Teresa

Hub digest – 6th August, 2021

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Another week of engaging chat in the Hub, with our monthly Trainer Talking Time event on Tuesday looking at how we can set new teachers up to continue developing after an initial qualification. Then on Thursday we met up for a fortnightly coffee break – notes will be coming soon on what we chatted about in each session.

Following on from a topic which came up in our last coffee break, the Wednesday Question this week looked at mono- and multilingual classes. There have been some interesting comments so far, such as how people enjoy being able to use the learners’ L1 effectively more in a monolingual class as well as some wonderful stories of cross-cultural learning in multilingual classes.

Coming up next week, we have a Focused Foum on Tuesday; as always, there’s currently a poll in the Facebook group to see what the topic will be. And on Thursday, we’ll be joined by Claire Thom, teacher and author of Ever Forward, to talk about using poetry in the classroom.

Coffee and a catch-up

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During the sessions we covered a huge range of topics, including the weather, pets and other such tefly topics including induction, use and abuse of materials, student  motivation, etc, etc. Read on to find out more.

Getting into induction

In the morning session we kicked things off by talking about induction and the move towards a lighter touch approach, understanding that very little is actually retained in these sessions and always needs to be repeated in various different ways. We talked about differentiation between returning and new teachers and about the importance of building team too. 

One feature we thought is important in induction is making sure everyone is ok for the first lessons. One thing we all agreed on is that we probably should head to the books in the first class or two, instead it’s more important to work on connections. Harry Waters shared the first day activities that are on the TEFL teachers in Seville Facebook group. We need to create a space where the students want to be there (after a long holiday). On top of that there are a lot of “admin” things to take care of especially around the organisation of online materials. We need to give teachers time and support for online set up and also devote class time to it. And more than anything we need to build confidence, for both teachers and students.

The use and abuse of materials

And what about September, any further thoughts on where we’re going to be? In class, online, hybrid? Whatever space we’re in, the online workbooks and self-assessment materials will continue to be really useful; our ability to gather so much info about the students. We commented that there is now an overwhelming amount of material with publishers producing more and more all the time as they continue to justify their costs. What happens with all the creativity, fun and personalisation when we are confronted with all this material. We need to approach it all with care bearing in mind students’ (and teachers’) needs.

Motivation, visible learning and elite sport

We went on to talk about motivation, setting short-term goals and mused on the idea that learning a language is in many ways like going to the gym. We went on to talk about John Hattie’s “Visible Learning” in this respect and related to when students really learn something. Are exams a good indicator? They are certainly an indicator. We wondered whether students then use the language to satisfy the teacher/exam and balanced this by asserting that the use of challenging language initially needs to be “set-piece”, rehearsed and shoe-horned into language use so that students can move from rehearsed to more natural language. We try to create a naturalness into the artificiality of the classroom. We talked about the importance of teaching chunks of language and about making it automatic. We moved on to “cognitive load”, automatisation and learning to drive; it starts off as a huge effort and then becomes natural, and the same is arguably true in learning languages. Our use of group work can release pressure on the brain and reduce the cognitive load. There’s huge amounts of research into elite sports but much less into second language acquisition. What can we learn from the research?

One thing we agreed on is that there has been a shift from a focus on communicative competence to exam preparation and that many of our students are achieving more and more. Has B2 become the accepted minimum? Is there a shift from C1 to C2 as the aspiration for our students? Are we getting better at it? Are our students getting better at English within this shift of focus towards exams? Does this tie in with the “Demand High” ideas of Jim Scrivener? How much are bilingual programmes in schools part of the answer? All of this can put more and more pressure on our students, we need to be mindful of that.

Which coursebook?

One Hubber asked for suggestions for a B2/C1 book which isn’t based around exams. We talked about two year per level systems and about using the same book across two years. The favourite non-exam book still seems to be English File from OUP, we love the extra communicative activities, although people weren’t so keen on the listening activities and the big jump into exams. We talked about the challenges of making exam books interesting and accessible and the need to prevent us all from just tumbling from one book exercise to another. We talked about using shorter books, CUP’s Compact was mentioned as was the Straight to… series. Within the group there was strong support for Macmillan’s Ready for… series, especially as it often has more communicative activities too. Whatever book we chose, newer teachers will always need help and guidance to use them effectively.

And when we’ve got even the driest coursebook we can give things a twist with some easy-to-do and low preparation activities. We like to give students the answers first and then they work out why it’s this and not that. Alternatively we can give them a couple of possible answers rather than the empty space or a choice of four. We agreed that the process is more important than the correct answer.

A trip down memory lane and back to the future

We talked about some (very) old favourites and wondered if they are still useful and available. Reward Resource Packs for communicative activities, In at the deep end for a functional approach to teaching business English, Streamline English and Off Stage! all got honourable mentions. What’s your favourite golden oldie?

Teach This was mentioned as having a huge variety of usable materials. You just need to input the language focus and the level and you get all sorts of things.

Stress, guilt and saying no

We started off in the afternoon session talking about levels of stress as one Hubber had recently stepped down from a project and we talked about the need to know when to say no, and the feelings of guilt which that often entails. We then went on to talk about a project which another Hubber had recently started: setting up their own website to market courses and we chatted about the benefits of learning how to do these things to be able to edit the site in the future rather than needing to rely on someone else doing it.

Our projects

This led on to some discussion around websites and blogging, and a query as to whether the blogging boom of the early 2010s was over. A couple of coffee break participants were regular bloggers during the hey-day and reflected whether this was also due to how their timetables had changed now: whereas in the past they were working in afternoon classes and so had more time during the mornings to read blogs, nowadays they’re working in other areas of ELT and so that ‘free’ time is now part of their 9-5 working day.

That said, there are still some prolific bloggers out there with great sites. Katherine Bilsborough’s Creating ELT Materials, which was started in June 2021, was mentioned as a new favourite. 

Carrying on the chat around projects we had been working on, one Hubber shared her experience of designing and running a course to educate young people, and their families, about menstruation. This was particularly interesting as she talked about the cultural norms surrounding the topic as well as making people feel comfortable about using terminology related to the topic. It was also interesting to hear about how she designed the course: running it over a period of weeks rather than an intensive course, as she said this gave participants more time to absorb the content and provided them with adequate space and time to ask any follow-up questions they might have had. We talked as well about the benefits of running a course like this online, as participants might feel more able to discuss sensitive issues in a safe space, perhaps feeling more comfortable accessing the course from home.

Don’t get too comfortable…

From there we talked briefly about COVID and the benefits and drawbacks of moving online. Some learners thrived in an online environment and it feels a shame to force them back into a traditional classroom. However, there were many others, particularly those in underprivileged communities, whose education suffered significantly during the pandemic.

How can we best help new teachers?

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The question morphed from “How can we help newer teachers continue their professional development?” to “How can we best help new teachers’” It was an extremely interesting and necessary conversation where we shared experiences and good practice.

Survival of the fittest?

For lots of new teachers the first few weeks and months are all about survival; survival in the class, of course, but also around all the non-teaching stuff too. It can be difficult for newer teachers to separate work and life resulting in long, long days and high levels of stress. We also need to remember it’s a new life, a new job, quite possibly a new country. Perhaps our key question should be, how much can they do without being overwhelmed?

There are some fabulous new teacher support programmes around where new teachers are paid a normal salary and have reduced hours, more development and mentoring. 

Me and my coursebook

We also need to remember that new teachers spend an awful lot of time along with their coursebooks and often need help with time management and answering the tricky question of what exactly should my working time be? Be careful of making any assumptions. Clear guidance is really helpful.

Death by powerpoint

Teachers are planning more and more on their laptops and even in shared, busy staffrooms there is a less communicative, less sharing atmosphere. We also noted a trend towards an increased reliance on teaching through powerpoint. Powerpoint is a perfectly good tool, of course, but we need to use it in teaching with caution. Powerpoint can give the illusion of security but often ends up with very passive lessons and “death by powerpoint”. Perhaps powerpoint has become the new, evolved version of cutting up pieces of paper so highly prized on pre-service training of old. Pre-service providers should be wary of over-use and over-reliance on powerpoint. Instead of powerpoint we should encourage sensible use of the publishers digital offerings and also be aware of the distancing effect of over-use of screen sharing. We need to try to create active learning environments, as one Hubber shared their story of kicking the powerpoint habit and going cold turkey.

Creativity step by step

New teachers should work with a coursebook where possible and then add in creativity step-by-step. We agreed that a good teachers book is a thing of joy, “Straightforward” was mentioned as a good one!

Do you remember how it feels?

We talked about a version of the CEFR levels for teachers and raising awareness of where we are and how we can move forward. New teachers should start slowly and move into things gradually, it all needs practice. How many hours do we need to teach to become “expert”? Trainers, mentors and managers need to remember what it feels like to be a new teacher and act accordingly.

PPPP – planning prevents poor performance

We all felt that a strong plan is the best start that a new teacher can have and support should be given around this. One school mentioned gives plans for new teachers to follow and gently increases their independence as appropriate. We know that the first year of teaching can be a baptism of fire, some of us shared our own horror stories of mixed levels, no materials and dodgy timetables, it still feels so close for so many of us. Another idea was creating space for teachers to practice “tricky” bits of the class with a mentor. A further suggestion was around level meetings where teachers meet once a week to plan lessons together. Here teachers can learn to plan and to ask about anything they’re not sure about, including grammar and other language questions.

Clear expectations

Clarity around expectations is also so important to help new teachers know what is and what isn’t ok. Issues around discipline procedures, classroom volume, studiousness, etc. all need to be as clear as possible. Teachers need to understand what is “good noise” and what isn’t.

Interview hints

We also talked about avoiding problems with some new teachers at the interview stage. We should ask them about how they react to stress and should probably steer clear of perfectionists. Sadly, we know lots of new teachers are “on the edge”, they are uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the role(s) they need to play in different classes. Teachers need to find their own identities. Sometimes the teacher can be younger than the students and that can require confidence and presence. At the same time our teenage students should not become our friends even if we are closer in age to them than with other people. At the same time teachers need to find their staffroom identity, “how do I fit in here?” and then again, a new country, new language, potentially new everything… it can be both exciting and terrifying!

Is there a new “N-word”?

We went on to talk about the pros and cons of hiring new teachers already in situ, and it can make a huge difference. And the conversation naturally drifted onto the teachers’ first language. Is the N-word (native speaker) acceptable? Should we instead be talking about qualified, competent, proficient teachers? We know we can’t change the world but maybe we can change our worlds. Perhaps we should see the world in general as it really is, less binary; less right and wrong, left and right, black and white, native and non-native. The conversation rolls on. 

Hub digest – 30th July, 2021

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Happy Friday everyone! This week we launched a new feature in the Hub: Speakers’ Corner. It was great fun with three topics to get us thinking – you can read the notes here. Simon chatted about inclusivity in his five-minute slot, and the following day a Hub member shared a link to an upcoming webinar on the topic. There was also an interesting question from another Hubber about how everyone shares materials with their learners or with other teachers. And the Wednesday Question also generated some thought-provoking comments – such a big question that it’s hard to know where to start! 

Stories were a recurring theme as well this week. Not only were we joined by Romina Muse with her incredible webinar on stories to transform challening behaviour, but there was also a question about stories told with yoga poses.

Coming up next week, we have our monthly live chat focussed on teacher training on Tuesday and our regular coffee breaks on Thursday. Hope to see you there!

Stories to transform challenging behaviour

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Stories to transform challenging behaviour - with Romina Muse (webinar)
Watch now

It was such a pleasure to have Romina Muse join us in the Hub for the webinar this week. Romina is passionate about working with young learners and using stories to develop their emotional literacy. Romina started off by sharing two different images of challenging behaviour: on the one hand, an incident of bullying and on the other, a child who is very withdrawn. It was really interesting listening to Romina talk about how we deal with challenging situations and how we can use stories to manage and redirect their behaviour through the use of stories.

FLIP

This is an idea from Rachel Wagner, an early childhood mental health specialist. When a child demonstrates a challenging behaviour, we need to identify what the underlying FEELING is – it could be anger, boredom, frustration, and so on. First we should acknowledge that it’s OK to feel this way as we can often try to ignore challenging emotions. Then we can LIMIT the emotion by explaining why it’s not OK for the feeling to manifest itself through violence.

It’s OK to feel angry, but it’s not OK to pull someone’s hair.

The third stage is INQUIRY and encouraging our students to be curious about other ways they can express their feelings. We can then move onto the fourth stage and PROMPT – taking the creative possibilities the students have identified, we can help them redirect their feelings in a different way.

Before we looked at the stories Romina shared with us, she spoke about why stories are such a useful tool for the classroom: they have familiar characters and settings, there’s often a conflict to resolve and solutions are provided in the story to deal with these problems, encouraging them to replicate the solutions in their own lives. As Romina said:

The power in stories lies in the buttons they push in our own selves.

We then went on to look at some wonderful stories – four from Romina and also some great suggestions from the audience.

The Color Monster (Anna Llenas) encourages learners to think about their feelings and to think about how they manifest them. Romina shared some lovely ideas to work with the story, including having them pull different faces in a mirror or create a feelings booklet. There are more ideas from the 15-minute mark in the webinar. 

Next up was When Sophie Gets Angry (Molly Bang), which focuses on how students can deal with anger. An important point which Romina highlighted here was that anger can be a mask for other emotions, such as embarrassment, stress or helplessness. She also warned that when we are feeling angry, we aren’t able to listen to reason as our reptilian brain goes into a fight or flight mode. When we’re in this state, we aren’t able to move onto the inquiry or prompt stage – we need to give ourselves space to calm down.

Accompanying this story (from about the 30-minute mark) were lovely creative ideas such as an anger thermometer, creating a Calm Corner in the classroom and having them share in a storybook the strategies they have to calm down. We can also avoid learners feeling uncomfortable talking about their own anger by having them think about other reasons why Sophie might be angry.

The next story was The Huge Bag of Worries (Virginia Ironside) which can help children who are feeling stressed or anxious – emotions which are sometimes more difficult to deal with as they tend not to manifest themselves through aggressive behaviour. Thre are lots of great suggestions for working with this stry (around the 45-minute mark) including writing or drawing your worries and putting them into a balloon, then inflating the balloon and popping it (as long as they’re not scared of loud noises!). 

Romina also shared a great technique for dealing with anxiety, which involves focusing on the present.

Image credit: https://weheartit.com/articles/332231979-anxiety-grounding-techniques

The final story was The Knight and the Dragon (Tomie de Paola) which teaches children to deal with conflict. From around minute fifty-five in the webinar you can see Romina’s suggestions for working with this story, including a conflict escalator or having them use the structure of the story to recreate it with their own characters.

Here were some other story ideas:

Romina has a wonderful YouTube channel with lots of activity ideas for younger learners and read-alouds of other books which she’s used in her classes.

As Romina mentioned, we’re not just working with stories or English, but providing them with tools that they can use in life. As they become emotionally involved in the sotires, they are able to show perhaps hidden emotions and replicate the characters’ ways of dealing with those same emotions.

Claude Steiner who coined the phrase ‘emotional literacy‘ said that stories can be used to:

  • Respond to feelings and emotions
  • Recognise triggers
  • Repair damage
  • Release emotions safely
  • Redirect behaviour

You might also like to read about Vivian Paley who did a lot work on early childhood and storytelling and said:

Pretend is the child’s real and serious world, the stage upon which any identiity is possible and secret thoughts can be safely revealed.

An important point that Romina made at the end is that if we introduce different emotions to our students in these ‘pretend’ way through stories, they’ll be more equipped to deal with the emotions when they arise for real. She also shared some good tips for working with stories: ask students to bring a cushion so that they associate sitting on the cushion with storytime. You might also find that you can’t tell the story in one go as students may identify so strongly with the characters that they want to interrupt and share their personal experiences. She also suggests having learners do pre-reading tasks, such as drawing a similar situation to the one they’ll see in the story as anticipation can make them feel safer.

Huge thanks to Romina for such an engaging webinar – wonderful stories and beautiful ideas to bring emotional literacy into the classroom.

 

Growth mindsets, eye dialect and inclusivity

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We love to try new things in the Hub and today we launched a new feature, Speakers’ Corner: a space for people to come along and share a short presentation, thought or query followed by time for participants to chat around a question the speaker proposes. Our aim is to give people a stepping stone towards preparing a talk for a conference, to have space for them to get feedback on a potential presentation or to offer people who don’t feel ready for a longer presentation the chance to share their thoughts. And we also wanted to provide people with a space to discuss the topics which come up, hence having a five-minute presentation followed by ten minutes to chat in small groups. The notes below aim to share a couple of key ideas from the speakers, as well as the questions which they posed for us to discuss, so please feel free to add comments in response to any of the topics. Here’s a link as well back to the post about this blogpost on the Facebook group as there are some interesting comments there too. And huge thanks to everyone who came along to our inaugural event!

Tracey kicked off the event by talking about growth and fixed mindsets, following her research into the topic. In her talk, she mentioned that that your mindset can differ depending on the task and that people with a fixed mindset often feel that things are innate so if you’re ‘not good’ at something, you’ll never get better. She also suggested we should do more to praise the process of our language learners rather than only the result, before asking us to think about how our classroom practice might (inadvertently) promote a fixed mindset. To find out more about the power of yet and developing a growth mindset, you might like to start by watching Carol Dweck’s TED talk on The power of believing you can improve. 

What are we doing to promote a fixed mindset?

Next up, I talked about eye dialect – dialogue written to represent a character’s accent. In its origins, it was often used to show the speech of uneducated characters and I also came across this idea: “writing about non-mother-tongue speakers can seem bigoted or prejudiced because a writer can try too hard to mimic the ‘otherness’ of a ‘foreign’ character’s speech”. My thoughts were evolving around whether we form an unconscious bias towards the speaker when it’s used to represent the speech of a second language English user, as well as what it does to perpetuate linguistic stereotypes. 

To what extent do you feel that eye dialect of non-mother-tongue users of English has a negative effect?

To round off our inaugural event, Simon talked about a topic he’s developing for an upcoming conference. He’s planning on presenting various ideas for how we can create a more inclusive classroom and having conference participants discuss how effective the ideas would be. His ideas included stand-alone lessons on a particular topic, using neurodivergent-friendly materials, using published materials such as Raise Up! as well as incorporating authentic materials such as The Owl House and characters created by Rick Riordan.

What can we do to create a more inclusive and representative classroom?