I have been writing about teaching (very) young learners for a while now, but I also work with teenagers and teach English with a focus on sustainable developmental goals. So after attending the APAC conference in Barcelona, I thought of starting to write about it here as well.
In this blog post, I'd like to share some takeaways from Katherine Bilsborough's talk on creating print and digital materials.
In her talk, Katherine emphasised the importance of incorporating a diverse range of activities when creating teaching materials. These activities should fall under three categories: heads up, which includes activities that require students to pay attention to the teacher or the screen; heads down, which includes exercises or reading materials that require students to engage on their own; and heads together, which involves students working in pairs/groups and talking to their classmates. This provides an opportunity to study, engage, and activate what students are learning.
During a discussion on student engagement, Katherine explained that giving students a choice increases their engagement. For instance, teachers could assign a homework task as either a writing or a speaking activity. One advantage of choosing speaking is that students may record their text multiple times to improve the quality of their replies. Katherine recommended using Vocaroo for recording audio, as it is very user-friendly.
Other useful online tools mentioned in the talk:
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