Video training of very young learners (kindergarten English) teaching techniques

by David | Games, Learning, Songs, Training, Video

Its hard to find really good training videos for teachers of very young learners. Here are a few taken from the professional development modules of the National Geographic series of books ‘Welcome to Our World’. Those books are designed for teaching...

Adapting activities and games for the very young learner classroom

by David | Books, Games, Learning

One of the useful skills you can learn as a teacher is the art of adaptation. I still get surprised at the interesting ways I see that others have creatively adapted activities to use in the classroom in order to make them far more powerful, relevant to a particular...

One of the biggest barriers to my student’s learning is… me

by David | Learning

  All the time, in my classes, I seem to get reminders that one of the biggest barriers to my student’s learning is me. Mostly, this comes in the term of what I believe the students are capable of, or might work, or not. My self-censoring, which causes to...

Things I wish I knew before I started teaching

by David | Learning

Many people think that because they can speak English, it should be easy to teach it. It’s not. Others think that teaching English is an unskilled position. Wrong, again. My English language centre is looking to hire new teachers. The problem is, they...

Professional development courses from the British Council

by David | Learning

Here’s something that might be of interest if you want to upgrade your teaching skills. The British Council offer a suite of professional development units on their website. Topics cover the gamut of English language teaching, everything from puppets to...

Review of Activities for Very Young Learners by Herbert Puchta and Karen Elliott

by David | Books, Learning

Today I want to review Activities for Very Young Learners by Herbert Puchta and Karen Elliott. Herbert Puchta is considered an authority in teaching Young Learners and Very Young Learners, and he’s the author of several popular English courses. The book itself...