Steve's ELT Blog

From June 7th to June 18, I had the privilege of co-hosting several new and potential teachers for the purpose of training them up. There were a total of 3 sessions per day with one of them being a practical application 45 minute session. Participants were learned and applied several techniques both unique to language teaching as well as for other subjects such as mathematics, biology, and chemistry. During the first week, topics included general classroom management skills like classroom discipline, giving instructions, and interaction patterns as well as a session of how to use inquiry-based learning in teaching. During the second week, another teacher trainer, Svitlana Bulkina, joined us to deliver trainings mainly dealing with lesson planning and the importance of learner-centeredness in teaching. Participants had more practice as several actually had to teach a lesson or portion of a lesson in front of other participants were they received constructive criticism on what they did w...

How do we start a new activity with our students? Well, clearly one of the important aspects to consider is about giving directions. Our directions are what tell the learners what we need to do for the next task and can help bring some sense of logic to the lesson being taught. Take for example, if I just threw several handouts at you, would you know which ones to do or how to do them? Probably not, but if you did you'd likely spend lots of time trying to sort through them first, or give up on them at some point. This is why we, as teachers, should take our directions very seriously. Avoid situations like these: In fact, one of the biggest takeaways for me from the sessions that I helped co-host with Svitlana Bulkina was something that she said in the second week. She pointed out that she has a 7-word limit for giving directions to an activity. While, as a teacher, I think I've been quite good at giving directions, this gave me something to consider and takeaway for my own teac...