Speaking Outside the Grammar Box

We are all familiar with the Grammar Box in course books. Many teachers and students find themselves trapped inside of it. Students, left packed away, crave practical experience, learning by speaking and developing continuity and flow through realistic conversation as opposed to concentrating on strict rules and the limited usefulness of stock sentences without context. The new learner is eager to not only think outside the box, but to speak outside of it too. Pragmatic approaches to utilizing conversation to challenge and develop learner's fluency will be demonstrated.

Vocabulary for adults

No, it's not an 18+ talk, just a catchy title to lure you into speaking about teaching vocabulary to adult learners.
We're going to have a look at vocabulary at different levels (starting with beginner): what to teach, how, and when. I don't have the right answers, but will share my favourite techniques and tools, and ask about yours too. There will be a practical part as well, so come with ideas, lexical enthusiasm and be ready to turn your cameras on.

Motivating Teens to Speak Out

Teenagers are often considered to be a challenging age group to teach, well, not only to teach but to deal with. However, our classroom is this safe environment where we can create conditions for teenagers to thrive. How to make sure teenagers feel confident enough to speak up? How to motivate them to express their opinions? In this workshop I am going to share my experience of organizing an extra-curricular TED Ed Club for teenagers where each of their voices is heard. I am going to share tips on how to motivate teenagers to speak English discussing the topics, which are close to their hearts. What makes the hearts of our teenage students beat faster? Join the workshop and let us discuss.

Helping Students Find Their Own Momentum


Discipline? Motivation? Inspiration? What is it that a student truly needs to properly assess and integrate a lesson? Stimulating a child's mind can be a tricky process and you need the right tools to do so. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is one of them. Haven't tried it before? The results will amaze you!

Practice and memorisation

Mike's workshop will look at ways we can use games to help students practice new language in order to make new grammar structures and vocabulary more memorable.

It's so important that we reuse and recycle language in the classroom, but we want to include variety in how we practice to ensure that students don't grow tired of seeing the same revision activities again and again. This workshop will give you some practical new ideas that you can use with your students

How to turn coursebook exercises into games and interactive activities

As our students grow older playtime is reduced to make more time for lessons and coursebook exercises. But most students dislike the tasks that are used throughout most coursebooks.
So, how can we make our coursebooks more appealing to our students? In my workshop I'm going to show how to turn coursebook exercises into games and interactive activities. We'll explore what type of games are suitable for different types of exercises. By the end of the workshop you'll learn how to choose games and interactive activities without breaking teaching principles.

The use of multi-sensory method to enhance early literacy as a ground for better future academic achievement

Nowadays early literacy is proved to play a key role in enabling the early learning experiences and linked with future academic results, graduation rates and general productivity.
Multisensory teaching gives kids lot's of opportunities to take information and make connections. It is a perfect way for early learners ,who by design, thrive when they can touch and manipulate learning materials.
In our workshop we will look at effective multisensory strategies for teaching such components of early literacy as phonological and print awareness, manipulative skills that will serve the ground for developing future emergent readers and writers.

Adapting and designing materials for the virtual classroom

The sudden move to remote teaching and learning has forced many of us to rethink they way we plan, deliver and manage learning. Many of us are being forced to rethink the techniques and practices that have become second nature to use and the bedrock of course materials on which so many teachers are dependent has suddenly shifted. How many of us use course books and materials that were designed for the virtual classroom? Who has had training in computer-based instructional design? The challenges of maintaining quality teaching across all four language skills whilst working in a virtual classroom environment are considerable and necessitate a different approach to materials design. In this webinar I will be sharing some of the insights I've gathered and materials I've developed from more than 20 years of working in digital learning environments

What activities can we digitalize?

Nowadays almost all teachers have to work online. All activities we used to do in class now look either slightly or completely different. Digitalizing our classrooms is a new must of today, so let's talk about what resources we can use to adapt good old exercises so that they can fit into this brand new world.