My considerations on lesson planning on a daily basis.
Category Archives: practical aspects of teaching
Freelancing vs working for a school
As some of you may know, I recently went from self-employed to working for a private language school. It was a welcome change as I was getting really tired of working long hours for peanuts, and after a few month I can still say that I’m happy with my decision. In case someone else is …
My own activity book
I read Marc’s blog post on a very interesting first day activity book. In the comments section, Chris suggested every teacher should create a personal collection of first day activities. From this discussion, I realised I already do that, so I thought I might share my experience here.
Mindfulness?
Stemming from the news of a school apparently substituting punishment with Mindfulness practices, a range of articles and commentaries have been written in the past few days on the effectiveness of so-called ‘Mindfulness’ for teachers and students. Since I have been growing fond of Buddhism in the last few months, and I have read more than one book on the topic, I would like to add my two cents.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!
With the new school year come many changes in my life. Here’s just a few.
Primary school nightmare
I’m writing this on a sweltering day here in Italy, so I apologise in advance if any of this is going to sound a bit harsh. I also want to point out that most of the colleagues I met during the experience I am going to describe were great teachers and wonderful colleagues, to whom …
A lesson on Brexit?
Read why you should definitely try this lesson with your students, especially after Brexit.
Materials-light teaching
I briefly mentioned on this post how I love activities which are materials-light and conversation-driven. I might not have acknowledged it fully, but I’m starting to suspect Dogme has seriously influenced my teaching ????. Anyway, last Sunday I tried to follow #AusELT chat on teaching materials-light, and even though I missed the time and couldn’t join the conversation, it still …
'Something I': a speaking activity
Today I would like to share with you an activity I love to do in both 1:1 and group classes. I love it because it has three very special ingredients that few activities have all combined: it’s flexible, it can be adapted to almost any level and any class; it’s fun, so far all my …
Considerations after one year of courses without a textbook
As I wrote at the beginning of this school year, we decided to try to experiment some courses without a textbook. The idea behind this was to give maximum flexibility and adaptability to the teacher and the course, so that it could be tailor-made for our very small groups. The results were not as positive …
Continue reading “Considerations after one year of courses without a textbook”