When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! And the world of education has leapt right into lemonade making the move to teaching online.
With Covid-19 rearing its ugly head, teachers and Academic Managers worldwide have had to completely switch their teaching around to move to digital. The International House community of teachers and Academic Managers have been demonstrating their adaptability and endless commitment by ensuring that the same high-quality teaching we've always offered is now happening online.
Most of our teachers are using the digital platform Zoom which allows them to replicate activities from the face-to-face classroom online. With this video conferencing tool you can deliver group online classes, conduct pair and group work in “breakout rooms” share your screen as a teacher, arrange events for up to 100 participants and lots more. What is great about this platform is that you can see and hear your students very well.
Teachers in the International House community have also recommended some of the teaching resources and materials they are currently using and we thought it could be useful to share them with you.
We have selected 11 for you:
1. Distance teaching and Learning Hub
Macmillan has set up a special distance learning section of their website. They have released a range of resources free of charge, including some how-to videos and four webinars happening over the next two weeks.
https://www.macmillanenglish.com/distance-teaching-and-learning-hub/home
2. The Techie Teacher
This is not a website which is specifically designed to teach languages but it has some great student instructions for Zoom, that can be downloaded, and also has lots of other ideas for using technology in class.
https://www.thetechieteacher.net/
3. One-stop-English
You can find lots of articles with ideas for teaching online, materials written and edited by an expert team of teachers and ELT professionals. Until the end of June 2020, all their resources are free to access.
4. Online Professional Development Resources
Check out National Geographic's offer of free e-books about teaching online, as well as online webinars.
https://eltngl.com/assets/html/digitalresources/
5. The EduBlogger
This blog by Kathleen Morris is really interesting and will help you find more resources for teaching online during school closures.
https://www.theedublogger.com/teaching-online-school-closures/
6. Cambridge English Teacher Support Pack
Cambridge English has prepared a teacher support pack to help teachers with exam preparation, digital resources and general English teaching materials.
https://view.pagetiger.com/cambridge-english-teacher-support-pack
7. CUP online seminar - Picture perfect: bringing the young learner classroom to life!
Claire Medwell gives plenty of ideas for exploiting visuals in the YL classroom. She was also one of the speakers at the International House AMT conference in 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59JNKDGuIto&feature=youtu.be
8. Liveworksheets
Liveworksheets allows you to transform your traditional printable worksheets (doc, pdf, jpg etc.) into interactive online exercises with self-correction, called "interactive worksheets". As well as creating your own, there is also a database of ready-made worksheets.
https://www.liveworksheets.com/
9. Make Belief Comix
This is more a fun element to add to your digital classes. Students can create a comic strip choosing characters, adding speech bubbles etc. Could be done in a breakout room if using the platform Zoom for lessons for example and then shared via email or screenshot.
https://www.makebeliefscomix.com/
10. Digital escape room!
Have you ever thought about organising an escape room with your classes? Now you can organise a digital escape room – find out how with these step-by-step instructions:
11. English Language Teaching from Oxford University Press
Online resources and activities to help teachers, parents and students get the most out of learning at home.