The Turkish government banned access to Twitter and YouTube this week.
Don't worry too much though.
It's easy to get around this and access any other blocked websites or Internet services you miss from back home.
All you need is this brilliant service.
It used to be a luxury.
Now......it's a MUST.
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“Deanna Jump is a 43-year-old kindergarten teacher who earns less than $30,000 a year. But this year, she says she has made $1 million. Yes, really.
How? TeachersPayTeachers.com (TPT), the online marketplace that allows teachers to sell lesson plans to other teachers. Jump became the first teacher on the site to earn more than $1 million on the site by using selling her lesson plans focused on teaching kindergarteners.
“Teaching is a hobby for me now,” Jump says. “I’ve made way more on TeacherPayTeachers, obviously. I don’t need to teach anymore, but teaching is my passion. I cannot imagine not teaching.”
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5 Creative Uses Of PowerPoint Presentations You Haven’t Explored Yet
See on Scoop.it - Learning Teaching
Death by PowerPoint is a popular term. It’s unfair that PowerPoint gets the stick as there are more than a few presentation tools around. As anyone who has taken the pains to make a memorable PowerPoint presentation will tell you – the secret of the steak is in the sizzle. The sizzle also comes and stops at creativity. If you have creativity by your side, you can use PowerPoint as your canvas.
See on www.makeuseof.com
Until recently, many teachers only got one word of feedback a year: “satisfactory.”
And with no feedback, no coaching, there’s just no way to improve.
In this TED Talk, Bill Gates suggests that even great teachers can get better with smart feedback -- and lays out a program from his foundation to bring it to every classroom.
How does feedback take place in your school?
How often do you get observed? Are the observations a useful way for you to improve as a teacher?
Share your thoughts and experience in the comments below.
Happy teaching!
Free Lesson Plans & Resources (No Prep!)
In this post I would like to share what I think are some of the most useful English teaching websites on the internet. All these sites are free and the resources you will find there are pretty much ready to use straight away.
I have chosen these sites because I think they will enable you to deliver really great TEFL lessons, and hopefully inspire some new ideas for ways to take advantage of the huge amount of work that has gone into creating these ESL teaching resources.
I love creating engaging teaching materials and you can purchase some of them for just a couple of dollars in the shop.
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Native speakers and non-native speakers can both succeed as ESL teachers. It’s true, but there has always been some controversy in the ESL community over the difference between having one or the other teach language courses. Obviously the situation varies from place to place but there are definitely pros and cons for both sides of this debate.
Let’s take a look at just a few key points.
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I spent most of last year battling with students and I felt like I was wasting my time. No matter how interesting and creative I made my lesson plans I could not get them settled long enough to teach them anything.
It was a hopeless situation and I was on the brink of quitting many times. Pushed to my limits, I lost my temper several times and, with it, any shred of respect from the kids.
So I went in search of a solution.
I found a methodology which I had never come across before but instantly recognised as something which would address my specific challenges.
I was excited but also apprehensive.
The method does require the teacher to step out of their comfort zone and try something new and this is never easy. Especially if there is a class that you really dread going in to. The thought of doing something a little risky is pretty daunting. So I started with a class I felt was one of the better ones. More open to having fun and going along with something new. The effect was incredible! Virtually 100% student engagement in the lesson and 100% of the lesson time spent on topic.
I could not wait to try it with another class. The results were the same.
And in the worst of worst classes............... the results were even better!
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We have a number of individual private students who are looking for a native English teacher to give private lessons at their homes in various Istanbul locations.
Key details:
- Approximately 100TL per hour for native speakers.
- May involve some travel but we will try to match students and teachers in similar locations.
- Usually in the evenings and weekends.
- You must be reliable and flexible.
- You must be well prepared and have your own materials.
Opportunity to earn excellent income and be in control of your hours, if you are prepared to work hard and be flexible. Email us here: info@englishjobsturkey.com
Teaching Vocabulary
Its easy to get stuck using the same tired old methods of teaching vocabulary, so its worth reading up a little on different approaches and activities to raise your awareness of some other options you could adapt to your lessons.
Vocabulary is vital to successful communication and will also allow your students to access a wider range of materials and stimulus (authentic readers, videos, newspapers, magazines) which will increase the pleasure of learning, and using, a language.
It could be argued that using the correct words in a sentence without any grammatical structure at all could still lead to a successful interaction.
For example compare, 'airconditioning, leak' to 'house, problem'. I know I have survived many challenging situations in foreign countries using this method!
Students at school should be aiming to acquire at least 400 new words a year. Doing so with the ability to not only recognise these words, but produce them correctly in written and spoken exchanges will require the teacher resorting to a variety of methods and sufficient repetition beyond the odd game of hangman!
Here are a few useful links for teaching vocabulary.
http://www.increasevocabulary.net/make-words-relevant.html
http://buildvocabulary.org/index.php
http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/vocab/strategies.html
Do you have any good ideas or useful resources for teaching vocabulary?