activity at the beginning of the language part of your lesson, then present afterwards, filling in the gaps you’ve noticed from students.
Break down long language presentations into smaller chunks, particularly with younger students. Again, this is good practice anyway, but more important than ever. Deep dive 2-3 items, then repeat for the next 2-3, then repeat the next 2-3, rather than working on 9 shallowly, then going back over all of them. For example, if you have 8 phrases for buying clothes accompanied by images, here’s possible sequence (which I estimate would take 60-75 minutes, depending on the students’ confidence):
Show them all of the images on one slide. Ask them where it is (a clothes shop). This sets the context.
Ask them to write what they can see in the chatbox. This shows what they already know. Maybe that includes a couple of the phrases.
Take the first 3 phrases. Try to elicit phrase 1 in the chatbox or on the microphone. Perhaps give them the first letter of each word as a clue. This mental processing and challenge will help the students remember the phrase. Once they have it, students repeat it 2-3 times, perhaps with an action if they can think of one. Repeat for phrase 2. Then get them to repeat phrase 1,2,1,2,2,1,2,1 switching between them quickly – make it fun! Add phrase 3. Repeat all three: 1,2,3,3,3,2,2,1,2,3,1. Play with the phrases, and keep the pace up.
Ask students to write the three phrases in the chatbox. Help them as needed. Once they have the correct version, they copy it into their notebooks and draw a picture to help them remember. They number each item to make them easier to refer to later.
Repeat for phrases 4-6.
Then phrases 7-8.
Send students into breakout rooms. They can use their pictures to test each other on the sentences. You can pop in and out and help with form or pronunciation problems.
Bring students back to the main room. Challenge them to remember as many phrases as possible in the chatbox. If they need extra support, show them the images again. This will show which parts of the form they’re still having trouble with.
Then students can create their own dialogues in a clothes shop, which they can practise in breakout rooms. Perhaps, they can use clothes they have at home to ‘buy’ and ‘sell’. This gives them a chance to move around. Again, you can do error correction and feed in extra language in breakout rooms.
Any students who want to can perform their dialogue in the main room. Praise all of the students for their effort.
Put one or two problem sentences into the chatbox for students to correct.
If time at the end, challenge them to remember all of the phrases again.
Include more ‘beginnings’ and ‘endings’ in your lessons to help students stay engaged and remember the new content. Again, this is good practice generally, but at home students have so many more distractions. By creating more natural breaks in the lessons, students can process the content more. Breaking down the language above into three smaller groups creates 3 beginnings and endings instead of just 1 for example. (This is definitely something I read about when preparing a session on engagement last year, but I can’t find the link now! Any ideas where it might be?)
Random thoughts
These have come up during discussions with colleagues through the week – thanks for asking the questions or making the statements that prompted them!
In the gallery view on Zoom, we’re all equal. Teachers and students are the same size, or trainers and trainees. What influence does that have on our and their perceptions of the lesson/training session? (Thanks Julie Wallis for pointing this out)
Parents are watching our lessons. While this might seem quite worrying at times, it’s actually a fantastic opportunity to show the range of activities we do with their children in class. For some children, it may mean they are reluctant to speak at first, but give them time and hopefully they’ll get used to it. It may be the first time some parents have ever heard their children speak English!
Questions I have
What are the safeguarding implications of being in a breakout room with one or two under 18s, when you are the only adult there? How can we work around this? Does anyone have any guidelines for this? (Apart from just not being in the room – but sometimes tech failures mean you end up in that situation.)
Is there anything extra or different we should be doing/thinking about when working with students with SEN that we wouldn’t need to consider in a physical classroom? We’ve tried to address the needs of our students as well as possible, but I’m wondering what we might have missed.
Useful links
Sarah Mercer, Tammy Gregersen and Peter MacIntyre would like teachers to complete their questionnaire “to inform understandings about the effects of the move to online and remote teaching on teachers’ health and wellbeing” as part of their ongoing research into teacher wellbeing.
The IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG (LTSIG) are presenting a webinar every Friday on How to teach English online. I attended Graham Stanley’s session on engaging students, including how to exploit the Zoom virtual backgrounds. I hadn’t tried them before, but am now trying to work out how to exploit them in my lessons. You can find the full list here, including highlights from webinars which have already happened.
THE REST OF THE SERIES
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
My friend Olga Stolbova posted these suggestions on facebook a couple of days ago, and agreed to share them on my blog. Thanks Olga!
Some simple tips on how to add more movement to your online classes. These are some of the things I do and they work for kids and adults.
1. What do you have in your fridge?
For lower levels
Ask your student/s to stand up, go to his/her fridge and remember 5-7 things that they have have in their fridge, allow 1-2 minutes. Then they return to their online classroom and tell you what they have.
For upper levels
Ask the students to check their fridge and tell you what they may be running out of and what they need to buy, ask them to check their fridge and make a list using the words for packaging ( cans/ pack, carton, bottle etc.)
To make it more interactive
Write a list of words that you think a student may have in his/her fridge, and the student/students make predictions about their teachers’ fridge. Set a time limit of 30 seconds – 1 min depending on their level, then you read the items from your list and the students go to the fridge and check. Take turns. It can be done in different formats. If you have a 121 class, then it is teacher-student; if you are teaching a small group, students can work in pairs or you can do it as group. You can use different questions depending on their level. For lower level students you can just read the list, for slightly higher levels you can use: Do you have any bread? Is there any… in your fridge? Is there a bottle of milk in your fridge? To focus on containers you can ask clarifying questions for the second round. e.g. Do you have a carton of milk or a bottle of milk in your fridge?
2. Can you name all the green/pink/blue/white objects in your bedroom/kitchen/living-room?
Students need to walk to their room and check the objects. You may ask them to take pictures of all green/pink/blue etc. objects and send them to you, though make sure you have parents’ permission for them to do this.
You may either set a time limit or ask them to take pictures of limited number of things, e.g. Take pictures of 4 green things in your flat)
3. How many rectangular/oval/triangular objects do you have in your flat/room/kitchen?
(This idea is from Lisa Margolina. Thanks a lot!)
Students are given some time to walk around and take pictures of all/some shapes at home, similar to the one with colours. They may not know the name of the objects, so you can help them with that when they show the object to you or send you a picture of it (with permission), or you can ask them to use an online dictionary to find the name. Set a clear time limit for that one.
4. What can you see from your window?
A student is given 1 min to go to the window and describe what he/she can see outside. If the window is far from the computer, allow 1 min for the task and make them remember/note down 4-5 things. Then they can tell the rest of the class what they can see. Then you may ask several students to compare it with their view. Encourage them to find more than 5 differences. Again, this can be done teacher-student, student-student, teacher-students.
5. Where’s the mirror?
Make 2 lists of 5 objects each: 5 pieces of furniture and 5 objects, e.g. list 1: a pillow, a vase, a mirror, a cat, keys. List 2: a desk, a bookcase, a bedside table, a bed, a windowsill. One student shows his list to the rest of the class. The students and the teacher make predictions about where the objects are. Those who guess correctly, get one point for each correct answer, and the objects are crossed out from the list. Take turns.
Olga Stolbova is a freelance teacher and a teacher trainer, based in Sevastopol, Crimea.
She has taught English in the USA, China, the Czech Republic, Vietnam, Russia and Ukraine and has run more than 30 CELTA courses around the world.
The title of this week’s post is inspired by this cartoon from Michael Leunig which appeared on my facebook stream this week:
Thanks to Lesley Cioccarelli for bringing it to my attention.
The personal stuff
This week has been my first full week of being at home – I left the flat on Saturday morning to do lots of food shopping, then the next time was Friday morning to treat myself to a 30-minute walk for my birthday (which was far more stressful than I expected as I was constantly looking to see what everyone else was doing).
I live by myself, so the thing I was most worried about when I knew that we might end up being at home was feeling isolated, but actually I think I feel more connected than ever. Yes, I don’t have actual humans in front of me, but I’ve had more social conversations with friends in the last few days than I have for a very long time, and my birthday was far more fun than I expected. It included a virtual birthday party (thanks Laura!) and a group of teachers playing online games from Jackbox (thanks Connor!).
It’s been a week of learning to adjust to the new normal, and of maintaining a sense of perspective: my birthday was the day the world hit the milestone of 1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide. Just over 20% of those people have recovered, but over 50,000 have died.
If you’re not already, please, please, please STAY AT HOME. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, the weather is getting nicer in the northern hemisphere as spring arrives. Walks are good for your mental health, but how far do you need to go? Can you stay close to home? Have you got a garden you can go out in instead or a balcony you can use? By staying at home, you are protecting other people, and giving health services and scientists valuable time to respond. You’re also reducing the likelihood that COVID-19 will enter your home in the first place. Please also think before you buy anything that needs to be delivered – do you really need it? Is it worth putting that delivery person at risk?
THANK YOU to those who are continuing to do essential jobs, like working in health services, making deliveries of food and medicine, and caring for vulnerable members of the community, and to every single one of you who is staying at home.
Management
On Tuesday and Wednesday I worked my way through all of the teachers, having a 10-15-minute chat with each to find out how everything’s going. Somebody from the IH DoS group suggested this – I can’t remember who, but thank you very much! This covered each teachers’ groups, their 121s, whether the tech was working, their general mental health, and any other problems or questions. I’m really glad I did this, and hope to repeat this periodically while we’re still on this pattern. I learnt that attendance is generally very high, barring a handful of students with tech problems (many of which were resolved between the first lesson and second), some exam students are handing in more work than ever, some teen groups are speaking more English than ever (they can feel the need for it now!), teachers are experimenting with functions on Zoom, and we’re still a strong community.
My Zoom lessons
This week we revised comparatives and added in superlatives in my elementary teen lessons.
At the start of Zoom lessons, I prefer to have something that students can get on with using the chat box for the first few minutes while we wait for everyone to join the lesson and deal with any technical problems. We repeated the comparatives challenge from last lesson the first time round, then in the second lesson one student called out an adjective, and everyone had to race to write the comparative and superlative forms. This helped me to see what aspects of the form students remembered and what they needed to revise.
Exploiting the chat box part 1: functional language
In the first lesson, the context for introducing superlatives was a multiple-choice quiz about geography. For example: Which is the longest river in the world? In order for students to do this in breakout rooms, they need some functional language. Here’s how I staged this:
Get them to open their books to the quiz page and show me.
Lay the book face down (I showed them this on my camera).
Tell them: “You’ll work together to do the quiz. You need some English to help you. Look at the chat box.”
Paste the first phrase with one word blanked out (I had them all prepared in another document). Elicit the missing word – a student comes on the microphone to say it.
If nobody can guess, give them the first letter.
Gradually add letters until somebody knows it.
Ask all students to copy the phrase into their notebooks.
Repeat for the other three phrases.
Paste all four phrases into the chat and ask students to check they have them all.
We had four phrases in total, and the chat looked like this by the time we’d finished:
Exploiting the chat box part 2: post-activity feedback
As students returned to the main room after they’d completed the quiz in breakout rooms, they wrote all of their answers in the chat, but nobody pressed enter until I counted down 3-2-1. That way I could see everybody’s answers at the same time, and there was no risk of copying from other people. It’s also a good way of double-checking that everyone participated (though I knew they had from popping into the breakout rooms). We then checked the answers as a group, with me telling them the answer and them debating if they disagreed. Feedback took 5 minutes, but they were definitely engaged throughout. Here’s what our chat looked like at the end of this stage:
Both of these strategies worked really well and I’ll definitely use them again.
I didn’t think this one through properly…
In contrast, the final activity of the lesson absolutely didn’t work the way I wanted it to. The vision:
A student calls out an adjective.
Everybody runs to find something ‘superlative’ matching that adjective, e.g. the oldest, biggest…
We choose which is the ‘superlative-est’ in the class.
Students write a sentence in the chat box using the superlative.
The reality:
A student chose ‘long’.
Everybody went to find the longest thing they could. This took about 3-4 minutes.
I tried desperately to get students to produce a superlative sentence in the chatbox.
Instead, they told me the measurements of the thing they’d got, and in some cases wrote it in the chatbox (the funniest was the pug who accompanies most lessons, who I now know is 26cm long thanks to T and his ruler!)
I realised that any sentence they produced needed the word ‘thing’ as we hadn’t specified a noun and few people knew the names of the things they’d grabbed.
I tried not to laugh at the inappropriateness of the sentence I was trying to elicit: ‘XYZ has the longest thing’. Oops!
The whole process took the final 7 minutes of the lesson – thankfully I’d already set their homework, so I could just let them go once we were done.
If anyone has an idea for how to exploit students’ environments to produce superlative sentences at elementary level, please comment!
Raising interest
The second lesson was based around a cartoon story in the coursebook about the characters going camping. I had the first panel on a PowerPoint slide, and used a simplified see – think – wonder thinking routine to raise interest. Students wrote sentences starting ‘I see…’ in the chat box for 90 seconds, then ‘I think it’s / he’s / she’s…’ for the next 90 seconds. I tried to elicit potential problems when you go camping, including some of the language they’d shared in the chat box – the first group didn’t get it, but the second group did (they’re a little older). We then watched the story video to check their predictions. I’m still feeling out how much I can push this level – my teen experience is limited, and I’ve only had these groups since late February.
Performing a story
After checking comprehension of the cartoon story, I wanted to experiment with students performing it. I’ve had mixed success with this kind of activity in the physical classroom and haven’t tried it with these groups before, but it seemed to work quite nicely in the end, with students generally engaged, and a few of them getting really into it.
(Group 1 only) Microphones off: I read the story line by line, students shadowed my reading.
(Group 2 only) Microphones off: I drilled some of the words group 1 had struggled to pronounce.
Breakout rooms: in pairs, students decided who’d play each character. They read out the story a few times. When I dropped in, I corrected pron and encouraged them to add emotion.
Main room: pairs performed one panel each, with everybody performing the punchline of the story together.
Zoom learning, tips and activities
Various posts/articles have been shared about privacy/security problems with Zoom this week. Zoom are working hard to combat these issues as quickly as they can. We’re already using waiting rooms on all of our classrooms, so teachers have to approve anyone who joins. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to read any of the links, but thanks to Phil Longwell for linking to this video produced on April 3rd:
When students are having connectivity problems, try communicating with them using the ‘rename’ function, as they may not be able to hear you or use the chatbox. I haven’t tried this year, but it might work.
There’s a lag of 5-10 seconds between when you share a screen and when the students can see it.
Some students appear twice in the room, with a separate video/audio feed. We suspect this happens if they’re on mobile devices and use the ‘dial in’ function for audio, though we’re not sure. This is a function you can disable in the settings. (Thanks Ruth!)
If students are working in groups on different Google Docs simultaneously, you can have them all arranged on your screen at the same time. You can then highlight anything that’s a problem for them to sort out. (Thanks Ruth!)
If you want to screen share and also see all of your students at the same time, arrange your screen(s) so that the software/document to share only takes up half of the screen. Share only that document, not the whole screen. Then use the other half of the screen for their videos: click on the gallery view icon, and resize the box until all of their videos are there. This is particularly useful if teaching young learners. (Will hopefully have a screenshot of this next week)
After setting up breakout rooms, go to each briefly to check everyone is on task. Then stay in the last one for a little longer to do some correction/upgrading. Vary which room is last each time. If time, sit in one or two other rooms for a longer period too. This ensures students still get hot correction/upgrading of their spoken language, without it being in front of the whole class.
Breakout rooms have various options, including:
Move all participants automatically – this means students don’t have to click on anything.
Close automatically after X minutes – good for timed activities.
Countdown timer after closing – I’ve found 30 seconds allows students to finish what they’re saying and come back. 60 seconds is too long if everyone comes back except one student!
Post-activity feedback ideas:
Teacher reads out answers (good if only one or two are there)
Student reads out answers
Nomination chain
Chat box simultaneous typing (see above)
Chat box – fast finisher types
Teacher types in chat
Display on slide/doc and screen share
Display with one or two mistakes for students to find
Display on course book software (if you have it) and screen share
Any other ideas? Please comment in the chat
‘What’s missing?’ works really well and can be run in a range of ways (thanks Jodie!) For example, a series of pictures on a PowerPoint slide with a white box on one of them. Screen share the slide on edit mode, students say/write what’s missing. Stop screen sharing, move the box, share, repeat. Alternatively, students go to breakout rooms. They show the pictures in their books/on homemade flashcards, but cover one up. Their partner says what’s missing.
Questions I/we have
All ideas gratefully accepted – please add comments!
How can you quickly ensure students have successfully completed activities in their course books/notebooks during the lesson, especially if their video isn’t working or the image is poor? (I’m mostly taking it on trust at the moment, but maybe you have other ideas)
Providing feedback on spoken language is challenging to do evenly across the group (and I only have 8-11 students!) I feel like the balance has shifted from the physical classroom. There I can give hot feedback on speaking to everyone throughout the lesson, and spend a little more time with individuals on writing while ‘ignoring’ others at that moment (obviously not ignoring them, but that’s the best description I can come up with!) Online, they get lots of hot feedback on writing in the chat box, but when speaking in pairs/groups I have to ‘ignore’ the others as I can only be in one breakout room at a time. It’s great that everyone is getting so much writing practice and feedback, but we don’t want to neglect their speaking. Apart from ‘sitting’ in a breakout room as mentioned in the tips above, any other ideas for what we could do to increase feedback on speaking?
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
The week started with a discussion with the school Director in which we decided to switch to working from home. Our teachers had been working from school for the first week of online teaching, and Poland is not (yet) on full lockdown, but it’s safer for all of our teachers to make that shift. Tuesday was about getting everybody set up at home, including me.
Management
I don’t think I’ve ever used my phone as much as I did on Thursday – 7 or 8 calls, none of which was shorter than 15 minutes, plus texts, WhatsApp messages, facebook messages, emails, and a Zoom call. It was really hard to know what to focus on! In between all of that, I did manage to update everybody’s timetables and get them sent out, but it took all day. It made me appreciate how much I benefit from being able to just pop to the staffroom or reception to pass on messages or ask questions when we’re at school. Thankfully on Friday things had settled down somewhat. We ran our weekly meeting and workshop via Zoom, looking at examples of online dictionaries and corpora.
I feel like the biggest management challenge for me in the coming weeks will be loneliness and a lack of balance in my interactions, missing informal chats in between bursts of work, as most conversations I have during the working day will inevitably be problem solving. That’s something I’ll need to actively seek out. On the plus side, it was nice to eat lunch in my own kitchen 🙂
Yet again, I’m incredibly grateful to the rest of the management team (Grzegorz, Ruth, Emma) and the office staff (Mariola, Sandra) for all of the work they’ve put into making the transition smooth and keeping lines of communication open. And to the teachers for all of their hard work!
My Zoom lessons
This week, we practised weather phrases and introduced comparatives. I’ve stuck to using the chat box, screen sharing, audio and video this week. That’s enough, I think, as I don’t want to overwhelm myself or the students too much.
I taught my first Polish lesson online too. There were three students and we did parts of the body, making use of teddies to show the parts of the body that are more challenging for the camera to get to, like ‘back’, ‘foot’, and ‘legs’! It was pretty entertaining 🙂 After every few words, the students predicted the spellings in the chat box, so we did more work on sound-spelling relationships, and looked at some plurals in the process too.
I feel like I’ve been able to do a lot more focussed correction than I can in the physical classroom, and my teen students have definitely had a lot more writing practice in the last two weeks.
I started using nomination chains, with each student saying who the next one to speak would be. This is something I generally avoid in the face-to-face classroom – I’d always associated it with feedback stages that go on for too long and in which students lose interest and the pace drops. In Zoom it worked really well for creating prompts for activities that everybody could participate in, as in the two examples below.
Drawing activity on Zoom
To test what weather students knew, they looked at a weather map of Poland and wrote their ideas in the chat box. I then filled in a couple of gaps by referring them to their coursebook and checking problem phrases.
Once I knew they had the basics, they all got a piece of (real) paper. I said a kind of weather and they had to draw it. We then had a nomination chain of what to draw next, and I joined in. After each one, they put their paper to the camera once they were done and I helped anybody who didn’t understand and commented on any similarities, for example “Look, N, we’ve both drawn a sad flower for ‘It’s dry'”. If their camera wasn’t working, they just had to say they’d finished.
I elicited the questions ‘What’s the weather like?’ and ‘What are you doing?’ by drawing a gapped sentence on my paper and getting words from the students. They copied it to their paper and again showed me when they were finished.
Equipped with the question and their pictures, students went into breakout rooms. They showed each other pictures and asked the two questions. If they didn’t have a camera, they asked ‘What are you doing?’ and the other student guess the weather ‘Is it sunny?’
This worked quite nicely for an activity I made up on the spot, but could probably do with a clear communicative purpose if I did it again.
Comparatives challenge
I choose two things, for example ‘summer’ and ‘winter’. The students wrote their ideas for ways to compare them in the chat box. I praised their attempts, especially if they tried to write more complex sentences, and corrected those who needed it, mostly using prompts: ‘W, how do you spell ‘than’?’ ‘T, you need an extra word.’ The students wrote the corrected sentence in the box without prompting. Once everyone had a couple of ideas, a student chose the next two things to compare.
This also worked well, with students being quite creative with their ideas. It was a good game to focus on the form of the comparative structure, but didn’t really have a clear communicative purpose again. Definitely something I need to focus on in next week’s lessons.
Zoom learning and tips
In breakout rooms, students can share their screen with each other. (Thanks Jude!)
Last week, Ash mentioned putting all of the Google Docs your students may need into a single folder and sending them one link. This week, he’s updated that to suggest numbering them in order to help you and the students work out what’s next. It seems like such a simple thing, but hadn’t occurred to me!
Useful links
If there’s one thing we’re not short of right now, it’s links to further development (sorry for adding to them!) Anyway, here are a few you may want to explore.
Activities
Teresa Bestwick has a series of visualisations you can use with students – this works well as mindfulness and a break from the screen for them: the park, going to school, going shopping, the beach
To finish off, here’s an infographic from Angelos Bollas about how to plan and run activities in breakout rooms:
The rest of the series
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
Our school, IH Bydgoszcz, has successfully completed a week of teaching teen and adult groups using Zoom. We’ve made plans (largely facilitated by Ruth and Char – thank you!) to move our young learner classes online, with a staggered start – half from Monday 23rd, the rest from Monday 30th. Our teachers are still able to go into the school building, which has made it easier for us to support them with problems throughout the week, and to continue to share ideas.
This week has truly demonstrated the power of a supportive team, as we all simultaneously became beginners again in our move to online teaching. Ruth and Emma, our ADoSes, have worked tirelessly to support teachers in their planning (often more so than me as I’ve often been coordinating other things). Grzegorz, our Director, and Mariola and Sandra, our office staff, have helped it all to come off smoothly. But of course, without the teachers’ willingness to try this, we couldn’t do anything – thank you, thank you, thank you! We’ve had generally good feedback from our students so far, and attendance has been pretty high. This is testament to everyone’s planning and hard work to make it all happen.
Reflections on my Zoom lessons
I’ve now taught three lessons on Zoom (you probably have more experience than me!), two with one group, and one with another. They were all with high beginner/low elementary (A2.1) teens, aged 11-13.
I really enjoyed them 🙂 It’s been a fantastic chance to get to know my students better. We’ve had visits from a rabbit, a dog, a cat, and a sister. 😉 One student spontaneously played her piano and violin during the break – I had no idea she was musical. We’ve also had a toy sword, spontaneous dancing, putting on make-up, and rather more eating than I would have liked!
Lesson 1 was an introduction to Zoom. We then played a guessing game. Students went to their kitchens for 3 items of food or drink (our most recent topic in class), which they had to keep secret. In breakout rooms they asked ‘Have you got a…?’ ‘Have you got any…?’ to guess what they others had. If they were right, the student had to show it on the camera. When they came back to the main room, they typed what they’d found out in the chat box. For example: ‘Sandy has got some oranges.’ ‘Sandy hasn’t got any cheese.’ This activity went down really well, lasted for about 15-20 minutes, and was a great opportunity to use their homes.
Most of the students adapted to Zoom pretty quickly, though two students still struggled to find functions at the end of lesson 2, and one student missed the Zoom tutorial in the first lesson. Another had huge connection problems in the first lesson, but this was much better in the second.
Lesson 2 was a continuation of our book (Project 2 from OUP), planned mostly by Jude (thanks!) After revision and a homework check, I screen shared a Quizlet set to introduce country vocab, with students calling out the words on their microphones, or writing them in the chat box. We stopped every few words for them to call out what they could remember. They matched the words in their books. To prepare for a short listening, I asked them to type what these measurements could be: 1000m, 6km, 10,000m etc e.g. a river, a bridge, a road. We listened to the audio – they filled in the correct number. We checked them one at a time using the chat box. I then introduced them to ‘high’, ‘wide’, ‘long’ and ‘deep’ from the listening by using gestures and asking them to draw different arrows next to the words in their books, e.g. an up arrow for ‘high’, a down arrow for ‘deep’. I set up the homework (the reading from the next page of their book) and did the first example with them. For the last couple of minutes they typed all of the new words from the lesson in the chat box.
If I taught the lesson again, I’d skip me introducing the vocab through Quizlet. Instead, I’d send them the code quizlet.com/491240605 and get them to play Quizlet match and learn modes – they’re used to doing this from classroom lessons. I’d then do a quiz, showing them three or four pictures at the same time and getting them to write all of the words. The listening and adjectives were fine, but there wasn’t much time left by this stage. I’d like to have something creative in every lesson, and I assumed we planned this but 5 days later can’t remember what it was! There certainly wasn’t time for it in the lesson.
Overall, I think my students have done more writing this week than in the entire proceeding month, and they’ve spoken to students in the breakout rooms that they wouldn’t dream of talking to in class, both without any complaints. Classroom management has been fine, because I can switch off microphones and videos if necessary – often the threat of this is enough to get students to concentrate again. If students consistently misbehave, you can put them into the waiting room for a minute or two to calm down, or speak to them individually in a breakout room (thanks for that idea Jude).
Let’s see how long the novelty of online learning lasts!
Zoom troubleshooting
Do a sound/video check at the start of each lesson. Get students to switch on their sound and video to make sure it’s working. If they’re having problems, put them in the waiting room (three dots in the top right corner of their video = move to waiting room) and let them come back in again. They may need to restart their computers/apps.
When one student is having lots of technical problems, give the others something to do while you help them out. You could put them in breakout rooms, with the ‘tech problem’ student in a room by themselves for you to help. Or give others something to do in their books. Make it clear to the other students that you’re helping the person with technical problems and how long this might take. If the technical problems are coming and going, make sure that student is in a 3, not a pair, when put into breakout rooms.
It’s better to have your computer plugged in or not at all through the lesson – it might not cope with the transition between two different battery settings. (Thanks Connor!)
If you’re having problems with the internet connection, switch off the video. If you’re at home, ask other people not to use internet-heavy apps at the same time as the lesson, like streaming.
If students are using Zoom on their phones, they need to be looking at the video (not the chat/participants list/screen share) when you put them into breakout rooms. That’s where the message pops up to invite them to the room. Alternatively, tick the option that says ‘Move all participants into breakout rooms automatically‘ and it doesn’t matter what they’re looking at!
If you’re kicked out of the meeting, one of the students will become the teacher with host privileges. Log back in, and (I think!) you’ll automatically become the host again.
Zoom tips
With small groups, prepare a piece of scrap paper with all of your students’ names before the lesson. Write C for computer/M for mobile/T for tablet – check what device they’re on as they come in. Don’t assume it’s the same as the previous lesson. That way, if they can’t find something, you know what instructions to give them to find it (the menus are different on different devices). I also used my list for noting which groups I’d put students in, tech problems they had, and how many K points (classroom management points) the group had got, plus reminders to myself about problems with Zoom/things to consider next time.
Recurring meetings: extend the date on your meetings for ages. If you let the last date pass, you’ll have to resend new links later. (Thanks Ruth!)
When you’re on mute, hold down space bar and speak – students will hear you only while the spacebar is depressed. (Thanks Emma!)
Make sure you remind students how to find functions – don’t just assume they remember.
In some browsers (Android phone?), the participant menu is a speech bubble with three dots in it. This is almost the same as the ‘more’ button, so students may be a little confused. (Thanks Ruth and Jude!)
Students can use the chat while in breakout rooms, but only they can see it. Nobody from another breakout room or the main room can see it. If you join the breakout room, you can’t see what’s come before, only what’s added after you join. A student without a working microphone can therefore still participate in the activity. (Thanks Connor!)
You can make the chatbox text bigger/smaller when you’re on a computer (not sure about a phone). Click into the chatbox. Press CTRL and + to make it bigger (CMD + for Mac), CTRL and – to make it smaller (CMD – for Mac), and CTRL and 0 to make it the default size (CMD 0 for Mac).
Google Docs tips
If you’re coupling Zoom with Google Docs, make the files directly on Google, rather than on Word then uploading them. If you have pre-existing Word documents to upload, make sure you save it as Google Docs if you want students to edit them. It’s not strictly necessary, but it makes things a little smoother.
If you’re using lots of Google files during a lesson, put them all into a single folder and send students the link to this before/at the start of the lesson. Then tell them which file you want them to open at the right point in the lesson. You can change from can view to can edit during the lesson if necessary. (Thanks Ash!)
Create designated sections of the document for students to write in. For example, we used red team/blue team/green team/purple team in the lesson I described above. (Thanks Jude!) Once students have accessed the document, ask them to write their name next to their team colour – this helps you to check instructions. (Thanks Connor!)
Lesson planning tips
Plan for a 60-minute lesson, not a 90-minute face-to-face one – everything takes longer! However, if you often spend a lot of time dealing with classroom management, you may find that your lessons are faster thanks to mute/stop video buttons. 😉
Keep the lessons simple. If you’re going to try something new, stick to a maximum of one new tech tool per lesson to avoid overwhelm.
Have a couple of zero-prep revision games to play at the end or discussion questions where they can go into breakout rooms, e.g. Pictionary, define the word and guess it (from anywhere in the book).
Put students into breakout rooms for the amount of time that you have groups. For example, if you have 3 breakout rooms, put them in there for a minimum of three minutes. If you have 5 breakout rooms, 5 minutes. 10 rooms = 10 minutes. That gives you time to check them all. It’s probably not really worth putting them in there for less than 3 minutes though as it’s a lot of faff and time, and sometimes the tech breaks!
Include breaks in the lesson. We normally have one 10-minute break in our 90-minute face-to-face lessons, but with my students I changed this to two 5-minute breaks. Even if you don’t normally have a break, it’s good to include stretching time and eye breaks to reduce muscle pain and eye strain. If you’re having problems with your neck or back because you don’t have an ideal position/posture, consider raising your computer. For example, put a couple of reams of paper under a laptop, or even put a chair on the desk and stand up during the lesson.
Include time when students don’t need to interact. For example, a drawing activity. They could switch off their video/audio while they’re doing this, then switch it on to signal that they’ve finished. You can switch off yours too.
You can ask students to do grammar controlled practice at home because they have grammar references, then use the lesson for problem solving, rather than trying to present the grammar from scratch.
For vocabulary, supplement with Quizlet sets – students can hear the pronunciation and practise the spelling.
Reading can be done for homework. You can check reading in class, or students can email you the answers to use it as an assessment. You can also do listening this way by emailing the audio to students (though be aware of copyright rules).
At the end of the lesson, consider sending an email summarising the content of the lesson, and including the homework, especially for teens e.g. Today we learnt some Zoom vocabulary from this Quizlet set quizlet.com/xxxxx. We practised how to use Zoom. The homework is WB p39 Ex 6. See you on Wednesday!
At the start of the lesson, display a puzzle, a Where’s Wally image, or an Every Picture Tells a Story ELTpic on the screen. Students write what they can see in the chat box – higher levels could imagine what’s happening, or what people are saying (reported speech revision?) This gives time for you to help people with connection problems. (Adapted from Lisa Wilson’s idea to display a wordsearch.)
Show an album from ELTpics that is connected to your lesson topic. Students brainstorm what they can see in the chatbox. Give them a sentence frame if you don’t want them to just write single words, e.g. There’s a… / There aren’t any…
To get students (of all ages!) moving, play run and touch. (Thanks Rosie!) e.g. run and touch something blue, green, red, new, old, wooden, metal, complicated, funny…
Ask students to make things out of the objects around them. For example, make a person, a house, etc. Other students have to guess what they’ve made. If planned with the responsible adult in advance, this could work particularly well with children – they could have a plate of e.g. pasta to make pictures out of (not rice – it’ll get stuck in the computer!)
With smaller groups, experiment with all of the students having their microphones on simultaneously at certain points in the lesson. For example, this worked really well with the homework check and drilling in my lessons. Students can also drill without their microphones on – they can practise repeating, then come on the microphone when they’re more confident.
Use Jazz Chants for drilling. Your students can make them too. They can say them with the microphone on or off.
Total cloze: before the lesson, write a sentence on a Word document. Set the text to white, but the underlining to black. Share the screen. Students guess what words are missing. If they guess correctly, you change the text colour to black for that word. (If you have a less fiddly way of doing this, please tell me!)
Organise for remote guests to visit the lesson. Students can prepare to interview them, or to listen to a short speech/presentation from the guest. There are lots of people looking for things to do right now!
Ask if you can observe other teachers remotely by joining their class as a student – this is much easier now. Make sure that schools and students are OK with you doing this if you’re the observed teacher before you invite anyone else in. (Please don’t ask me for the moment – I’m not quite ready!)
Fast finisher idea: students can build up a single picture using all of the vocab introduced during the lesson. For a few minutes at the end of the lesson, or as a warmer at the start of the next, they hold up their picture to the camera and describe what’s in the picture. You may need to demo this is a whole-class activity in a previous lesson.
Get students to write emails to their future selves using FutureMe. These are incredible times we’re living in right now, and it could really help them to consider that this is not how life will always be. (I hope!)
Useful links
Here are a handful of the many, many resources that have been shared in the past couple of weeks. Feel free to add others in the comments:
Teaching online – week one – a blogpost by Rachel Tsateri listing various tools for teaching online, including an alternative to Zoom (LearnCube)
2 short webinars on using your coursebook online and using breakout rooms by Lindsay Clandfield and Carol Rainbow, broadcast by Teaching English British Council and organised in collaboration with The Consultants-E
Teaching Online – a webinar from the SLB Coop in Barcelona on using Zoom, Flipgrid and Microsoft Teams
Covid-19 mental health and wellbeing – a blogpost by Phil Longwell on how you can maintain your mental health and look after your wellbeing right now (these ideas are useful at any time though!)
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
As more and more people are forced to work online due to Coronavirus, how can you make sure that you look after your mental health and create clear boundaries between home and work life, especially if everything happens in the same room? I’m particularly thinking about English teachers in shared flats who don’t have a living room or another space to escape to.
Create a very clear area that will be dedicated to work. If you are lucky this can be a desk. If not it might just be a chair that you only sit on for work or a part of a table that is for work. Be consistent and disciplined about using the space for work and nothing else.
When you’re not working, cover this space with something so that you can’t see it, for example a blanket or a spare bed sheet. If you have something nice to decorate it with, why not add that? This might be a plant or a teddy or a cushion, something to make it a bit less obvious that it’s a work space that you’ve covered with a sheet!
Create signs for yourself that say what you’re doing at each part of the day. This might be teach, admin, relax, chat. Put the sign somewhere obvious so that you can see it regularly to help you remember which phase of your day you’re in. Use your down time to make the signs look pretty.
Create a routine for ‘going to work’. For example, walk backwards and forwards in your room 10 times, ritually remove the sheet from the workspace, and then sit at your chair. If you have a slightly larger living space, for example a separate kitchen or living room, walk out of your working space and back into it a few times before you start your working day. Reverse the routine for ‘leaving work’.
Other routines could also be useful. Include routines for breaks, exercise, and regular meals. If you have the possibility of going outside, think carefully about when to incorporate this in your routine so that you got the maximum benefit from it. If you have options about when to do this, Crowdscience says that an hour of daylight in the morning is the most beneficial. You could also get this on a balcony if you have one. Daylight is enough, sunshine is a plus!
Include social contact that isn’t work-related in your daily life. Put a call out your social media to find out who would like to have a video chat (if your internet is up to it). I’m sure that you will find other people in the same situation as you and not everybody will be brave enough to ask for people to chat with. Get back in touch with those friends that you haven’t spoken to for years. This is a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with people.
If you’re working online and screen time is a problem try to keep your computer for work only and look for other things to do to entertain yourself when you’re not working. Read a book, do some sewing or repairs of your clothes, do some drawing even if you think that you’re not very good at it (this is an excellent opportunity to start practising and getting better, from somebody who also isn’t very good at it!), learn to play cards, do puzzles, build funky things out of the things in your flat and share pictures of them on social media…
If your computer or phone are your only source of entertainment when you’re not working, clearly delineate your computer time between work and home life. At a minimum close and reopen your computer in between working and using it for home, and get up and move away from it in between too. If you can, set up different desktops with different backgrounds on your computer, one for work and one for home. Do something completely different on your computer: many places are streaming operas, plays and concerts for example. Try something you wouldn’t normally consider. Or stick to comfort films: write a list of all the things you’ve been meaning to rewatch for years and work your way through them.
If you like music, have work music and home music. You could also use music as part of your ‘going to work’ and ‘leaving work’ routines. Have a song that gets you going before you start – listen to all of it attentively and mindfully, really focusing on all of the words. Then have another one at the end of the day which can transition you into your home time.
If you’re not doing it already, find out about meditation and mindfulness. If you are doing it, keep on doing it! Meditation is another thing that you could use at the boundaries between home and work and also if you want to take a break during your working day.
Start a journal of your experiences during this time, which will be very interesting for future historians and for you and your family in the future. You could also write a gratefulness journal of all of the things that you are happy are still happening or that you can still do during the quarantine period.
During your work time, arrange some kind of staff meeting with colleagues. This will help to retain some of the benefits you get if you have a good staff room. It allows you to let off steam with people who are in the same boat as you.
If you don’t have a staff room at the moment, there are hundreds of teachers in online communities who I suspect would be interested in meeting and talking to you. This is a way to have contact with other people, including perhaps meeting some new people. This gets different voices into your space that aren’t only your students or worried family members.
Give yourself periods of balcony time or, if you don’t have a balcony, window time, when all you do is stare off into the distance and look at what is around you. Pay close attention to all the details that you don’t normally notice in your daily life. If you’re at the window, open it as far you can. Get some deep breaths of fresh air. Appreciate the reduction in pollution because there are so many fewer vehicles on the road!
Have stretching breaks. Look up stretches that you can do to help you reduce potential pain in your neck, back and hips due to too much time sitting down. Plan which stretches you’re going to do during each break you take during the day. This could be one of the things you do in your routines before and after work as well.
Have some paper next to your bed so that if you’re feeling anxious in the night or you’re listing things for the next day you can easily write it down and empty your head to help you try to get back to sleep again.
Find things to laugh at. Watch stupid videos on YouTube or whatever it takes to make you laugh. Stand up when you’re laughing as well – this will vary your posture and help you fill your space with laughter more effectively.
Make a star chart or some kind of way of recording when you have been good and stuck to your routines. Give yourself a star or a 🙂 every time you complete your ‘going to work’ routine or take a proper break or sleep for 3 hours without waking up. Whatever it is that you want to be able to do, reward yourself for it. Make the targets super achievable so you get tons of stars. Reward yourself for everything that you can and search for opportunities to be positive.
As has happened in much of Europe, Poland has now closed schools, universities and other places where people might gather in the hope of reducing the spread of coronavirus. Our school had its last normal lessons on Wednesday, with Thursday and Friday dedicated to training our teachers how to use Zoom. We start teaching on Monday 16th, so my total experience with Zoom so far has been in the training process. However, I wanted to share what we’ve done and some of the ideas we’ve had for our adapting our standard EFL face-to-face lessons, in the hope that others will be able to build on this.
Useful links
International House World arranged a live session run by Shaun Wilden on Tuesday 10th, in which he introduced us to Zoom. He has summarised tips for moving to online teaching in these two blogposts on the Oxford University Press blog:
On 20th March 2020, Lindsay Clandfield and Carol Rainbow will run a webinar for Teaching English British Council on using your coursebook online and ideas for breakout rooms (see below for a definition and our ideas).
There’s a very active hashtag on Twitter called #coronavirusteaching, which you can view without having a Twitter account. It’s full of ideas and experiences, and is a rich source of information.
I posted this tweet:
Looking for ideas for teachers as to how to teach a standard EFL lesson via Zoom. Have lots of thoughts for vocab, but not so many for grammar practice. #coronavirusteaching#eltchat
There are lots of great replies, with more being added – see this thread for access to all of them.
Technical arrangements
We’ve compiled a beginner’s guide to joining Zoom for our students (in English and Polish). Teachers will email meeting links and join IDs to each of their groups, with student emails in BCC so that we’re not sharing their contact information with each other. Students can email the teacher if they’re having technical difficulties during the lesson and can’t access Zoom.
We’ve signed all of our teachers up for individual Pro accounts so we don’t have to worry about the 40-minute limit on free Zoom accounts. If you have a school domain and teachers have school emails, Zoom have temporarily removed the 40-minute limit on the free account, but this doesn’t work for private emails such as Gmail or Yahoo.
We’ve also suggested that teachers using Google Docs to complement Zoom, so we’ve asked students who plan to use their mobiles to download the Docs app in advance.
The rest of this post is an adapted version of our guide for teachers, including lots of activity ideas which we came up with/found as we were writing it. Please feel free to share more! Thank you to Ruth and Emma, our ADoSes, for helping me put it together, and to all of our teachers for being amazing at suggesting ideas and trying to work out the kinks in the system so that we’re ready for things to run as smoothly as possible on Monday.
Zoom functions
Managing participants
As the host of a class/meeting, you can manage participants such as renaming, muting, stopping video and other controls for participants. For more, visit this page.
If somebody joins the room late, or has been kicked out (e.g. due to connectivity), a notification will pop up for you to allow people to join the group.
The participants list also has options for students to give you simple messages:
These appear next to their name in the list. You have a ‘clear all’ button to switch them all off.
Students also have raise hand/lower hand options. A hand will appear on their video.
Participant video
As students join the room, a box with their name will appear. Once students click to give Zoom permission to access the camera, this will change to a video.
If you want lots of people to speak at the same time, ‘gallery view’ is much less chaotic. I’d recommend telling students to generally use this view.
We don’t think there is gallery view on mobiles.
If you’re using ‘active speaker view’, whoever is speaking will jump to the top of the column. This can get very distracting if lots of people are talking as it changes all the time. If you want students to show work they’ve produced on paper, ask all students to change to ‘active speaker view’, then ask the relevant student to unmute their microphone and start talking – their video will jump to the top.
As the host, you can switch all of the videos off if you want to. This reduces bandwidth (and is better for the environment!).
Tip: Switching your own video off when students are doing individual work gives you a breather and allows you to check what’s happening next. It also means students aren’t looking at your funny faces while you figure out what’s next 🙂 It will also mean there is less to distract them!
Tip: In the first lesson, we recommend keeping the videos on so that students know this could happen, and so you can make your expectations clear about this online classroom environment.
Tip: Having all students with their videos off makes the room much more smoothly as it uses a lot less bandwidth.
Participant audio
When students join the room, their microphones will be on mute. (We recommend our teachers choose this setting when they set up their Zoom meetings.)
It’s best if you only unmute microphones for students who need to speak – otherwise it can get quite chaotic.
For drilling, you could unmute all microphones at the same time, but warn students before you do this!
Allow silence during your lessons – don’t be afraid of it, and don’t feel like you need to fill it. It’s a little strange initially when you feel like you’re not talking to anybody because you can’t hear them responding when students are on mute, but you’ll get used to it pretty quickly.
Tip: Mute your audio when you’re typing/opening up the next bits of your lesson.
Sharing your screen
Tip: make sure you have everything you want to share open and ready before you start the lesson.
You can use the screen share function to:
Show powerpoint
Show a picture
Show a document/gapfill
Show the coursebook software
Share computer sound (to play a listening, or background music before the lesson starts)
Share a video (see below)
You can share the full desktop, a particular window only, or a portion of the screen (i.e. part of a picture). Here’s how. To share a portion of the screen, click on ‘advanced’ in the ‘share screen’ menu.
Screen sharing a desktop DOES NOT share any Zoom windows that are open.
If you give them permission to, students can also share their screens. Teachers can take remote control of students’ screens. Teachers can annotate students screens as well. Once this feature is enabled, all students can annotate whoever’s screen is being shared.
Playing audio
Put the audio on your computer.
Use the ‘share screen’ function. Tick the ‘share computer sound’ box.
Press play on your computer and students should be able to hear it as normal.
Audio activities:
Normal comprehension questions. A gist could perhaps be done as a poll.
Listening dictation.
Write the next word.
Tip: switch off your audio when playing audio from the computer, otherwise the students will hear you and the listening.
Playing video
Click on ‘share screen’.
Choose the window where the video is playing.
Tick the ‘share computer sound’ box.
Tick the ‘optimise for full-screen video clip’ to make the video smoother on students’ computers.
Press play on your computer and students should be able to hear and see it as normal.
Tip: Streaming Youtube videos takes up less bandwidth than playing a downloaded video.
Video activities:
What’s my line: write three lines from a short video clip, two which are really there, one which isn’t. Students write the number of the line which isn’t there in the chat box.
Chat box
There is a chat box in every Zoom meeting. Participants can send public messages to everyone, or start private chats. Here’s how.
In teen classes, change the settings in the chat so that students can only chat with everyone publicly or privately message the teacher. It’s better for them not to be able to chat privately as you can’t monitor their communication. See ‘Changing in-meeting chat settings’ on this link.
If you send students to breakout rooms (see below) they cannot see anything that is sent to the chat box. You can only send them written messages to the room.
Also, when students return from the breakout rooms their chat box may have been wiped clean (especially if they are on a mobile). However, the host can still see everything that was in the chat box.
You can use the chat box to:
Chat!
Have students complete a statement you give them e.g. ‘I really like using Zoom because…’
Spelling tests. Students can also go on the video to choose the word to spell or the sentence to complete.
Annotating a screen/whiteboard
This allows you or the students to annotate a blank screen (whiteboard) or whatever you’re sharing at that point. You can annotate in the following ways:
Draw – insert lines, arrows and shapes
Text box – including copying and pasting text from elsewhere
Stamp – e.g a star or a tick
Arrow – click to make an arrow with your name on it stay in one place. Each time you click, the previous arrow will disappear and a new one will appear.
Display a controlled practice activity using a text box.
Draw a timeline (if you want something more permanent than holding up one on paper to the camera)
Copy and paste a gapfill or similar from elsewhere for them to write into (though this is probably better as an activity on Google Docs or as a Powerpoint for them to handwrite the answers to).
You can download whiteboards and send them to students.
To stop students from being able to annotate the whiteboard, i.e. to make it so you are the only person who can write on it, there is a setting in the ‘more’ menu called ‘disable participant’s annotations’. (Thanks Shannon!)
Breakout rooms
A breakout room is a way to put your students into small groups or pairs.
Watch this 2.5-minute video to see what a breakout room is, how to set it up, what it looks like for the teacher (host) and the students (participants). You can assign students manually or automatically, and you can move students around before you send them to the rooms. If you want something more technical, here’s Zoom’s written guide to how breakout rooms work.
You can use this function to:
Do the homework check.
Create discussion groups.
Divide the class into two teams e.g. to make a decision/plan.
Tip: Students cannot see any of the materials from the main room while in a breakout, or do any type chatting, so ask them to take a photo of the task or write it down.
Tip: Remind students of breakout room etiquette before you start those stages each time.
You can’t monitor all of the breakout rooms simultaneously. You can only join one room at a time. Students can request help from inside the breakout room and invite you to join them. This pops up on your screen with a direct link to the breakout room. Your video will join the students – it’s very obvious that you’re there!
From your master breakout room list, you can broadcast a written message to all of the rooms which appears as a banner for all of the students.
If breakout rooms aren’t visible on Zoom, you need to go to your main settings and switch them on. This video shows you how.
Students may have trouble having a conversation if there are connection issues.
It might be a challenge to have more than 3 students in a breakout room because of sound problems/noise, but it could work for a game if there is clear turn-taking.
If you set a timer for breakout rooms, the timer starts regardless of whether or not the participants are in the rooms. When you close the breakout rooms, you can choose how much of a countdown the students get.
Hands up (and other non-verbal feedback)
Students can put their hands up to draw your attention to them. To do this, they:
Click on ‘participants list’.
Click ‘raise hand’.
When their question has been answered, they click ‘lower hand’.
As a host, you will see a ‘hands up’ icon appear on their video. If you’re using active speaker view, ‘hands up’ should push their video to the top of the list.
You can also see a summary of how many people have their hands up by looking at the complete participants list.
Find out which students want to speak on audio/camera.
Check understanding of a particular term/concept/instruction.
Using Google Docs
Before the lesson:
Create your Doc.
Click on Share (a blue button in the top right or go to the ‘file’ menu).
Click ‘get shareable link’. Make sure that it says ‘anyone with the link can edit’ – not just view!
During the lesson:
Check that all students on mobile phones have downloaded the Google Docs app.
Paste the shareable link into the chat box.
Students click on the link and can edit the document simultaneously. This should be fairly smooth (we hope!) as we’ve asked them to download the app before the lesson.
Tip: if you want to have students work on different specific parts of the same document at the same time, put their names at the points you want them to write/specify ‘group 1’ ‘group 2’ etc in the document.Here’s a (view-only!) example.
You can use this to:
Get feedback after a discussion task – students can all write their answers in the Doc simultaneously.
Brainstorm ideas.
Get students to complete a table when they have proved they can do something (like we did in the session)
Using Google Sheets
Students might not have the Google Sheets app. If you want to use it in your lesson, please ask students to download it when you send them the link to the lessons.
You can use this to:
Get students to complete a table when they have proved they can do something – for example, a list of can-do statements.
Do a ‘board race’ using a Google Sheet with columns that small groups need to add their ideas to.
Advice for planning your lessons
Start with activities you’re familiar with from the face-to-face classroom and consider how to adapt them. Look at the activities throughout this post for ideas of how you could do this. Be creative, and ask for help if you’ve spent more than 5 minutes trying to figure something out!
Best practice
Students recording lessons or taking screenshots (our advice to our teachers)
In the invitation email that we send for every lesson, students will be reminded that they may not record any part of the lesson without first asking the teacher’s permission, to keep in line with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, RODO in Polish) which is EU law.
During the lesson, if any students ask to take a screenshot, you may NOT give them permission if any other students are on the screen. If only you are on the screen, it is your decision. If it is only the work (e.g. the whiteboard) then it is your decision. Unless the work is incomplete or there is a particular reason you do not want them to take a screenshot, then it is probably OK to say yes.
Other tips
Include a summary of the lesson right at the beginning – I think this is more important in online lessons so that students know what to expect.
Always plan an activity at the start of the lesson that isn’t crucial to the lesson as a whole – this activity can ‘buy’ the time needed to make sure everyone has connected and issues with audio etc. are ironed out. (quoted from Shaun Wilden)
Give time for activities, especially if they have to switch between apps and views. Everything will take longer, especially if things have to load. Aim for simplicity in the plan in general – fewer chances for things to go wrong!
Include breaks for students: decide with the students what they want. You may decide to have a couple of shorter breaks, e.g. 5 minutes each after 30 minutes.
Look for as many student-to-student interaction opportunities as you can – not just student to teacher or lecture-style. It’s worth putting interaction patterns on your plan to be aware of this. Plan for every student to be on camera taking to the group at least once during the session.
Include movement in the plan – chances for students to get up. Tell the students why you’re doing this (it is better for your brain to move regularly, and you’ll remember more English). This is also a change for you to move around and take a break from looking at the screen. Ideas include:
Run and write: put books on the other side of the room. Look at a sentence, remember it, run and write it in the chat box/ on a Google doc. (A kind of individual running dictation)
Run and write in pairs: as above, but with the runner dictating to the other student, who has their book hidden.
They’ve done an activity in their books. You say a sentence – they stand up if it’s right, sit down if it’s not. Or a little more complicated: stand up and jump, stand up turn around and sit down again.
After a breakout room: students stand up if they agreed / turn their back if they disagreed. Teacher can turn on their mike and they can say what they thought.
If all students are on phones, they can walk for 2-3 minutes from their seats, then switch videos on and comment on where they’ve ended up/describe where they are/display it on the front camera/write about it. Could also be used for modals of speculation: other students guess where they might be, then turn on the camera and find out whether the guess was correct.
Other considerations
On the mobile phone, students can only see a super tiny whiteboard and can’t do much except draw on it. If they need to type, it should be on a Google Doc as they can still hear Zoom but can’t see anything.
Chat box activities should be focussed on only the chat box, not while doing something else (e.g. watching a video). Students on mobiles can’t look at two things at the same time with Zoom.
If you disconnect and reconnect, the chat refreshes and you lose all previous messages. If a student has lost the connection partway through a task that you’ve written in the chatbox, you need to copy it back into the box again.
Some students might not have their coursebooks in front of them. Make sure you have another way to show them the activity.
Other activities
Flashcard games
Draw pictures and hold them up to the screen
I can… statements on the whiteboard for students to annotate/add to the chat
Dictation: email half the group with something to dictate to their partners in breakout rooms, using a Google doc.
Kim’s game: show a picture with various objects or various things happening. Take it away. Students list what was in the picture. Chatbots, docs, breakout rooms all work for this.
Quizlet flashcards: share the screen, students write the words they see in the chatbox. With smaller groups, put the microphones on and use them for drilling. Also works with normal flashcards when you have them.
Students write a selection of words in the checkbox. You can take suggestions then choose one to display on the whiteboard. They then create sentences using the grammar structure. Then challenge them to add the context around the sentences: who says it/ where is it written, what comes before/ after it.
Remove/ replace/add: give students a starter sentence. They have to change/add/ replace words to make new sentences. Students can also suggest the original sentences.
A tour of my favourite website. Students would need to prepare this before, or have something and time in the lesson. You could also use it as a lead in to a topic, showing them around a website linked to the lesson theme. Aim for 2-3 minutes maximum four presentations like this. Alternatives: my favourite app, my favourite game, my favourite book, my favourite room where I am now. Note: this should be on a voluntary basis.
Research time: students have 15/20 minutes to find out about a topic and prepare a mini presentation, which they then report back to the group as a live listening. This could work really well in a breakout room.
Picture dictations: as a whole class, followed by students dictating to each other in breakout rooms.
Warmers
These activities are also good to maintain the group dynamic/connections between students, something which can very easily be lost if the primary communication is with the teacher.
What can you see: describe your room, the view from your window, a photo. Alternatives: what you can hear, what you can smell.
First lines: open the first book you can find in your house and bring to the screen. Type the first line into the chat box/ Google Doc. Choose a favourite and write the next line/ continue the story/ say what happened before/ describe the character.
Tell students three adjectives. They write a noun which connects them in the chart box. Ask students to come on camera to justify their choice. Alternative: three nouns, they say a verb. Three verbs, they say a noun or adverb.
Odd one out: Write a list of six words on the board from a lexical set. Students have to decide which one is the odd one out. They must explain this. Once they have, then challenge them to nominate another one which could be the odd one out for different reasons. Great for lateral thinking. The variation is great too, where every time they argue one is the odd word out you cross it out and they repeat the activity with the words left until there are only two words.
My neighbour’s cat is… page 54 of 5-minute activities by Penny Ur. This activity is great for eliciting adjectives from A-Z. You write up all the letters of the alphabet on the board and then you begin by saying “My neighbour’s cat is awful”, and write awful next to the letter “a”. Give students a timed limit eg 5 minutes, for them to add more adjectives in any order. For online purposes, challenge your class to get from A to Z, either in the chat or on a Google doc, or in breakout rooms as a competition. Variations: My neighbour likes… with verbs (adding up) or nouns (apples)
Taboo: email a student a taboo card. They have to define the word, either on the video or typing in chat. Or they create their own.
Display a picture, then take it away. Students write the dialogue, list what they can see, describe what happened before/afterwards… should work well in breakout rooms.
Students choose an object in the room with them. They share them in breakout rooms and say why they chose that object/ the story behind it/ who they would sell or give it to.
Messages to the world/ the group: questions can promote discussion. Breakout groups can discuss, then one iteration can report back in the chart or on the video to the group. What’s the best thing in the world? If you could change one thing about school, what would it be? I’d you could day one thing to the world, what would it be? Also works with Thunks
Mind reader (I’m sure there’s a way to adapt this!)
Each week I’ve summarised what our teachers and I have learnt during the transition to online teaching. Every post includes some tips about using Zoom, activities we’ve tried out (many adapted from the face-to-face classroom), and reflections on how my teaching and management have been affected by working from home. Here are all of the posts so far:
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