Giving kids a head start with pre-teaching

We like to think of education as the road to equality. It should be that one place where background doesn't matter and equal chances abound. But that's not entirely true, is it? Weaker learners start every lesson behind the rest of the class. Where everyone else is at the starting line, they start meters behind. …

Science in the EFL classroom: an experiment worth trying!

Children love to explore!  Sometimes, their exploration seems random, like tinkering around.  Other times, children explore in a more organized, or scientific, fashion.  As teachers, we can combine children's love of exploration with language by teaching using the Content and Language Ingrated Learning approach, otherwise known as CLIL. In this video, you can see a …

Policy planning part 3: a plan of action

Now that you've created a complete picture of the language curriculum, it's time to make a list of "Points of Action" for each section of the language policy.  Points of Action are things that need to be done, in order to realize the ideal English program.  These actions may be big or small, as long as …

EFL in the big picture: policy planning

In previous blog entries, I've looked at various aspects of planning English lessons.  In terms of long-term planning for instance for the coming half a year or so, I've written about writing semi-annual plans based on lines of language development. In terms of shorter-term planning, for instance per theme and per lesson, I've looked at …

Teaching from the top-down: flipping Bloom’s taxonomy

How many of us have learned about Bloom's taxonomy, back in the days we went to college?  Very likely, one learned to start teaching at the base: knowledge and comprehension, before moving on to the higher levels of application and analysis.  And maybe, just maybe the children would be clever enough to move on to …

Update: Can-do descriptors of language development

One of the questions I often wrestled with as a starting teacher was how to build a logical and developmentally sound curriculum.  I've written a blog about it before, but return to this topic as I have since found new descriptors for language development that I thought would be interesting to share. One set of new …

An alternative to the textbook

I'm an addict.  I cannot help it, and I'm not sorry about it either.  I can never just walk past a children's book store.  I always have to go in.  And I never leave empty-handed.  There are just too many good books in the world, and I just have to share these with "my kids". …

Multiple Intelligences and ESL lesson planning

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I was given an article to read by my art teacher.  It had been written by a man named Howard Gardner.  It was a difficult read, including all sorts of concepts I'd never heard of before: logical-mathematical intelligence, visual-spatial intelligence, and other such concepts.  After a few reads, …

ESL and the long-term plan

Twice a year, I sit down to write out a semi-annual plan for my teaching.  My table is strewn with all sorts of documents: summaries of the results from the latest round of assessments, lists of children per class, the books I use for each class, and copies of the old semi-annual planning.  A cup …

The cardboard curriculum

On the very first day with my new ESL kindergarten class, we had 9 tables, 9 chairs, and a cardboard box.  Not just any old box, mind you, but a refrigerator box.  A child or two could easily fit inside.  I put the box in the middle of the circle, and the children stared, wondering. …

What to teach? Making a plan of action

One of the first problems I came across as a budding early ESL teacher was the question: what do I teach? Of course, I needed to teach them numbers, colors, food, animals, and classroom vocabulary, but - what exactly did these children need to know? What was going to be the curriculum? I decided that …