Regular guest Matt Courtois and I discuss staging lessons with young learners. What is staging? How much should teachers deviate from their plans? How can we avoid running out of time in our lessons?
Encouraging Young Learners to be Creative (with Matt Courtois)
Demystifying IELTS Speaking (With Pete Jones)
Quality Teacher Talk with Young Learners (with Matt Courtois)
Choice, Challenge & Routine with Young Learners (with Jake Whiddon)
Teaching Phonics (with Lesley White)
Letterland teacher trainer Lesley White tells Ross about phonics. We touch on the history, the advantages of phonics over other approaches, different options to teachers within the phonics system and some of the differences between learning to read in your first language and in your second language.
Using Storybooks and Graded Readers (with Jake Whiddon)
Jake Whiddon joins me to talk about using storybooks in class. So many schools have graded readers, but so few teachers use these in class. Graded readers can be used with students of any age group and any level. They’re a great alternative to the coursebook and a contextualized way of presenting new language. In this episode, you’ll hear a simple five step approach that you can use to use graded readers with your students.
Classroom Interaction Patterns (with Dave Weller)
Getting Young Learners to Communicate with Each Other (with Matt Courtois)
Engaging Young Learners with Routines (with Allan Crocker and Diederik Van Gorp)
Using The Tools Of Positive Discipline (with Dina Emser)
Author and positive discipline trainer, Dina Esmer, joins me to talk about tools for managing young learners’ behavior. What can teachers do to encourage long term positive behavior in class? How can teachers train learners to solve their own behavior problems? And what can teachers do when conflicts happen in their classes?
Teaching English as a Lingua Franca (With Marek Kiczkowiak)
We know that the majority of the world's English speakers are not native speakers, so what does this mean for how we teach English? Marek Kiczkowiak talks to us about teaching English as a lingua franca (ELF). Is ELF a variety of English? How can teachers approach teaching it? In what situations is it helpful to students (and when might it not be)?
Please Mind The ___________ Gap (with Matt Courtois)
Nominating Students to Talk (with Allan Crocker & Rebecca Gary)
Which students do we choose to speak in class? Trinity CertTESOL trainers Allan Crocker and Rebecca Gary join me to discuss how we pick students to speak, how to stop students from speaking too much, how to know who is ready to speak before anyone opens their mouths and what to do when no one wants to talk.
Wants and Needs in Test Preparation (with Pete Jones)
How should teachers familiarize themselves with the assessments they need to prepare their students for? Which test strategies should teachers teach? What effect do students’ expectations of test-prep have on teaching? Pete Jones tells us about approaches towards helping students prepare for language tests.
Differentiated Support (with Chris Roland)
Young learner and teens expert Chris Roland talks to us about giving differentiated support to students. We discuss which students we are trying to help when we differentiate, which students teachers tend to forget about when they plan and how to differentiate without needing to spend twice as long preparing materials as usual.
Podcast: Mutilate Your Coursebook! A Guide to Adapting Teaching Materials
The Who What How When and Why of Error Correction
Advantages and Opportunities in Online Teaching (with Matt Courtois)
Regular guest Matt Courtois returns to discuss teaching groups of young learners online. We focus on some of the advantages of online teaching – what is it possible to do online, that isn’t possible to do offline? How to get students to genuinely and meaningfully communicate with each other online? And why tech problems and glitches might actually be the best part of online language lessons.
Using Literature To Teach Language (with Anne Carmichael)
Lots gets said about the value of graded readers, but how can teachers use these in class? We speak with Diploma in TESOL course director Anne Carmichael about using graded readers with students at different levels, how teachers can integrate different skills using graded readers and how teachers can deal with new language from the texts.