On October 5, 1994, the first World Teachers' Day was held after an initiative of the Special Intergovernmental Conference on the Status of Teachers signed by representatives of UNESCO and International Labour Organization. This event has been organized on the same date each year since then.

The United Nations´(UN) World Teachers´Day celebrates the role teachers play in providiing quality education at all levels. This enables children and adults of all ages to learn to take part in and contribute to their local community and global society. International organizations such as TESOL and Education International (EI) organize international, national and local events.

 

In some areas posters are displayed and pupils and ex-pupils are encouraged to send e-cards or letters of appreciation to teachers who made a special or memorable contribution to their education.

On this special day, thank you teachers for you are the most powerful source of Quality Education. 

 

 

 You can watch the video here:  A Day in the life of a Teacher

Spring is here!!

These two worksheets can be used with primary students: second or third graders. they were samples from Teacher Tips #714: March Worksheets and Lesson Plans For Your Class.

The following is a worksheet activity for a video on: Our colourful world from the BBC Learn English kids.

And the link for the video is here: Our colourful world

FCE for Teachers: Writing

As one of the tutors of this course, organized by Customized Training Services, we have discussed with our students and have found out that in our case the best preparation for the Writing paper is to practice in two or three of the different model texts that have to be developed.

One of these written texts is an essay.

It is for this reason that I would like to share this presentation with a compilation of some ideas to improve your essay writing.

Essay writing from Maria Mu

The 19th Británico Annual Convention

Today I participated as a guest and as a speaker in the 19th Británico Annual Convention and I had the double pleasure of meeting some good old friends-since I used to teach at Británico myself- and attending some interesting talks. The event was impecable and cozy and all participants were very well attended.

 

The first plenary was Jeremy Harmer´s Focus and Creativity in the Classroom. As usual, Jeremy is a showman and a guru so everybody was very attentive to his talk. I used two of the many pieces of advice he gave because they seemed appropriate for the talk I was going to give some hours later on Critical Reading : " Focus on the text, create the need and students would want to learn". I also liked his claim that even if technology helps, there should also be instances of teaching "unplugged", the ultimate interaction in the classroom is between the teacher and the student and we want students to "focus on things they need".

 

Then I attended a semi-plenary: Brain Rules by Craig Huxley from Express Publishing. This was also very interesting and fun. Craig made us move a bit since exercise (physical exercise) improves cognition and that is why everytime we ask our students to perform a dialogue, it should be done with students standing up and facing each other.

He also showed how information is registered through the senses, how long it takes for information to be "stored" in the immediate memory (30seconds) before it was moved to the working memory where it stays for about 20 minutes (with a máximum of 7 pieces of information a time). For information to get stored in the long term memory, it has to be meaningul and make sense to the learner- sounds familiar?- he also claims that attention is connected to memory, interest and awareness so we need to find out what our students are interested in and we, teachers, need to make students repeat to remember (so as to actívate their working memory) and they should remember to repeat so thi information would pass on to the long term memory. As the saying goes: "Use it or lose it!"

 

Next semi-plenary was Skills for the 21st Century: The New Literacies by Francisco Lozano from Cengage Learning. Do you know what the new literacies are? Visual, Digital, Cultural and Critical thinking. These are all wrapped up in a cross-curricular, multi.cultural approach.

 

It was a pity I could not attend any other talk, especially because of the variety of the offer, there was practically something for everybody and there was so much to be learned but I hope there will be another opportunity for this.

 

In sum, the event brought up a lot of food for thought. Regarding my talk on Critical Reading for EFL Learning ... it will be the topic of another post.

Teaching Children

Teaching children implies recognizing the physical, emotional and cognitive needs of the students. This is why it is OK to recognize that from time to time they feel their brains are tired and need a change of activity "to give their brains a rest" but also they should be contented since it also means they have worked hard.

Watch the following video and try to answer some of these questions to fully appreciate the teaching/learning situation.

• What is the effect of praising effort rather than ability?

• How do you talk about effort in your classroom?

• What do you see as the long term benefits of using this strategy?

Cambridge TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test) Qualifications

Cambridge ESOL exams offer Teaching Qualifications of several sorts. TKT Young Learners is one of them.

For more information between the different TKT modules please follow this link.

If interested you can register in the TKT blog: http://ctstktyounglearners.blogspot.com/

Happy Teacher´s Day in Peru

Quality education offers hope and the promise of a better standard of living. There is no stronger foundation for lasting peace and sustainable development than a quality education provided by well trained, valued, supported and motivated teachers.