Teacher Discussion Forums

Never but it is fun and rewarding.

You need to band together and make a group of ESL teachers and then go to the supervisors, board and so on and teach them a new language. I wouldn't use Spanish in case they know it but use a language that someone in the group knows. Hand them a book at a high level and ask them questions as they wo...

Try to remember what it is like to be 6, 7, 8 or 9. Keep low. Take a mirror and lean over it - you will shocked at your saggy face but that is what kids see if you are looking down at them, so don't. Have a low chair so you are eye to eye. Smile a lot. Look up some games on the Sticky under the Acti...

When people have to explain something they will talk so get them to teach you some games they know - card games, mahjong, instructions of how to get somewhere interesting and what you will see there, how to make sushi, why the garbage trucks have music, what the people are saying as they drive aroun...

Drinking at 9 a.m.? Coffee? How about a Karaoke machine? Not a great expense and they will have the English words on the screen. My friend tried the topic approach and it failed completely. Hope you have better luck. But if you are a good teacher, I'm sure whatever you plan will work. Good teachers ...

We did this in the school I was at in Japan. We had small coffee tables with a teacher at each table with four or five participants. We also had coffee and treats. It sounds like you will be the only one there though so how is the owner setting up the seating and how many will there be? It turned ou...

Sorry, I never got to Kazakhstan although we heard a lot about it. Hunting with eagles mostly. They said that the people of Western Mongolia and Eastern Kazakhstan were family. I have never heard of making a diary of the psychological profile of students and it would be frowned upon in Canada and th...

I think you could probably do all the exercises that you have read about but just not do the marking. It would be impossible to read everything that 120 students wrote more than once I would imagine. I would put them in groups of 4 or 5 and get them to exchange their writing, comment in writing on e...

We used a picture dictionary with twenty words per page and a different topic per page (transportation, home, me, animals, etc.) and made a passport out of it with 20 words typed on the page. The younger children tried to match the picture of the object with the word (pictures scrambled) and the old...

I think it might be a bit overwhelming for a teacher to think of one incidence of their teaching and tell you. It would mean that something didn't work and they would have to publicity say that something didn't work, even if they did think of a way to fix it. We are not inclined to publish our mista...

I see there is a Reflective Teachers blog and there is a plan to make a Reflective Teaching Group from the University of Illinois and there are many articles on it both on Google and Google Scholar. I haven't seen a Reflective Teachers Association yet. Maybe you could start a group - that would be g...

You might want to read, "Teacher Cognition in Language Training" by Devon Woods. Teachers have done this since there was teaching I'm sure. You couldn't go on teaching without reflecting on your teaching in all areas. I have done this in every area that you mentioned. There is a lot of literature in...

Beverly Deriwianka's book is called "Exploring How Text Works" and is $4 used on Amazon.

Canada In emails, nothing. There is no openings or closing, just doing the business at hand. For customers, it is still "Sincerely" if you send them a letter. I think it is good to teach students to get as much information from previous emails and letters as they can so they can find the style of th...