This was a wonderfully uplifting session to round off the year 😍
Teresa
Bringing meaning to the ESP classroom – with Patrick Mustu
Follow Patrick on LinkedIn for more ideas for language and law.
Low-cost ideas: using things around me – with Adriana Coto
Follow Adriana on Instagram for more teaching ideas 🤩
Hub digest – 4th October, 2023
There’s lots to catch up on in the Hub from the past couple of months. We’ve had some great webinars: in August, Tim Warre joined us to talk about Atomic Habits, Tom Liebewitz of the TEFL Workers’ Union chatted about workers’ rights and Kate Bodrova from Amazy shared tips on how to create, publish and monetize digital materials. There was also an opportunity at the end of August for teacher trainers to get together to discuss how developments in ELT feed into their practice. In September, Dr. Amina Douidi shared how to make ELT research more approachable and Lara Mehanna talked about the circular economy and EcoTEFL content.
And there have been weekly Wednesday Questions:
- What’s an example of bad CPD for you?
- What should be the minimum rate for classes?
- What programme do you use to create digital classroom materials?
- Do your students choose where they sit and who they work with?
- What are your top tips for teaching C1/C2 learners?
- Who or what changed your approach to teaching?
- How do you encourage learners to use English in class?
- What don’t you know about in the world of ELT?
- What are the pros and cons of working with the same student(s) for a long time?
- What communication strategies do you teach learners?
- Do good language teachers make good language learners?
We had some thought-provoking questions from members too. Mike asked about how to get into teacher training, Ri was looking for participants for a survey on CELTA and neurodiversity and Mary asked about practical ideas for the primary classroom for SEL (social-emotional learning) and CLIL (content-language integrated learning). Jack asked about sites or apps for learners to practise spelling and also shared a survey on AI in the classroom. Emma asked about coursebooks for teens at a B2+ level, Blanka started a conversation about bionic reading, and Lisa was looking for fonts to use with the phonemic script. We also had an anonymous post on how to recognise reputable training providers.
As always, there were some fabulous resources shared by Hubsters too. Silvina had lesson plans on dealing with change in the workplace and Kintsugi, whilst Quick and Easy English had a detailed plan on travel.
Robert shared the latest issue of the University Grapevine and Hubsters shared some other events of interest: Erin of Everything EFL did a webinar on the Lexical Approach and she also shared a fab video on giving learners choice through the lesson. The team at Euro Speak did a session on boosting spoken English skills via interactive and asynchronous learning, ITEACH offered a session on earning more as an online teacher and Leo from Learn Your English did a session with Geoff Jordan on SLA (Second Language Acquisition) and another with Cecilia Nobre on video-based lessons. At the start of September, Fiona from Kids Club English ran an ESL and pre-primary pentathlon and Blessing Epum ran a back-to-school conference for parents and educators. Jane also shared a link for Pearson’s webinar series, which included a few Hub regulars…including Dr Amina Douidi who was speaking about accessibility and diversity.