Planning and designing worksheets are necessary skills that teachers need to achieve best practice in the classroom. Of course, there are times when we end up hastily throwing together a hand-out or using a less than appropriate one from the Internet. However, we should create our own material because we are the ones who know our students the best. Further, a well-thought-out worksheet isn’t just something to give the students; for our literacy learners, it is an essential tool for skill-building, skill-using, and for acquiring learning strategies. Here are some tips for planning and creating worksheets for literacy students.
Category Archives: Workplace Materials
Good Habits for Managing Learning Material

Introduction
Over the past months, thousands of language instructors across Canada have been unwittingly or intentionally taking on instructional developer responsibilities. They have been cobbling together, rearranging, and refining digital resources and activities from various sources to meet the needs of their students. Many instructors have been generating original learning resources to fill in gaps that appear while teaching online.
Usually, learning materials are prepared ‘on-the-fly’ to anticipate or adapt to challenges that arise from our classroom lessons. What happens to these documents? Often, they are forgotten on a computer drive and discovered on a slow day when you are considering which files to remove to free up hard drive space. These files are hastily named, filed, and saved, so they are lost. Sometimes, it is too much trouble to save and properly file a document that is created just before your online class is about to start. If you are currently teaching online, I am sure you will agree with this! Continue reading
Summary of the #teslONchat on Workplace English with Patrick Chan
Post by: Patrick Chan and Vanessa Nino
On March 26, 2021 we discussed Workplace English on Twitter. The guest moderator of the evening was Patrick Chan (@patchantweets). Patrick Chan currently serves as the Social Content Committee Chair for TESL Ontario. He is also Technological Lead in TESL Ontario’s Conference Committee and the current president of TESL Ottawa. In addition to these roles, he is a LINC instructor in Ottawa. Along with his Ontario Certified English Language Teacher (OCELT) designation, he is an Ontario Certified Teacher. He has taught Workplace English for many years.
Continue readingSummary of the #ELTResources discussion with Diane Ramanathan

On November 20, 2020 we gathered on twitter to discuss English Language Teaching resources with Diane Ramanathan. Diane is the Tutela outreach coordinator as well as a @LINCHomeStudy instructor and TESL professor at @AlgonquinCollege. In her free time she can be seen in Ottawa paddling up the Rideau with a merry band of friends. You can connect with Diane via Twitter (@ram_diane).
Continue readingEXTENSIVE READING RESOURCES

Since Extensive Reading (ER) is a crucial part of language learning, I have compiled some important ER resources to help you promote ER in your classroom. ER can build learners’ confidence, enjoyment and autonomy.
If you missed my first blog post, The Role of Extensive Reading in Language Learning, please read it when you get a chance so that the resources below will be most helpful.
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