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halloween vid: the facts in the case of mister hollow

a picture, 1000 words ... etc
short of the week, vimeo

Teaching without a book

You can read some thoughts I've gathered over the year about book-less teaching here.

Thoughts from IATEFL Liverpool

With 20 plus talks in some slots, it's difficult to know what to go to. Methods of choosing include the random I'll-try-the-2nd-door-on-the-left method, the follow-a-friend technique and the popular in-search-of-TEFL-star approach.
I tried to be a little more coherent (although guilty of all three of the above on occasions) and went on the trails of ICT, Dogme and Task-based learning - a mix of personal interest and what seems relevant to our centre.
What follows are some thoughts and favourites as well as some links. Note that many of the talks can be watched at Liverpool Online, . 

1. Ipads & Web-based Tools

Apart from my own interest in web-based resources, I'm aware we've just bought a class set of Ipads for the teaching centre so I thought this was an important area to focus on.
i) One of the best talks I went to was by a colleague, Jon Parnham, from the Hong Kong teaching centre called Implementing Ipads In The Classroom. His talk was very relevant to us and I'll pass on more to the management and ICT teams here. During my stint on the BC stand, I got to learn a bit more about the 7 British Council apps - these will all appear on our new Ipads.
ii) Another session I really enjoyed was Nik Peachey's session called 'Evaluating Web-based Tools'.  Have a look at this simple site called TodaysMeet, which he had running throughout his talk, inviting participants to comment and ask questions. I used it with my Senior Advanced A class on Friday. In my task the students searched for interesting articles on their mobile phones and posted the links on TodaysMeet - homework is to choose an article and talk about it in the next class.

2. Getting rid of coursebooks?
A number of talks I went to were anti-Dogme, with coursebook writers justifying the way they make a living. I went to one talked entitled Dogme: A Coursebook Writer's response - a summary of which might be 'Dogme has some very valid points and useful ideas but you still need my coursebook'. Another session on this theme is The Decline & Fall of The Coursebook.
In the exhilaration of the conference, I started thinking it would be great to abandon our coursebooks. A more sober reflection is that, whilst that might not be possible or really desirable, we should be questioning the role of the coursebook as the de facto syllabus in our centre. Its place as chief source of material is one thing but shouldn't we be using our own syllubus-based learning outcomes as a starting-point for lesson planning?

3. My favourite talk
The most impressive talk for me was by Jane Willis, who is semi-retired, but one of the early advocates of the task-based approach. Task-based coursebooks never really took off (Cutting Edge was a watered down version) and as a result many of us are not very familiar with this approach. A pity because it's an approach that could revolutionise much of our teaching. I recommend having a look at the slides from her talk From Grammar Point To Task-Based Lesson. 

4. Poetry and Linguistic Imperialism
The conference treat was the closing plenary with Roger McGough, one of the 'Liverpool Poets' reading some of his work. Also worth watching was the excellent discussion organised by the British Council on Linguistic Imperialism. The 4-person panel was great but it was the contribution from the floor which really made it, including a question about why the British Council doesn't seem to promote the Welsh language!

If you ever get the chance to go to one of these big conferences, I strongly recommend it. I got to go this year on the strength that accommodation was provided free by family 'over the water'. I'll need a talk next year.

CiSELT

This year we are running CiSELT in the centre for our teachers. We are running to course partly online and partly face-to-face. After some initial teething problems, everything seems to be going well, and the first assignments are to be uploaded by the end of next week.

Can you make your class disabled friendly?

There's not a lot of good class material out there that raises the issue of equality in the face of disabilities. However, here's one I can recommend: a lesson plan by Bren Brennan entitled Success or failure???

It's suitable for teenage+/ upper-intermediate+ and comes complete with student handout plus teacher's notes. As you might expect, the lesson get students to consider what makes somebody's life a success or a failure and focusses on a video of Nick Vujicic who talks about how he's faced life's challenges without arms and legs. Quite rousing stuff!

Also, take a look at the Disabled Access Friendly website which has lesson plans listed by CEF level and age group.

Class activities for raising students' awareness of the importance of online safety

Dave Mainwood on his EFL Smart blog has created a series of good lesson plans that you can use for this.

I've had quite some success using Exposed (CEOP Video - Staying Safe Online) with various age groups of students (teenagers+) from intermediate upwards.
This lesson plan gets students to:

• watch a film about internet safety
• do some gap-fill and matching exercises
• practise present simple
• discuss ways to stay safe online

It centres on a well-made, engaging video where a teenage student gets hounded by her classmates because her boyfriend lets compromising photos of her get published on a social media site. I've found that students react positively to the video and the pre and post-viewing activities work well.

Sexting: is technology endangering teenagers?
This lesson plan gets students to:

• listen to a radio debate on teenagers and technology
• discuss the dangers and benefits of new technologies
• do a sentence matching exercise
• prepare and write an IELTS style question on the subject

It centres on a radio debate on sexting - using a smartphone to send indecent images to to others. This leads to a discussion about whether teenagers should be prevented from using these technologies or whether they should be trusted to develop their self-awareness of these types of gadgets. There are accompanying online activities that focus on language and comprehension plus the optional follow up writing task.

Should parents follow their children on facebook?
This lesson plan gets students to:

• discuss social networks
• listen to teenagers discussing social networks
• listen to some teenagers and parents talking about their online relationships and to order their comments
• look at some language used for writing - connectives
• write a discursive essay on the topic