Keep Calm and Teach English

This Advent Calendar is based on a lesson plan by Arjana Blazic, made for the Collaborative Teaching and Learning MOOC in the European Schoolnet Academy. The specific calendar is made purely for fun. There is something new behind each door, so make sure you come back everyday! You can make your own in Tuerchen.com , free and without registration. It can be easily embedded in eTwinning projects as well.

Last year's eTwinning project: "Most Wanted: A detective tour over Europe" was awarded with the European Quality Label, which is a second mark of success (after the National Label) meaning that it was proposed by at least one National Support Service after screening. A very big thank you to Kristell Lansonneur, Anna Eisler, Vanda Ramalho, Zuzana Korineková and Loredana Popa for our excellent collaboration. Special credits must go to Kristell in particular for coming up with this original idea of having mascots travelling from country to country looking for stolen artifacts, and for designing the whole project. My students and I had a wonderful time and learned a lot about our partner countries.

Another interesting MOOC was organised by the European Schoolnet Academy . The course focused on Collaborative teaching and learning. Being able to collaborate effectively is a valuable 21st-century skill, yet teaching about or through collaboration remains rare in schools because of a lack of understanding of what real collaboration in an educational setting means, and because existing policy conditions do not always enable it to flourish. This introductory course provided insights into: What is collaborative learning? How can I carry it out effectively in my classroom? What tools can I use to assess collaborative learning? How can I collaborate with fellow teachers to facilitate collaborative learning? The diary includes some inspiring diaries from fellow teachers attending the course as well as a collection of ideas for collaborative activities, digital tools that can be used in collaborative teaching and lesson plans. Collaborative teaching and learning Cour...

In Unit 1 of our coursebook Think Teen 1st Grade, we read and discussed about our schools, our ideal schools as well as unique schools from around the world, such as "Schools of the air" in Australia.  photo by  422737 The following video seems like a good way to wrap up our unit by looking at schools in Britain. It  is suitable for older children or young teens at an A2+ level.

Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, "They don't pay me to like the kids." Her response: "Kids don't learn from people they don't like.'" She calls to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level. I am posting this incredible talk in TED  as a reminder of what our most important role is.

Summarising involves taking the main ideas from a piece of text and rewriting them in your own words.   The ability to summarise a text is an important reading and studying skill as it can show that you have really understood the text and that you have identified its main points and ideas. It is also an essential writing skill as it requires the presentation of these ideas in your own words. The following Graphic Organiser can help your students when working with short stories or narratives. Summarising Graphic Organiser