Keep Calm and Teach English

In the EFL classroom, sparking curiosity and encouraging students to think critically can be challenging. One technique that is gaining popularity for its ability to promote deeper thinking and engagement is “See, Think, Wonder.” This thinking routine, developed by Project Zero at Harvard University, is a simple yet powerful way to help students observe, reflect, and question the world around them.  What is "See, Think, Wonder"? "See, Think, Wonder" is a thinking routine designed to help learners make careful observations and think more deeply about what they see. It’s broken down into three steps: See:  Students describe what they see in a specific image, object, or scene without making assumptions or drawing conclusions. This step is all about observation and noticing details. Think:  Students share what they think about what they have observed. Here, they start making interpretations and forming ideas based on what they see. Wonder:  Students ask questions about...

A Thinglink by Kornelia Lohynova  

Having an organised and reader-friendly whiteboard is vital when you are working with good, old-fashioned whiteboards. Whiteboard organisation can be quite challenging though for teachers who, like me, struggle to keep things under control in classroom environments that are increasingly getting more restless and more difficult to handle (for reasons we, in Greek State Schools, are all aware of ). When I attended the RSA Certificate in TEFL (now CELTA) 25 years ago in International House Hastings, we were given some basic guidelines for keeping our whiteboard, or should I say blackboard, neat. I had forgotten all about them, when I came across the same basic advice, together with some new tips in  http://eltplanning.com/ . As a way to keep them in mind I made a simple outline, which I hope you will find helpful. Set the goals of the lesson at the beginning and keep them up untill the end. Make sure everything you write is big enough and clear enough even for the ones ...

Every teacher knows the struggle of how to capture the students' interest at the beginning of a lesson. Engaging them into their own learning can prove to be even more difficult. One way is to use a KWL chart. In my lesson about Sherlock Holmes I used such a chart as a pre-reading activity. A KWL chart is a graphical organizer designed to help in learning. The letters KWL are an acronym, for what students already K now, what they  W ant to know, and what they ultimately L earn in the course of the lesson. A KWL chart consists of three columns and it is very simple to design and use. However it is a very powerful tool as it motivates and engages students from the very start. First, a KWL chart activates students' prior knowledge of the topic to be studied. Next, it sets a purpose for the lesson: students are able to add their own input to the topic by contemplating what they actually want to know. Using a KWL chart allows students to expand their ideas beyond the text us...