English Book Education is pleased to announce that Macmillan Education is starting the 4th season of the Advancing Learning Academic Programme and orginising Advancing Learning Roundtable Discussion: Education for Sustainable Development and Citizenship on the 28th of October. 

Educators play an important role in shaping young minds to create a fairer and more sustainable vision for our future. In this special roundtable discussion, the speakers will be addressing issues such as diversity, sustainability and global citizenship in an ELT context, while exploring ways in which teachers can implement these important areas into their teaching.

Register now to join in the discussion:

About the Speakers

Zarina Subhan originally qualified as a scientist, she has been working in the field of ELT for over 30 years. She has taught at all levels, in both private and government institutions and worked worldwide as a teacher and teacher educator. Having worked in the science, educational and development sectors, her interests are the neurology of learning; CLIL; continuing professional development for teachers; inclusive and sustainable education.

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Harry Waters has been involved in English teaching for over 14 years. His passion for teaching and obsession with the planet led him to create Renewable English an online English course, providing free classes and materials aimed at raising climate change awareness across the globe. Harry is also a passionate teacher trainer. He describes himself as an imperfect environmentalist with a love of flags and funky second-hand shirts.

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Matthew Hayes, BA (Oxon), MA (SOAS), is a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Education in London. His current research concerns Global Citizenship Education in English language textbooks and he has previously written on Robert Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Matthew is also Managing Director of Lean Library, the library services provider owned by SAGE Publishing. 

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Mariela Gil holds a Master’s degree in TESOL and a dual Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics and Psychology from the University of Southern California. She taught ESL in the U.S. and EFL in Thailand and Mexico before joining Macmillan Education. During her career in publishing, Mariela has held the positions of Academic Consultant, Field Editor, Commissioning Editor, and currently, Publisher for the American English Pre-Primary and Primary segment and Global Methodologies.

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Jessica Gedamu drives Springer Nature’s global diversity, equity and inclusion strategy as Director Global DEI. Before joining Springer Nature in 2018, Jessica worked as a DEI consultant, trainer/facilitator and project leader and supported companies in various industries in change processes towards more diversity in leadership. Jessica earned a BSc and M.A. in International Business Administration in Rotterdam and Berlin, as well as an M.A. in Gender and Diversity Competence from Freie Universität Berlin.

We are delighted to announce that English Book Education is organising an online preparation course for TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test).

The course is designed to prepare teachers for TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test). The course is for teachers, who wish to refresh and extend their teaching knowledge. It is a 2-month course and includes 18 lessons focused on preparing participants for all the three modules. The course aims to introduce participants to the test structure, the main current theories and approaches, concepts and terms about teaching and learning that are central to TKT. After completing each module, they will write a practice test which gives them opportunities to do sample test tasks and become familiar with the format of the test.

Quick Facts

Who is TKT Preparation Course for?

TKT is suitable for teachers of English in primary, secondary or adult teaching contexts and is intended for an international audience of non-first language or first language teachers of English. This preparation course and TKT itself can be taken by:

• Pre-service teachers;
• New and experienced teachers;
• Teachers who teach primary, secondary or adult learners;
• Teachers who wish to refresh and extend their teaching knowledge;
• Teachers who need a globally recognised certificate.

Why Attend the Course?

• To become familiar with the format and style of the TKT exam;
• To get introduced to the main current ELT theories and approaches;
• To get introduced to the concept and terms about teaching and learning;
• To build your confidence in teaching;
• To step forward in your professional development as teachers;
• To move onto higher-level teaching qualifications;
• To get an internationally recognised qualification.

Selected trainer: Nata Gugushvili

This training course will be conducted by Nata Gugushvili, an experienced EFL teacher and trainer.

Nata is an English Language teacher and ELT trainer with more than 20 years of experience. She started working for English Book Education in 2015 as an English language teacher for Ilia State University project. Nowadays, Nata cooperates with English Book Education in terms of delivering various training sessions.

How to apply

Step 1: Fill out the registration form:

Step 2: A representative of English Book Education will contact you to confirm the registration

Look through the Brochure:

Welcome to the second edition of Life. It’s been a fantastic experience to use the feedback we’ve collected from teachers and learners from around the world to revisit the first edition and build on its strengths. There are three things that a second edition gives an opportunity for: to bring in fresh content; to adjust existing content to ensure it delivers a book’s underlying methodological principles; and to refine and improve exercises according to user feedback. What does this mean for the second edition?

• New and updated content, including exciting original video and fresh National Geographic stories and articles.
• By linking this rich, global content more clearly to learners’ everyday lives, new ’My Life’ speaking tasks are even more personalised and relatable.
• Revised grammar spreads make learning more accessible and more effective.  These spreads are reinforced with a newly extended grammar practice at the back of the student books.
• The Critical Thinking activities are now part of a more fully-articulated syllabus, founded on Bloom’s taxonomy of lower and higher order thinking skills.
• Techniques to make learning more memorable, already present in Life‘s use of images and engaging content, have now been refreshed and extended throughout the unit and in the review sections.

For Students

• Student’s Book + App Code
• Online Workbook (Printed Access Card)
• Student’s Book + App Code + OWB
• Workbook Without Key + Audio CD
• Workbook With Key + Audio CD
• Student’s Book eBook Without Key
• Combo Splits + App Code
• Student Book Splits + App Code

For Instructors

• Teacher’s Book + Class Audio CD + DVD
• Classroom Presentation Tool (USB)
• ExamView

With NGL English language programs, students learn about their world by experiencing it. They develop the language and skills they need to be successful global citizens and leaders.

TED TALK CONTENT:

• Create global citizens
• Motivate learners to engage fully with their learning
• Prepare them with the skills needed to succeed in the 21st century
• Teach them to use English effectively

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Buy this book at English Book Education Bookshop:

Address:

Tbilisi 14 Chavchvavadze Avenue; 92 Vepkhistkaosani Street, 3 m/r Didi Dighomi, Tbilisi, Georgia

Batumi: Brothers Zubalashvili and Baratashvili Street

Give Me Five! is an engaging 6-level primary course with a strong focus on collaboration and 21st century skills. The dynamic and fun content keeps students motivated to reach learning goals and achieve success in external exams.

Designed to engage and build students’ confidence as they learn to communicate, Give Me Five! provides unique opportunities for both free and controlled speaking practice across a range of contexts. Participation, learner autonomy and social competency all take centre stage in order to help young learners reach their true potential.

Key features

• The cooperative methodology encourages teamwork and collaboration, helping to create a positive classroom environment and celebrate achievement.

• Integrated exam practice and additional resources, including videos of Cambridge English and Trinity mock exams, help familiarise children with exam techniques.

• The 21st century learning strand develops skills such as creative and critical thinking. 

• Memorable songs, adventure stories and classroom games make learning enjoyable.

Fully flexible course

If you teach remotely or would like to add an online learning element to your face to face classes, we have reconfigured and enhanced this course with digital components, making it ready for any scenario. The listing below shows you all of the components available for this course.

Pupil’s Book Pack

The Pupil’s Book provides tools to engage children in learning key 21st century and collaboration skills. The pack includes Pupil’s Book (print and digital) and an access code to the Navio App. This blended solution enables teachers to use the course effortlessly in their face-to-face and online classes.

Activity Book Pack

This blended solution of the print Activity Book and Digital Activity Book enables students to have extra practice while studying face-to-face or online.

Digital Pupil’s Book and Digital Activity Book

Give Me Five! includes all the tools needed to engage children in developing collaboration and key 21st century skills while learning English. This fully digital solution enables teachers to take teaching online instantly and confidently. It provides access to the Digital Pupil’s Book, Digital Activity Book and Navio App.

Teacher’s Book with Navio App

The Teacher‘s Book includes a flexible Teacher’s eBook to allow for on screen lesson preparation, access to the Teacher App, Tap and Teach Lessons, Progress Tracker and Test Generator. The Teacher’s Book includes lesson notes, lesson plans, teacher tips and answer keys. 

Navio is a next-generation digital platform that provides an enriched teaching and learning experience. 

Buy this book at English Book Education Bookshop:

Address: Tbilisi 14 Chavchvavadze Avenue; 92 Vepkhistkaosani Street, 3 m/r Didi Dighomi, Tbilisi, Georgia

Batumi: Brothers Zubalashvili and Baratashvili Street

Macmillan English is a 6-level primary course that nurtures non-native learners’ speaking and writing fluency, bringing them on par with native speakers of English in the same age range.

Using participation-based learning such as shared listening and reading exercises, Macmillan English encourages children to work together, which helps build their confidence. Traditional EFL methods are reinforced with phonics and sentence-building activities, giving children who are adapting to English as a second language the tools they need to start mastering it.

Key features

• A range of course components, including Language, Practice and Fluency books helps children learn and practise new language in a variety of contexts.

• The course is perfect for schools working towards the Cambridge International Programme, and is mapped to the Cambridge English Curriculum.

• A range of games and class activities encourage participation and reinforce lesson work, with assets like posters and flashcards making learning more visual and memorable.

• The Digital Student’s Book can replace all printed student components, allowing for more interactive, mobile learning.

• The Teacher’s Presentation Kit includes digital editions of all coursebooks, as well as interactive audio activities and a Test Resource Pack for fast preparation.

Digital Student’s Book

The Macmillan English Digital Student’s Book provides students with a print-free option of accessing the Student’s Book content and includes all of the interactive activities that the Macmillan English Presentation Kit offers.

Language Book

The Macmillan English Language Book gives pupils the opportunity to work through basic skills such as reading, comprehension, sentence and language building, grammar, listening, phonics, spelling and class writing. Revision pages reinforce material already learnt.

Fluency Book

The Macmillan English Fluency Book helps children to develop natural intonation in speaking English through an exciting adventure story at lower levels, and at higher levels through a radio programme with accompanying writing tasks. A full colour book complete with engaging illustrations and stickers.

Practice Book Pack

The Macmillan English Practice Book contains practice exercises accompanying the Language Book. Activities include grammar exercises, writing tasks and grammar check-up pages to support and reinforce the material being learnt. Packaged with the Practice Book is the Working with Words CD-ROM.

Teacher’s Guide

The Macmillan English Teacher’s Guide contains two pages of notes for each lesson to assist the teacher, supporting the classroom use of the Language Book, Practice Book and Fluency Book. Key aims and targets are clearly identified for each lesson.

Though we talk often about learners and their roles, it’s just as important to pay attention to the teachers themselves. According to Hoyle’s and Harmer’s lists, there are a number of roles ascribed to the teacher in a general educational setting:

• A representative of society (teachers morals)
• A judge (gives marks)
• A resource (conveys knowledge)
• A helper (provides guidance for student difficulties)
• A referee (resolves conflicts)
• A detective (catches rule breakers)
• An object of identification (has traits that students imitate)
• A limiter of anxiety (helps students with impulses)
• An ego-supporter (helps with students’ self-confidence)
• A group leader (establishes group climate
• A parents surrogate (acts as object of bids for attention)

Knowing one’s role can be very motivational as a teacher, which is why it’s important to be familiar with these kinds of lists.

Source: Peter Medgyes, “Teacher-centered and learner-centered approaches”, The Non-Native Teacher

ATTENTION TEACHERS!!

Certrificates for Macmillan Open Mind Training with Steve Taylore-Knowles are now available.
To collect your certificate(s), please come to our main office at:

Tbilisi, Didi Digomi, 3 m/r, Nestan-Darejani Str.1

If you have questions, please contact:

Lali Jokhadze at 032.200.1242 ext.1006 or l.jokhadze@englishbook.ge

By Lindsay Clandfield and Jo Budden

Level: Starter/beginner, Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, Upper intermediate, Advanced

“I love my new job. I can be creative in my class preparation, I get along really well with my students and I really appreciate the responsibility. There’s nobody looking over my shoulder all the time when I’m at work. It’s me and my class.”

“I feel bored and a bit depressed with my job. I feel like I am doing the same thing over and over again. I have no new ideas and I hate my course book. I don’t know if I can do this for the rest of my life. One of the problems is that I feel so lonely, even with a class full of students. I think I’m becoming disconnected from it all.”

The first quote is from a new English teacher in their first few months of teaching (after the “fear” of the first classes has worn off) and the second is from an English teacher who has been working for some years. Do either of these sound familiar? Why does the second teacher feel that way? What has happened?

The second teacher may be close to suffering from teacher burnout. Burnout is a response to chronic, everyday stress, rather than to occasional crises. As Dr. Susan Barduhn, President of IATEFL, notes, “People who go into teaching (or nursing, social work, fire-fighting or any kind of helping profession) often have a high need for approval and high expectations of themselves. The burnout-prone individual is one who simply takes on too much.” One of the best ways to avoid burnout is to start supporting and cooperating with fellow teachers and professionals. According to many studies, burnout and teacher turnover is drastically reduced when successful peer support exists.

This article is about Collaborative Teaching. I take Collaborative Teaching to mean more than teaching or planning a class between more than one teacher (although it can take that form). For me, collaborative teaching is about developing different mechanisms of peer support. It is also about developing professionally, but not in isolation. What follows is a series of tips and activities for teachers to do to start collaborative teaching and stop burnout before it occurs.

Share ideas

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to start collaborative teaching is to swap ideas. Teachers often do this anyway. You can formalize this process at your school in two ways:

Organize a folder entitled Ideas and Tips. Divide it into sections (either by level, or by theme) and ask other teachers to contribute. For a project like this to work you really have to have someone in charge of keeping the folder or folders in order. Why not rotate that duty among teachers? You could also have a “Tip or Activity of the Week” that you can post on the staff room wall.

Offer to organize a meeting to exchange ideas at your work. All you need is a time and a place where teachers can meet. At a school where I worked we called it the Materials Circus Maximus(Gladiator had just come out in the theatres!) We all met on a Friday afternoon and shared activity ideas. This became even more popular when teachers would “teach” the others using their material. It made the activity more memorable when teachers actually played the part of learners.

Sharing ideas in your school can be beneficial for all involved. But why stop at your school when you can share tips and classes with English teachers all around the world! One way of doing this is through the onestopenglish Lesson Share competition. See section G below for other ideas.

Start a teacher discussion group

This aspect of collaborative teaching means going further than just swapping tips and materials. Get together with a group of other teachers (or even just one other teacher!) to exchange ideas and methods and reflect on your teaching. This could be to discuss problems you have had with a certain class or course book, to share good and bad moments in class or to reflect on a particular aspect of your teaching. It could be a formalized meeting with other teachers at the school, or a more informal meeting at a cafe.
Here are some directions that a teacher discussion group could take:

• The group meets to discuss discipline problems in their classes and ways of dealing with them.
• The group meets to offer advice and suggestions to one member who is having trouble motivating a class.
• Each member of the group researches an aspect of methodology which they haven’t tried (examples include Total Physical Response, Using Literature in the Classroom, Task Based Learning) and then presents their findings at the meeting. A good starting point for research like this is the Methodology section of onestopenglish.
• Each member of the group writes some reflections on two different classes – one which went well and one which didn’t go so well. Teachers come together and exchange reflections. They then discuss the classes.

Observe a colleague

Peer observation is a great way to get new ideas and see how others deal with everyday classroom occurrences. Have you ever wondered what was going on in the classroom next door? Why was it so quiet or why was there so much laughter? Here’s your chance to find out.

Choose a colleague who you respect and ask them if they would mind you observing them. With any luck they’ll jump at the chance of having an extra pair of eyes in the class. You could use the observation to steal some new ideas for your own classes. There are many forms available to use as a guide for the observation. Click in the box below for some samples from Jim Scrivener’s Learning Teaching. Alternatively, make a form yourself for your exact needs.

Ask a colleague to observe you

Choose a colleague you admire and trust and invite them to observe one of your classes. Choose a focus that you’d like them to concentrate on, such as your instructions, interaction with students or use of L1 in the class and ask for feedback on that specific point.

Always remember that giving feedback is a skill in itself and you should aim to be mainly positive, by giving constructive advice and ideas. Think about what you would like to tell the observee before you begin the feedback and consider how best to tell them.

Set up a mentor program

In English language teaching, the idea of having mentors in a school is relatively new. The mentor is an experienced teacher in the school who knows where things are and is familiar with school procedures. A new teacher is assigned a mentor when they start. The mentor is responsible for this new member of staff. The mentor has different “roles”:

• that of model (to inspire the mentee)
• that of acculturator (to show the mentee around and get them used to the school culture)
• that of sponsor and support (to “open doors” for the mentee, to introduce mentee to the “right people”; to “be there” for the mentee)
• that of educator (to listen and coach the mentee so that the mentee can achieve professional learning objectives)

A more informal mentor program could be a simple buddy system by which new teachers are assigned a “buddy” on the staff who they can turn to if they have any problems or questions.

Inter-class communicating and swaps

If you teach in a school at the same time as another English teacher with a similar level, there are many interesting possibilities for collaboration. Here are some ideas.

For oral tests, swap classes with the other teacher. This can be beneficial for getting an outside view of your learners’ oral competence. It will almost certainly mean that your learners will take the test a lot more seriously. For learners who are preparing for an external exam like the Cambridge First Certificate or Advanced, both of which have an interview component this could be a good practice run for them.

Run friendly competitions between classes. This could involve trivia quizzes for example. Post the results of each group in the classrooms.

Have learners write letters to each other. You can even set up written role plays. For example, have one class write a series of job adverts for the other class. The students in the other class decide on which job they would like to apply for and write letters of application, which go back to the first class. This could even be followed up by a face-to-face interview.

Have individual learners come and visit the other class from time to time. They could be interviewed by their new classmates, or make short presentations.

Collaborate locally

The above ideas all more or less take place inside one school. You can expand your horizons and link up with other English teachers in your area. For example:

Go to a conference, seminar or product presentation. Many countries have an English teaching association and run a yearly conference. Conferences are great places to meet other teachers, network and get new ideas. Sometimes a local school or organization will set up a seminar on an aspect of language teaching. Finally, publishers will often have special teacher development days or product presentations (these often include free books or a free breakfast!). Get in touch with the publisher’s local representative.

Start a teachers’ newsletter. You could start this in the school where you work, or organize it between two or three schools. Include lesson ideas and tips and news about teaching in your local area.

Collaborate world-wide

Do some of the above projects seem too difficult to set up in your school? Maybe you work in many different schools and therefore are not in a position to implement or participate in such programs. Does that mean you can’t do any collaborative teaching? Not at all! There is a whole community of English language teachers helping each other around the world.

Source

ATTENTION TEACHERS!!

Certrificates for Macmillan Summer Training and Conference are still available until December 2014.
To collect your certificate(s), please come to our main office at:

Tbilisi, Didi Digomi, 3 m/r, Nestan-Darejani Str.1

If you have questions, please contact:

Lali Jokhadze at 032.200.1242 ext.1006 or l.jokhadze@englishbook.ge

So dear Teacher, will you please take him by his hand and teach him things he will have to know, teaching him – but gently, if you can. Teach him that for every enemy, there is a friend. He will have to know that all men are not just, that all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero, that for every crooked politician, there is a dedicated leader.

Teach him if you can that 10 cents earned is of far more value than a dollar found. In school, teacher, it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat. Teach him to learn how to gracefully lose, and enjoy winning when he does win.

Teach him to be gentle with people, tough with tough people. Steer him away from envy if you can and teach him the secret of quiet laughter. Teach him if you can – how to laugh when he is sad, teach him there is no shame in tears. Teach him there can be glory in failure and despair in success. Teach him to scoff at cynics.

Teach him if you can the wonders of books, but also give time to ponder the extreme mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun and flowers on a green hill. Teach him to have faith in his own ideas, even if every one tell him they are wrong.

Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone else is doing it. Teach him to listen to every one, but teach him also to filters all that he hears on a screen of truth and take only the good that comes through.

Teach him to sell his talents and brains to the highest bidder but never to put a price tag on his heart and soul. Let him have the courage to be impatient, let him have the patient to be brave. Teach him to have sublime faith in himself, because then he will always have sublime faith in mankind, in God.

This is the order, teacher but see what best you can do. He is such a nice little boy and he is my son.