Category Archives: Planning

Teacher Time Management Strategies in the Classroom

Photo taken from: Big Stock Photo

One of the frequent challenges for teachers, even ones with experience is how to manage time in the classroom. One may well ask, why time management is so important. Effective time management is crucial to provide quality education. In fact, teachers don’t really have enough time to teach considering the breaks, learner attention span (which is typically half an hour or less); moving between classrooms for various activities and downtime between lessons and activities (Mehta, 2019).  Continue reading

POST COMMENT 0

Navigating Management and Administrative Roles in ELT

Administrative roles are important in the overall management, functioning, and strategic direction of educational institutions. These roles can encompass a wide range of responsibilities that may involve overseeing operations, implementing policies, or managing resources to ensure the overall success of the educational programs and institutions.

Whether you are an educator seeking to broaden your impact on a larger scale, drawn to leadership and mentorship for educators, or motivated for professional growth, embarking on the path from educator to administrator is a journey that demands both ambition and strategic navigation.

In this unique blog series, we explore the pursuit of administrative roles in the field of English Language Training (ELT). TESL Ontario collaborated with six (6) hiring managers representing various sectors of the Ontario ELT landscape, who stand ready to share their experience, advice, and wisdom along this transitional journey. This first installment of the series is designed to introduce you to the available roles and potential pathways into administration.

Continue reading
POST COMMENT 0

Task-Based Language Teaching

Image taken from: Big Stock Photo

In my last blog, I wrote about the educational movements and how they have encouraged new methods of viewing teaching and learning. They have also made room for new forms of content delivery to be developed. One of the more recent developments in content delivery, which is becoming popular in language teaching, is Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), or “learning by doing.” Learning by doing can be defined as performing an action, i.e. enactment; in comparison, other ways of learning something are learning by viewing or learning by listening (Steffens et al., 2015). There is a general assumption that learning by doing creates better memories of an event or action, and so styles like TBLT are becoming more popular.  

Continue reading
POST COMMENT 2

Quick Tips for Teaching Literacy – Part Three of Three

Colourful Letter Tiles
Photo by Surendran MP on Unsplash

Guest Contributor: Zainab Almutawali

In Part One and Part Two of this series I’ve talked about issues that may affect attendance for literacy learners, as well as some best practices I’ve picked up over the years.  In this post, I’ll pass along some more effective teaching practices for literacy learners and tips on PBLA.

Continue reading

POST COMMENT 1

#CDNELTCHAT: JOIN THE CHAT ON TUESDAY!

If you’re a Twitter user, join the next #CdnELTchat on Tuesday, December 8 with Tanya Cowie co-moderating a chat on intersectionality.   Below is a recap of the November 10 chat written by #CdnELTchat moderator Jennifer Chow.

Continue reading

POST COMMENT 0

Online Teaching Reflections

Fast forward and rewind symbols on either side of zen stone, pause reflect and rewind
Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

Some of my primary concerns about this current online world of teaching are the creation of community and how to effectively engage learners.

Continue reading

POST COMMENT 2

Adventures in Summer School

Retro television with technical difficulties warning , 3D rendering
Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

Like many of my colleagues, I was teaching online this summer using Zoom. My adult ESL class (CLB 4) had about 14 regular students. By the end, we had become quite close and it was sad to see them go. Along the way we had a few adventures related to online learning that I’d like to share with you.

Continue reading

POST COMMENT 3

Zooming your Docs

Since late March, many of our courses have been moved online, and synchronous sessions through Zoom have become a new part of our teaching lives. While testing various features offered by Zoom, I have realized that I really miss my classroom whiteboard, which was used for writing the agenda, teaching notes, upcoming coursework, classroom instructions, and conducting student interactive writing, editing, and speaking activities.

Although Zoom has a Whiteboard feature, I find it limiting, so I have replaced it with Google Docs. I have found this practice quite sustainable and a user-friendly approach to an online whiteboard. Here is how and why I combine Zoom and Google Docs.

  1. Sharing: I have created a Google Doc, named it “Whiteboard” and shared it with my students by placing its link on my Learning Management System (LMS). In every class, my students can click on the same link and find their class notes there.
  2. Organizing: I have organized my notes on the Google Doc by creating a table of contents, and the table of contents is organized by date of the class, list of planned activities, and by placing the newest notes at the top.  
  3. Navigation: This way of content organization through a table of contents makes navigation absolutely efficient for both students and instructors.
  4. Agenda: My table of contents also plays the role of an agenda. As an instructor, I place my list of planned activities on the Doc right before the class starts just like when I used to step into my physical classroom welcoming early arrivers and writing my agenda. Now, my table of contents displays my agenda.
  5. Class Notes: Once the class starts on Zoom, and after I greet my students for a few minutes, I start teaching by sharing my screen and displaying my Google Doc “Whiteboard”. Since my list of activities has already been shared, I ask students to locate a certain activity. When I have my students’ attention on that activity, I can add more teaching notes to it, just as we used to utilize our whiteboards/ blackboards and share information.
  6. Interaction: Leading a more sedentary lifestyle at this time, it is now more important than ever to create an interactive learning environment for our students, who might be staring at screens for long hours every day. Therefore, for every assignment, I have a short teaching moment, and then ask my students to work on the activity.
  7. Watching: In the case of showing a video, I place the video link right in front of the planned activity, which has two benefits: It is quick for the instructor to locate the video link and play it right there, and it is already shared with my students for their own future reference.
  8. Reading: The same goes for sharing an article and having students read it. With Zoom’s Breakout Room feature, it is easy to place students in different groups to read and speak about an article. I can assign certain paragraphs to each group, or I can assign a different article to every group. Having all the links shared on one page for the whole semester makes navigating content a highly efficient practice. A little side note: I also use the Zoom’s chat box or the broadcast feature to share a quick spontaneous link or a message when conducting breakout rooms.
  9. Writing: In terms of writing, I can follow the same practice of assigning a page to a breakout room group, where students can write and edit their work. I am writing a whole blog post on writing and editing, coming up soon. 
  10.  Announcements: Finally, I share reminders, coursework due dates, and announcements right at the top of every class’s list of activities, which makes it easy for students to plan upcoming activities and assignments.

This combination of Zoom sessions with a consistent Google Doc link has been a well-received practice with my students. By placing your whole class on a Google Doc, teaching, learning, note sharing, and storing have become sustainable, organized, and efficient. I highly recommend it to all the educators out there who are trying to make their lives and their students’ lives easier, stay efficient, and make learning more accessible.

 

POST COMMENT 2

The Rewards of Team Teaching

Mandeep Somal and teaching partner Emily Imbrogno
Photo credit: Mandeep Somal

It’s the end of day and I have just finished writing an email update to my teaching partner about what students did in class. I have a sense of relief that I made it through the day, while at the same time I’m glad about what we have accomplished. I’m also delighted that I have someone to share my experiences with who knows the students, the content, and the design of the class. Team teaching works for me!

Continue reading
POST COMMENT 8