ELTWeekly Volume 8

Re-Energize Your Classroom in the New Year – Edutopia

Post author:Tarun Patel
Post published:January 5, 2016
Post category:ELT Articles and Research Papers ELT Newsletter ELTWeekly ELTWeekly Volume 8 Volume 8 Issue 1
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[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 1 | January 4, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]

The New Year is a wonderful time to start trying some new things. You’ve spent a good amount of time with your students and feel more comfortable exploring new strategies and practices that are more tailored to their learning needs. I want to share some great ideas that you can use to change things up for the second part of the year — and that can also help beat the winter blues.

Student Interest Project

A great way to bring energy back into a classroom is to let students have more say in what’s going on in the class. One way to do that is by giving them an opportunity to research a topic that interests them. This doesn’t have to be a very long process, but it could turn into something much larger if you want. Just giving students the time to look up things of interest and share out with the class is a great way to develop their research and speaking skills. If you want to go the extra yard, (more…)

Top 10 Time Fillers For Your Classroom – BusyTeacher

Post author:Tarun Patel
Post published:January 5, 2016
Post category:ELT Articles and Research Papers ELT Newsletter ELTWeekly ELTWeekly Volume 8 Volume 8 Issue 1
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[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 1 | January 4, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]

Try as you might, careful as you are with your planning, sometimes what you plan to cover in class does not work with the clock.

When you are ready for the bell but the bell is not quite ready for you, try one of the following time fillers to keep your class busy until it is time to dismiss.

Try These Top 10 Time Fillers With Your Class!

Twenty Questions

Do you remember car trips as a child playing twenty questions in the back seat? Youthink of a person or object and your siblings have twenty opportunities to ask yes/no questions to determine what object you are thinking of. This is an easy and short activity for you to do with your ESL class when you have a few minutes to spare. (more…)

Pedagogical reasoning skills – Cambridge ELT Blog

Post author:Tarun Patel
Post published:January 5, 2016
Post category:ELT Articles and Research Papers ELT Newsletter ELTWeekly ELTWeekly Volume 8 Volume 8 Issue 1
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[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 1 | January 4, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]

An important component of current conceptualizations of Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE) is a focus on teacher cognition. This encompasses the mental lives of teachers, how these are formed, what they consist of, and how teachers’ beliefs, thoughts, and thinking processes shape their understanding of teaching and their classroom practices. Borg (2006) comments:

A key factor driving the increase in research in teacher cognition, not just in language education, but in education more generally, has been the recognition that teachers are active, thinking decision-makers who play a central role in shaping classroom event. Coupled with insights from the field of psychology which have shown how knowledge and beliefs exert a strong influence on teacher action, this recognition has suggested that understanding teacher cognition is central to the process of understanding teaching. (p. 1)

An interest in teacher cognition entered SLTE from the field of general education, and brought with it a similar focus on teacher decision making, on teachers’ theories of teaching, teachers’ representations of subject matter, and the problem-solving and improvisational skills employed by teachers with different levels of teaching experience during teaching. Constructs such as teachers’ practical knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge, and personal theories of teaching are now established components of our understanding of teacher cognition (Golombek 2009). (more…)