Resources

Looking for inspirational teaching tips, or handouts from an event that you’ve attended? You’ve come to the right place!

Success Strategies in the Primary ELT Classroom

10 Powerful Ways to Step Up Your Students’ Learning Outcomes

This is a handout full of practical ideas to go with my workshop Success Strategies in the Primary ELT Classroom: 10 Powerful Ways to Step Up Your Students’ Learning Outcomes. I gave it for the first time in February 2014 in Mexico.

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MOTIVATING TEENS THROUGH ACTIVATING THEIR BRAIN'S OWN REWARD SYSTEM

Teenage Motivation

This handout was created for a webinar I have given for Cambridge University Press on teenage motivation. There is a recording available on the web.

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Critical thinking skills with young learners and teens

5 practical activities

This handout was created for my session on developing critical thinking skills in the foreign language class. It gives you 5 ready-made activities that you can use with your classes. Feel free to adapt to your students¹ language level and other needs.

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Bored students? Tap into the brain’s own reward system!

Event handout from Brazil

This is a handout to go with my talk Bored students? Tap into the brain’s own reward system! It discusses why ‘external rewards’ – praise, gold stars, good grades etc. – often achieve the opposite of what we want to achieve, and makes suggestions on how to activate the students’ own intrinsic reward systems.

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Developing young learners' speaking skills

More than little parrots...

This is a handout to go with my talk More Than Little Parrots: Developing Young Learners’ Speaking Skills. It’s all about trying to get young learners to talk as themselves rather than saying things by heart.

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PechaKucha, IATEFL 2012

Glasgow, Scotland

This is me trying my first PechaKucha – a presentation format in which the speaker is allowed 20 slides, each running for just 20 seconds, out of his control, resulting in a very fast-paced talk that is hopefully also fun!

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Developing Thinking Skills in the Young Learners' Classroom

Cambridge University Press

This is a booklet I wrote for CUP about Developing Thinking Skills in the Young Learners’ Classroom. It gives a brief overview of the theory, and a number of practical examples, and teaching tips.

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Teachers need to join the teenage fan club

The Guardian

I wrote this for ‘The Guardian’ to discuss Kieran Egan’s concept of ‘Romantic Understanding’ and what it means for the teen classroom. Just to clarify… I’m not advocating the use of texts about evanescent celebrities like Lady Gaga.

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The use of a portfolio

English in Mind

You may already use a portfolio with your teenage students and want to compare your ideas with the ones suggested here. Or you may be interested in introducing a portfolio as one additional way of assessing your students’ progress.

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Motivating Adolescent Students

Teaching teens

Do you agree with Michael Grinder’s dictum that if you can teach teenagers you can teach anyone? This handout looks at the key challenges of motivating teens, and gives practical tips galore.

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