I have been involved in education since 1990 and have worked all over the world as a language teacher, teacher trainer, technology trainer and educational technology consultant. In May 2012 I won a British Council ELTon for Excellence in Course Innovation for the Blended Learning in ELT course I designed for Bell Educational Services . I write and publish materials which make best use of educational technology.
I have been involved in education since 1990 and have worked all over the world as a language teacher, teacher trainer, technology trainer and educational technology consultant. In May 2012 I won a British Council ELTon for Excellence in Course Innovation for the Blended Learning in ELT course I designed for Bell Educational Services . I write and publish materials which make best use of educational technology.
This lesson plan explores the topic of crime and motivation. It uses images and a crime story to develop students’ vocabulary around the topic of crime. It also helps to develop their understanding of narrative tenses.
Most importantly, the lesson pushes students to think more critically about the information they are being told and to think about how they can cross-check information.
At the end of the lesson, students are also encouraged to do research in preparation for a debate about various issues related to crime and punishment.
This lesson also has an interactive version of the materials that teachers can use with a data-projector or interactive whiteboard. The students can also follow the lesson and interact with the materials using a tablet, mobile phone or computer.
This lesson is based on an infographic about happiness and the factors that effect our happiness.In the lesson students will explore their views of what makes them happy and discover some of the science behind what happiness is and the factors that create and effect it.
Aims:
To develop students’ abilities to study and research effectively using digital tools.
To develop students’ abilities to read and understand visual information.
To develop students’ abilities to check the credibility of online information.
To develop students’ abilities to carry out online research and to represent their findings visually.
To develop students’ abilities to extract information from research and create informative text based on their findings.
The materials in this plan can be used in different ways. The first four tasks can be used independently as a simple reading and discussion lesson. The final five tasks can be used selectively depending on the aims of your lesson.
This lesson contains nine tasks:
A discussion task which gets students thinking around the topic.
A reading task which develops students’ abilities to check information.
A reading task which encourages students to look more carefully at the information.
A discussion task which gives students the opportunity to formulate a personal response to the information they have studied.
A research task which gets students to check and explore the authenticity of sources.
A research task which gets students to check the validity of the information in the infographic.
A research task which gets students to find out more about Maslow and the hierarchy of needs.
A social research task which gets students to create an online questionnaire to research happiness.
A writing task which gives students the opportunity to consolidate their learning in the form of a magazine article.
This lesson is based on an infographic about the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) and its role in our lives. In the lesson students will explore the differences between IQ and EI and develop an understanding of how they can improve their EI and how doing this can benefit them.
Aims:
To develop students’ understanding of EI and its importance.
To develop students’ abilities to study and research effectively using digital tools.
To develop students’ abilities to read and understand visual information.
To develop students’ abilities to check the credibility of online information.
To develop students’ abilities to carry out online research and to represent their findings visually.
To develop students’ abilities to extract information from research and create informative text based on their findings.
The lesson files include:
Step by step lesson plan and answer key
Presentation
Photocopiable worksheets
In the lesson students will find out about the different things people usually have for breakfast in different countries and they will develop an awareness of the importance of having a good breakfast.
Aims:
To develop students’ abilities to think critically and form informed opinions.
To develop students’ abilities to understand statistical information.
To develop students’ abilities to check the credibility of online information.
To develop students’ abilities to carry out and create online research and to represent their findings visually.
To develop students’ abilities to extract information from research and create informative text based on their findings.
This lesson is based on an infographic about the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) and its role in our lives. In the lesson students will explore the differences between IQ and EI and develop an understanding of how they can improve their EI and how doing this can benefit them.
Aims:
To develop students’ understanding of EI and its importance.
To develop students’ abilities to study and research effectively using digital tools.
To develop students’ abilities to read and understand visual information.
To develop students’ abilities to check the credibility of online information.
To develop students’ abilities to carry out online research and to represent their findings visually.
To develop students’ abilities to extract information from research and create informative text based on their findings.
The lesson files include:
Step by step lesson plan and answer key
Presentation
Photocopiable worksheets
In this lesson, students try to understand the nature of conspiracy theories, how they evolve and how to debunk them. They also look at how to talk to people about them in a non-confrontational way.
Aims:
To develop students’ knowledge and ability to talk about and understand the nature of conspiracy theories.
Level:
Intermediate + (B1- C2)
Tools:
Note pad: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/
Whiteboard: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/
Materials:
Teachers’ Guide - PDF
Digital presentation: Demonstration copy
Infographic - Conspiracy Theories: https://bit.ly/3n30QxV
With the advent of ‘Instapoetry’ on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, there seems to be a whole new generation open to creating, publishing and enjoying poetry. This lesson explores the motivation of a woman who writes poetry and encourages students to share their views of poetry. They also choose a poem to listen to and create a profile for an imaginary poet.
Aims:
To develop students' appreciation of poets and poetry.
Materials:
Teachers' guide (PDF)
Digital presentation
Dictation activity
Poet profiles activity
Reflection activity
In this lesson from the Building Dialogue series, we look at the controversial issue of the growing role of AI in our lives and in government.
Through the lesson, students find out more about AI and its abilities to make logical decisions by watching a short video. They will also listen to people sharing their views about the role of AI in government.
They use techniques from dialogue building to explore each person’s beliefs in a neutral way. They then find out about the beliefs of their peers by asking open questions and listening.
Aims
To give students strategies for engaging in dialogue and improving understanding of complex issues.
Time: 90 mins +
Level: B2 +
Materials
Teachers’ Guide: PDF
Presentation: Demo copy
Note-taking task: https://bit.ly/42uDtip
Listening gap-fill task: https://bit.ly/42dLTLA
Script task 1: https://bit.ly/3pe51u6
Script task 2: https://bit.ly/3HMzOVo
Question task: https://bit.ly/3nFV4Fh
Reflection task: https://bit.ly/3LEwn47
In this lesson about money students will explore cryptocurrency, one of the most fascinating and poorly understood elements of digitalisation that could soon impact all of our lives. They will exchange their knowledge, views and experiences of money and read and research cryptocurrencies and the mysterious creator of Bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto and all of this while developing their English, communication skills and digital literacies.
Aims:
To develop students’ knowledge and ability to talk about and understand cryptocurrencies.
Level:
Intermediate + (B1- C2)
Materials:
Teachers’ Guide - (PDF)
Digital presentation: Demonstration Copy
Understanding and being able to convey information about a sales funnel is an important part of any commercial business.
In this lesson, students will listen to three managers discussing their sales funnel, learn associated vocabulary and work together to design a sales funnel for a new company.
Aims
To enable students to understand and discuss the process of attracting and converting new customers.
Time: 90 mins +
Level: B1 +
Materials:
Teachers’ Notes - PDF
Presentation: Demonstration copy
Vocabulary activity: https://bit.ly/38EeLFJ
Listening activity: https://bit.ly/3kx1Rfs
Role play cards: https://bit.ly/3y2UqVj
Reflection task: https://bit.ly/3kwhKmg
Additional Materials:
Speaking activity: https://bit.ly/3ku3LNJ
In this lesson, students discuss and learn about the difficult process of firing someone. They learn about the procedure and language for firing an employee, listen to three managers who made mistakes when firing someone, and role play talking to members of their team and reassuring them.
Aims
To enable students to use the processes and language for firing a member of staff.
Time: 60 mins +
Level: B1 +
Materials:
Teachers' Guide (PDF)
Presentation: [Demonstration copy](https://view.genial.ly/6173a1e32d16df0de52ff83e)
Reading 1: https://bit.ly/3vwtTw9
Activity: https://bit.ly/30UXiVJ
Dictation: https://bit.ly/2XACCAW
Role card 1 A: https://bit.ly/3jwiIij
Role card 1 B: https://bit.ly/3m4EtHE
Role card 2 A: https://bit.ly/2XFVz5q
Role card 2 B: https://bit.ly/3Gh8Wu4
Reflection task: https://bit.ly/3nnS4Jt
Digital Video is a 400 page multimedia manual for language teachers to help them build activities, courses and engaging materials for their students. From exploiting mobile apps on handheld devices to building video into blended and task based learning, Digital Video covers it all.
With detailed technical support through a range of 26 tutorial videos, illustrated step-by-step guides and more than forty lesson examples and over 300 images, teachers can use this manual to build their confidence and find some of the best free video applications and resources online.
Whether you are a novice teacher or an experienced trainer looking to develop your tech skills, this manual can help you with plain English explanations and practical online and face to face classroom suggestions.
This is a PDF ebook with links to video tutorials.
This ebook was designed to be the first in a series of collections of the simple activities and ideas I have used over many years when delivering teaching and teacher training sessions that incorporate the use of digital technologies.
The ideas use simple free tools that have stood the test of time and remained consistently reliable. The teaching ideas and activities themselves are ones that I have adapted from my pre-technology teaching days, so they are all built on sound classroom teaching practice.
The activities are ideal for the modern connected classroom in which students come to class with a variety of devices, but they can also be used in a blended context and students can be assigned some parts of the tasks to do outside of the classroom.
I have also included a collection of 8 video tutorials to help less tech confident teachers deal with the technology side of using the materials.
I hope these materials will act as a bridge for teachers who are newer or less confident at using digital tools and materials and help them provide engaging and motivating language learning experiences for their students.
This ebook was designed with English language teachers in mind but should have some value for any teacher who is interested in developing their students’ digital literacy and critical thinking skills.
The book contains a wide range of suggested activities for both the creation and exploitation of infographics in the classroom.
It also helps teachers with tips and advice on how to plan and create infographics and suggestions for which tools to use to produce different types of infographic.
Exploiting Infographics follows on from 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy, which is a collection of lesson plans based around infographics, and looks in more depth at the genre and how infographics can be used as both sources of information and as creative learning tasks for students.
The tasks that accompany the infographics are intended to encourage students to think more critically about the information they are exposed to and to question the sources of information they find whilst browsing the internet.
Exploiting Infographics should help teachers to start creating their own tasks activities and lesson plans for students and to integrate infographics in a way that will enhance students’ critical thinking, digital literacy, language and communication skills.
This e-booklet contains a collection of ten lesson plans to help you develop students' digital literacies and critical thinking skills. Based around authentic infographics the lessons start by using discussion to help students access what they already know about the topics and then move on to comprehension and a range of tasks that help students to explore the validity and authenticity of the information they find. They finish with structured research and presentation tasks that encourage students to work collaboratively and share what they have learned.
The lessons progress through a range of tasks that engage student’s interest, encourage them to:
-: interact and share what they know
-: develop their abilities to extract information from text and graphics
-: view information critically
-: check the credibility and validity of information
-: develop online research skills
-: use web based tools to create surveys and data visualisations
The lessons cover a range of topics including:
-: Advertising and how it influences us
-: Body language and how to understand it
-: Introverts and extroverts and how they differ
-: Emotional intelligence and how it impacts on our relationships
-: Facts about hair
-: Happiness and what effects it
-: Developing study skills
-: The environment and waste caused by clothes manufacturing
-: Daily habits of the world's wealthiest people
-: The history of marriage and weddings
Each lesson includes:
-: A step by step teachers guide with advice and answer key
-: Worksheets to print for students
This book was the winner of the 2016 British Council Innovations Award (ELTon) for Innovations in Teacher Resources
Digital Video is a 400 page multimedia manual for language teachers to help them build activities, courses and engaging materials for their students. From exploiting mobile apps on handheld devices to building video into blended and task based learning, Digital Video covers it all.
With detailed technical support through a range of 26 tutorial videos, illustrated step-by-step guides and more than forty lesson examples and over 300 images, teachers can use this manual to build their confidence and find some of the best free video applications and resources online.
Whether you are a novice teacher or an experienced trainer looking to develop your tech skills, this manual can help you with plain English explanations and practical online and face to face classroom suggestions.
This is a PDF ebook with links to video tutorials.
This book is a collection of fluency activities that encourage students to think creatively and which help to build their ability to empathise with others.
Each short lesson is based around a beautiful image, starts with a vocabulary building activity and has a set of questions designed to make students think more deeply about the story behind the image and encourage their curiosity and imagination.
The lessons also include creative activities that can be used for writing or speaking practice. These include role-plays, simulations and creative writing tasks.
This is an example presentation from one of the ten units: http://bit.ly/forest-demo
Each lesson also ends with some form of follow up research task that encourages students to find out more about the images and topics that the activities deal with.
These short lessons can be used in full to form the basis of a fluency lesson or they can be used in part as warmers or fillers to get students speaking and thinking in English.
Each lesson also includes a digital presentation that can either be shared using a projector or students can access the materials on their mobile devices using a short link or QR code.
The QR codes can be accessed through the teachers’ presentation.
This e-booklet contains a collection of ten lesson plans to help you develop students' digital literacies and critical thinking skills. Based around authentic infographics the lessons start by using discussion to help students access what they already know about the topics and then move on to comprehension and a range of tasks that help students to explore the validity and authenticity of the information they find. They finish with structured research and presentation tasks that encourage students to work collaboratively and share what they have learned.
The aims of the lessons are to:
-: develop student's digital literacies
-: help them to think more critically about online information
-: develop their ability discuss and develop ideas around information and understand how it applies to their own lives.
The lessons progress through a range of tasks that engage student’s interest, encourage them to:
-: interact and share what they know
-: develop their abilities to extract information from text and graphics
-: view information critically
-: check the credibility and validity of information
-: develop online research skills
-: use web based tools to create surveys and data visualisations
The lessons cover a range of topics including:
-: Advertising and how it influences us
-: Body language and how to understand it
-: Introverts and extroverts and how they differ
-: Emotional intelligence and how it impacts on our relationships
-: Facts about hair
-: Happiness and what effects it
-: Developing study skills
-: The environment and waste caused by clothes manufacturing
-: Daily habits of the world's wealthiest people
-: The history of marriage and weddings
Each lesson includes:
-: A step by step teachers guide with advice and answer key
-: Worksheets to print for students
Techniques, Exercise and Activities for the Creative Language Classroom
This book is for any language teacher who is interested in developing their own and their students’ creative skills while teaching languages.
The book is in two sections.
-: The first part looks at a range of teaching techniques that you can use in any lesson to help develop your students’ creativity. It also includes some suggestions and easy exercises for applying these in the classroom.
-: The second part is a collection of 30 structured activities. These include step by step instructions as well as example digital materials that you can use in the classroom.
The example materials have been designed so that you can use them on any digital device with an internet connection.
Example digital presentation: Interview Images
I hope you and your students will find this book an enjoyable and useful accompaniment for your everyday teaching.
This book has been designed to act as a practical resource that should help you to get a better understanding of the kinds of AI tools that are available and how to use them in the English language classroom.
The book does this through a series of chapters focusing on tools for teachers, tools for students and a collection of background reading.
All of the tools and reading texts in this book have tasks to accompany them that will help you orientate yourself to the materials and think more deeply and actively about how they can be used.
These tasks have been adapted from the online course version of the book, in which participants can share opinions, reflections and materials with each other. I would encourage you to do the same even if you aren’t part of the course.
Keep a journal and make notes as you work through the book and try the tasks.
Find another colleague you can talk to about the tasks and the example plans
Seek out opportunities to interact with and discuss what you are learning with other teachers and with your students.
Use what you are learning to run formal or informal development sessions for other teachers.
The book also includes a link to download a free copy of The Digital Toolbox.
The Digital Toolbox
The Digital Toolbox is regularly updated, and should help to keep you up to date with new developments and apps that are becoming available.
I hope you enjoy the book.