And let’s be honest, towards the end of the school year, the feeling is always the same: tiredness mixed with relief mixed with a little sadness. But mostly relief.

So, if you are looking for a few low-prep activities to end your school year on a high note, have a look at these tried and tested activities for your English language classroom. Just like with our back to school activities, these activities are easily adaptable to most CEFR levels, from A1 to B2 and up.

You can also download these activities in pdf below:

1. Make your own Taboo

Are you familiar with the game Taboo? In teams, a player talks to their teammates and tries to make them guess the word on the player’s card without using the word itself or five additional words listed on the card. As a nice vocabulary revision activity (and to get a little bit of speaking practice in), you can divide students into teams and they can create their own Taboo cards. For lower levels, they might just create cards with words to guess and perhaps one or even no “taboo” words that cannot be used.

2. Three things from this year

At the end of the year, we often want our students to look back on what they’ve learned with a critical eye. This develops their metacognition and those pesky “learning to learn” competences from our good old European Key Competences. Give each student the following three prompts to fill out (use the L1 if you need to):

• The most difficult thing for me this year was…
• The thing I liked the most this year was…
• The thing I still want to learn more about is…

Review their answers and use these as formative feedback for you as well, to help you plan for the following year or reflect on what you have done this year: for example, is there an area that seems to have proved particularly difficult for your students? And why is it phrasal verbs?

3. Create a poster on next year

What do you wish for your next school year? In groups, students can create a paper or digital poster answering this question with short sentences and pictures. Additional prompts to guide them might include:

• What do you want to improve?
• What new things would you like to try?
• How would you like your school to change?

4. Share a gif or meme on your struggles

Sometimes, talking about what we struggle with can be, well… a struggle. Admitting to and articulating our difficulties in the learning process and be an ordeal for students. To take the pressure off, you can use a means that students are familiar with and that according to research has great potential for the ELT classroom: memes and gifs. Create a simple Padlet and ask your students to either find or create a meme or gif in English that answers the question “what was your biggest difficulty in English this year?” Each student uploads their image and then you can review them and discuss them as a class (and have a bit of a laugh while you’re at it!)

5. Write an Instagram review of a book, video or film you liked

If you have Instagram, looking up hashtags like #bookreview or #bookstagram will bring up dozens of book reviews. So, in keeping with the idea of using means that are familia and somewhat appealing to students, you can round up the year by asking them to choose one book, video or film they liked and write a short Instagram post, complete with a photo, about it. These might be books, videos or films you’ve covered in English or you can leave the choice up to them, including anything they may have liked outside of the English classroom.

6. Plan your dream holiday with Where the Hell is Matt?

For close to 20 years now, Matt from YouTube channel Where the Hell is Matt has danced (badly, by his own admission) in dozens of places around the world. Show one of his videos (like this one) to your class or let them find one if you have more independent students and ask them to identify the place they liked the most and tell you why. Then, either in pairs or individually, have them plan a dream holiday to that place: when would they go? Why? How would they get there? What would they do? All the questions you need for a nice little WebQuest and a true task in the TBLT sense – and of course, dreaming a little before the summer holidays can be nice.

7. Create your own LyricsTraining gap fill

Having students create a quiz is always an engaging way of including them in the formative assessment process. With LyricsTraining, students can choose a song they like and either play with the ready-made games on the website (just make sure they choose an appropriate level for them, i.e. “beginner” for lower levels) or create their own gap fill with the “print lyrics” function. If you want to learn more about how to use music for listening, I gave a tutorial on how to use LyricsTraining to improve listening skills and create custom-made exercises for the LanguagEd Day last year – you can still check out the video recording and slides here. And yes, just in case you were wondering, the song I chose for the tutorial is by Måneskin (if you read my newsletter, you’ll know I’m down a Måneskin rabbit hole because so many of their videos and interviews are such interesting tools for language learning for an Italian audience!)

I hope these activities are useful and while you’re here, I also want to say: well done for making it through to the end of the school year! Pat yourself on the back for a job well done (and if you’re going to be working on the end-of-year exams… it’s not quite over yet, but you’re almost there!)

If you use any of the activities, why not let me know how they worked? Get in touch at chiara@languaged.org – I reply to all emails and love hearing from teachers.

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But then, after all is said and done, there is often one big question (among many questions we have related to teaching literature):

how do we assess literature beyond mere text comprehension?

Fear not, because we have collected examples of assessment tasks you can use to assess literature in a video.

Watch the video for some innovative examples of:

• language-based tasks

• non-linguistic tasks

• tasks involving L1 and L2

• tasks based on previously unseen texts

Want to find out more about teaching literature, history and culture in an innovative way, in accordance with the CEFR?

Learn a practical framework to teach literature: try out our bestselling course Teaching Literature in the Language Classroom for free!

Here are some reviews from teachers who have completed the course:

This historic event is going to be marked by a bank holiday in the UK – but even if you don’t get the time off, you might still be searching for some simple lesson plans to teach your students about the Coronation.

Just like we did when Queen Elizabeth II passed, we have decided to scour the internet and bring you the best lesson plans on the Coronation, including some of the controversy surrounding it.

Here they are: they’re mostly full, well-structured presentations with pictures and short, clear explanations and tasks, plus some individual activities and videos.

Some of them are designed for primary or secondary students in the UK but as you will see, you can easily use them with English language students too. We have also looked at them thoroughly to give you an idea of what CEFR level(s) you can use them for.

So, here we go! We’ve divided the resources into lesson plans, activities and videos:

Lesson plans

Introductions to Coronations (suitable for A2 and up): download a PowerPoint presentation with key facts about Coronations, plus teacher’s notes

The Coronation: Assembly (suitable for any level): a simple, picture-based presentation on the Coronation, plus detailed teacher’s notes by Historic Royal Palaces

The Coronation: Values and Symbols (suitable for B1 and up): a presentation on the symbols and values of the Coronation and the Crown. It can be a good springboard for a discussion involving some critical thinking on the “values” embodied by the Crown and its colonialist legacy. You can also download teacher’s notes.

What is a Coronation? (suitable for A1+ and up): key facts about the Coronation, with a bit of history and teacher’s notes by the Royal Collection Trust

Be a part of history and celebrate! (with appropriate vocab scaffolding, this lesson plan is suitable for A2+ and up): a presentation lesson about ways in which people have celebrated coronations historically and how they can celebrate now

King Charles’s Coronation – British Council Learn English Kids (suitable for A2+): a full lesson plan with a video with a worksheet and detailed instrucitons

Activities

The official Coronation website: use this for a webquest (levels A2/B1 and up)

Coronation starter quiz (levels B1 and up): a multiple choice quiz – students can have a set time to look up the answers online!

Coronation Map of Westminster Abbey (levels B1 and up): help your students visualise what’s going to happen at the Coronation with this map

Coronations at the Abbey Fact Sheet (levels B1+ and up): vocab-rich fact sheet with the key points and vocab your students need to know about this historic event

Timeline of Coronations (levels A2+ and up): an excellent timeline of coronations at Westminster Abbey and a good way to revise British history

The pledge of allegiance to the king is nonsense (levels B2+): an authentic text to reflect on the controversial pledge of allegiance

Videos

360° Video: King Charles’s Coronation ceremony virtual tour at Westminster Abbey

The King and The Queen Consort’s Coronation Quiche

King Charles’ coronation could be ‘the final event of its kind’ for the British royals | Jennie Bond

The coronation – What are the costs and who pays?

We hope you find something in here you enjoy and that can help you plan your classes more easily! If you use some of these resources, let us know how your lesson goes in the comments!

Wondering how to structure a culture, literature or history lesson in the English language classroom? Our unique, best-selling course Teaching Literature in the Language Classroom will teach you just that! Try it for free:

I am talking, of course, about how to teach grammar.

Teaching grammar with Grammar Translation (?)

We know that Grammar Translation, with its deductive teaching, memorisation and continuous writing and translation exercises, was not only unengaging but it also contradicted what we know about grammar learning from SLA research.

I know this is an interesting topic for teachers: indeed, I got asked about grammar teaching and Grammar Translation in Italian schools in a Q&A a while back:

Tasks vs. grammar

I was speaking to some of my teachers who are preparing for the concorso ordinario recently. They had prepared a presentation with a lesson plan, which included a speaking activity. The teacher described the activity as a task in a TBLT framework: in groups, the students had to debate the pros and cons of two social media platforms to create a school profile and then decide which one they preferred. In doing so, they were asked to use functional language for agreeing and disagreeing, e.g. “I fully agree/I’m not sure I agree” etc.

Now, here is the issue: if the instructions had stopped before the last sentence, this would be a task. However, asking students to use specific grammar structures automatically makes the task… not a task.

Why, you ask? Because in TBLT, learners should largely have to rely on their own linguistic resources to complete the activity and there is a clearly defined outcome other than the use of language.

In short, this means that asking learners to use specific structures or vocabulary to complete a task ≠ using TBLT.

The view from the CEFR (2020)

Although the CEFR (2020) is very clear that it does not prescribe a specific method, its action-oriented approach definitely develops the rationale behind the use of tasks:

“ The CEFR takes an innovative stance in seeing learners as language users and social agents, and thus seeing language as a vehicle for communication rather than as a subject to study. […]

The methodological message of the CEFR is that language learning should be directed towards enabling learners to act in real-life situations, expressing themselves and accomplishing tasks of different natures […]
This is not educationally neutral. It implies that the teaching and learning process is driven by action, that it is action-oriented. Above all, the action-oriented approach implies purposeful, collaborative tasks in the classroom, the primary focus of which is not language. If the primary focus of a task is not language, then there must be some other product or outcome (such as planning an outing, making a poster, creating a blog, designing a festival or choosing a candidate).
(CEFR 2020, pp. 28-29)

What does this mean for teaching grammar and for those of you doing the concorso? To summarise a complex matter, it means that if you claim you’re using tasks in the TBLT sense, you can’t really prescribe what language learners should use.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t prescribe what language learners should use: if you use a PPP lesson framework, for example, chances are that you will be telling students what target structures or vocab they will use. If this is your choice, that’s fine as long as you can justify it (and some people, like Jason Anderson, have done this!); however, be careful not to call it TBLT and be aware that this contradicts recommendations in the CEFR.

So how can I teach a grammar structure with tasks?

Strictly speaking, you don’t set out to do a TBLT lesson with the explicit purpose to teach a grammar structure.

What you can do, however, is:

• make hypotheses about the grammar structures that might be needed to perform a certain task. For example, it is indeed plausible to expect that the task of discussing pros and cons and choosing the best social media might involve the functional language of agreeing and disagreeing;
• monitor what the students are saying (i.e. their emergent language), make notes about it and then use it to focus on the grammar. This is what Mike Long calls Focus on form: you build on the students’ existing knowledge and help them fill the gap between their language production and the target language production. So for example, if you heard “yes, you have right but I’m agree with Carla”, you might put this on the board, elicit how to phrase it differently and then add some more examples and language. This way, you will help the students notice the grammar.

Helping students notice the grammar: the case of advertisements

One perfect example of using authentic language to help students notice grammar is advertisements. I recently read this excellent article by Bruno Leys in which he gives loads of examples of ads and how you can use them to prompt students to notice grammar structures, including the imperative, present tenses, comparatives and superlatives.

Here are some examples from Bruno’s article:

How can I learn more?

If you’re studying for the concorso, you will know that the CEFR’s action-oriented approach, TBLT and grammar teaching are among the most common topics in recent concorsi.

If you want to find out more about these, you can try our dedicated self-study course Designing Activities and Lessons for free:

I accumulated hundreds of hours of experience, which I put together in my top tips to pass the concorso.

And in this work, nothing pleased me more than receiving an email from teachers telling me that they had been successful.

That was the case for Sabina Damiani. She sent me the following email:

Hi André!
I just want to let you know that I got 90/100 on the second exam on marine engines!! I worked till 4 a.m., but I pust so much effort into the presentation that in the end, I was able to explain it even better than the first one.

Sabina Damiani

Since I know one of the best ways to succeed at anything is to listen to the story of people who have been through the same, I reached out to Sabina and asked her a few questions about the experience of passing the concorso. Check them out below!

Tell us what you have accomplished after passing the Concorso

After the Concorso, I was lucky enough to get a job as a permanent teacher at a high school not far from where I live. I still can’t believe it, but it’s true!

What were the major challenges you faced when preparing for the concorso?

There were many different challenges to face: first of all, I felt I had to practice the language: I lacked confidence in my fluency and speaking abilities.

Then, I found it very difficult to translate all the theories I was studying into practical ideas and lessons. I worked a lot but always needed clarification about the results of my work.

Ultimately, at the beginning, I felt a bit lonely: when you start to study for a Concorso, the programme is huge, and you feel lost; it is crucial to have someone who shares your anxiety and excitement.

How has LanguagEd helped you?

To fight the loneliness, I started looking for people in the same situation and courses that could guide me. LanguageEd has helped me make things clear.

All the theories and concepts were reorganised, and I was helped to put the theory into practice.

Thanks to the individual consultation, I had the chance to show and discuss my lesson plans with experts and, at the same time, to gain confidence in my speaking. And I felt understood and cared for.

What are your tips for teachers going through the same challenge?

I would suggest clearly defining the things to do and creating a flexible study plan. In my experience, developing a network of people who can support you in this adventure is also essential.

And the last tip is: don’t get discouraged! Sometimes I felt that the difficulties were insurmountable. In these moments, it is important to hang in there and not give up.

Sabina has also told me she’s adapting to her new reality and that she still faces challenges. Her biggest challenges now have to do with motivating and managing the behaviour of more disruptive students as well as preparing lessons with very technical language. I know she’ll be able to manage and she knows she can count on LanguagEd.

What about you? What’s your story? What are your tips? Let me know in the comments!

André

Do these sound at all familiar? In our work with English teachers all over Italy, we have heard these dozens of times. It is not at all uncommon for English teachers to be concerned about their own level of English.

The good news is there is a solution that is cost- and time-effective: English-for-Teaching, a specialised methodology designed to improve English proficiency in the specific field of English Language Teaching, not in general.

Our programme Speak Better Teach Better is based on this construct, so if you…

• teach a foreign language,
• want to improve your English speaking, including your vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation,
• need to discuss and learn new and practical teaching strategies for your classroom

… read on, as our programme might be exactly what you need.

The growing need for better English proficiency in Europe and Italy

It is no secret that English is the global language, but some wonder: is it destined to remain the global language? According to a report from the British Council on the future of English Language Teaching in Europe, the answer is yes: English will remain the dominant language in Europe, and with more people speaking it, teachers will need higher proficiency to keep up (British Council, 2018). Indeed, efforts all around Europe are being made to improve teacher proficiency in English.

The Italian case is a perfect example of this. Only about a third of Italians claim that they can have a conversation in English (European Commission et al., 2017) and a number of government policies have been in place for the past two decades to improve English language teaching. These ranged from the Progetto Lingue at the start of the century and have evolved with the introduction of CLIL in schools in the early 2010s and of the INVALSI English test at all levels of public education.

And that’s not all: since 2017, English is a requirement in all public concorsi – meaning that some English proficiency is always required to access a public government job.

This is especially true of teaching: in the 2020/2021 concorsi, teachers of all subjects had to show they had a B2 level of English as a minimum, while English teachers needed a C1 level.

Indeed, spoken proficiency is one of the three criteria used to evaluate teachers’ oral exams in the concorso ordinario, as explained in the quadri di riferimento:

The “oral interaction” criterion focuses very specifically on production and comprehension on teaching-related topics:

Teachers’ English proficiency: a vital competence, a potential obstacle

Many teacher development programmes assume that English language teachers have a good level of proficiency and thus do not work on developing it. However, language proficiency is a vital aspect of teacher competence – indeed, the first one listed by Jack Richards (2010) in his model of teacher competence:

So, if teachers’ English proficiency is regarded as so important by governments and society at large, what do teachers themselves think and how does it affect classroom teaching?

In terms of what teachers think, research suggests that especially “non-native” English teachers may perceive their proficiency as low and be concerned that it decreases with time (Guo et al., 2022).

This lack of proficiency in turn affects their self-confidence: as Jack Richards (2010: 104) reminds us, “a language teacher’s confidence is [..] dependent upon his or her own level of language proficiency, so a teacher who perceives herself to be weak in the target language will have reduced confidence in her teaching ability and an inadequate sense of professional legitimacy”.

This is by no means only an Italian problem: English teachers’ proficiency is a key aspect of teacher competence that is the subject of many teacher education programmes around the world. An example that is close to home is how important it is as a cross-curricular goal in Erasmus+ projects.

The limitations of a general English approach to enhance English teachers’ proficiency

English Language Teaching is a very peculiar subject, as English is simultaneously the medium and the content of instruction. In other words, you are supposed to be teaching in a language… that is also the content that students need to develop. This is unique to language teaching and as such, programmes that aim to improve teachers’ proficiency of “general” English are unlikely to be very successful in the short term.

Indeed, research shows (Freeman et al., 2015) that general English courses for teachers, based only on broad CEFR descriptors to define learning outcomes, “do not address or specify the specific demands of language use in the classroom” (p. 131). These might include micro-tasks such as managing disruptive behaviour, explaining pronunciation or giving feedback to a student’s oral production.

A specialised, cost-effective approach: English-for-Teaching

This is why we have researched and adopted an approach that is more effective (and cost efficient!) for language teachers: English-for-Teaching.

English-for-Teaching is an approach that develops the specific command of English that teachers need in the classroom. It is for teachers who use English as the medium of instruction although they also know the students’ first language, use instructional materials (e.g. textbooks) and teach students who are at beginning or intermediate levels (Young, Freeman, Hauck, Garcia Gomez, and Papageorgiou 2014).

English-for-Teaching moves away from general English proficiency to a more useful, time efficient approach for teachers that “can respond to often heard comments that general language training takes too long to make a difference in the classroom. By focusing on the work itself, English-for-Teaching can help teachers make more efficient and effective use of their time, energy, and experience” (Freeman et al., 2015, p. 137)

The LanguagEd English-for-Teaching new programme: Speak Better Teach Better

Based on this research and on years of work with language teachers in Italy, we have worked as a team for 6 months to design a conversation programme based on English-for-Teaching.

The programme is called Speak Better Teach Better and it aims to develop two key aspects simultaneously:

• Speaking proficiency, including fluency, accuracy and use of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation
• Teaching skills, including teaching strategies and knowledge of topics of common interest for language teachers in schools

The programme leverages English-for-Teaching to make sure you get the best value for your time and money. Its methodology is based on these tenets:

If you’re curious about the programme and you think you might like to join it, send us a message at languaged.courses@gmail.com!

So, given this huge amount of Christmas nerdiness, I have hugely enjoyed compiling a list of my favourite Christmas activities for the classroom.

They range from games to more structured activities, from videos to songs and readings, from paper-based to online activities. Most of them can be used flexibly from low to higher levels. One thing they have in common is they all require students to do something that’s not necessarily employ some given language we’ve given them, i.e. they can be used as tasks.

So, without further ado, here they are: my favourite 10 Christmas-themed activities! You can read on or download them as a handy pdf:

1. Christmas bingo card generator (any level)

I bet you have played bingo at least once in your life. Well, so have our students, and we can use that knowledge and that spirit of competition to play a Christmas-themed game (and review a bit of vocabulary while we’re at it). The cool thing? You can quickly and easily create your own set of Christmas bingo cards with this website. Enter the Christmas vocabulary your want to include in the game, decide your settings, click next step and choose “30 cards for free”: here are your bingo cards ready to print!

2. Write a letter to Santa with prompts (A1-A2)

This activity is well-suited for lower levels, though anyone can do it as we could all write a letter to Santa. Thanks to this online activity, students have to answer simple questions and at the end, the website pulls the answers together to form quite a cool letter to Santa Claus.

3. Christmas memory (A1-B1)

Remember Christmas? Have your students play this Christmas-themed memory game: set them a time and ask them not only to play the game but also to write down as many of the things they see. At the end of the set time, which students won the most and also remembers the most words?

4. All I want for Christmas is you: elision game (A2-B1)

If you came to the LanguagEd Day, you’ll remember that in my webinar, I talked about using gap-fills creatively and gave a tutorial on how to use Lyrics Training (and if you didn’t come, you can still watch all the videos and slides). For Christmas, I thought I’d put the two together, so I took the uber-famous song by Mariah Carey and made a gap-fill game with a twist: the words gapped are all examples of elision, i.e. the last sound is omitted in the way they’re pronounced. For example, think about how Carey says “all I want for Christmas is you”: the /t/ in the word want is omitted. Students listen and play the game, then you can ask them if they noticed something in how all the words are pronounced. If they didn’t, you can tell them! This raises their awareness of how English is pronounced in real, spontaneous speech (aside from, of course, training their listening skills).

5. Christmas taboo cards (any level)

Taboo is truly one of the games I’ve played most often in class, especially at the end of long lessons, long days or – as is the case now – a long semester! Print these Christmas-themed taboo cards. Put students in teams and taking turns, one person in the team has a set time (maybe give them a bit more than the one minute in the standard game) and they have to explain the words in bold on the cards without using the other words. You can review some vocabulary in class in the previous days or remove some cards if you think they’ll be too difficult. Better yet: why not give students 20 minutes to make their own cards?

6. Google Santa Tracker (any level)

Did you know Google has quite a few Santa-themed games? My favourite is this Elf Glider. It’s easy to play and accessible: an elf on a glider has to dodge a number of obstacles. Put students in pairs and set them a time (I’d recommend 5 to 10 minutes). First, student A will play the game and student B will write down the names of as many of the objects the elf dodged. Then, the students swap roles. They continue swapping roles until the time ends. If they need help finding the names of the obstacles, they can be allowed to use a dictionary. By repeating the game, they repeat the task: one of the many advantages of task repetition is vocabulary consolidation (not to mention the motivation given by the competition aspect!)

7. December holidays around the world reading (A2 and up)

As you probably know, December is not just Christmas. There are lots of resources out there about the many other festivities celebrated in December but this text is nice and short. You can do lots of things with it: brainstorm all the holiday names students know, ask them to check them against the ones in the text. Or you can print the text, cut it into paragraphs, divide the class into groups and then assign a holiday to each group. After reading about their holiday, each person from each group will join another group and tell the rest of the new group about their holidays. Another idea: divide the students into groups or pairs, give them the names of the holidays and a set amount of time to find as much information as possible about it. Then, give them the text: how many things did they find? How many more did they learn from the text?

8. Video: The Weirdest Christmas Traditions From Around The World (A2 and up)

Did you know that the Austrians believe in Krampus, Santa’s evil twin? Or that the Indians don’t decorate pines but banana and pear trees? These are only some of the interesting weird facts about Christmas from countries around the world that you’ll find in this Buzzfeed video. You can ask your learners to share the weird traditions they know, from their families, hometowns or other places. Tip: you may need to slow down the video to help learners understand.

9. Twenty questions on Christmas (any level)

This game can easily be customised for any level. In groups or even as a whole class, one learner chooses a Christmas object and all the other learners can ask up to 20 yes/no questions to guess what the object is. If they guess with 20 questions, they win. And I bet you can see the grammar benefits of this straightaway: it’s a great chance to review and consolidate the interrogative form and short answers (yes, it is/yes, it does, etc).

10. Submit your New Year’s wish to the Times Square wishing wall (any level)

I’ve left this for the end because I’ve done this one for years and my students always enjoy it. It has real value and it’s a prime example of a proper real-life task. As you probably know, Times Square in New York is the place to be for New Year’s Eve, with its traditional celebration: the ball drops (and you can watch it live, by the way), confetti flutter all around, everyone is happy. The brilliant thing is anybody can write a wish for the new year, submit it to the Times Square website and it will be printed on a real piece of confetti used on 31 December! Students normally get quite excited as their words will be part of a real celebration all the way across the Atlantic. To help lower level students, give them some prompts to start their wishes, like “for next year, I would like/I want/I wish…”

So these are my top 10 activities: I hope you like them! If you try out any of them, please let me know how it went!

May I also take this opportunity to wish you all a restful and pleasant holiday season with your loved ones.

If you’d like to download all these ideas in a handy, printable pdf, here it is:

Join the Newsletter

​

Join 10,400 teachers (and counting!) who read our Sunday newsletter for teachers!​
​
Penned by researcher, teacher educator and LanguagEd’s founder Chiara Bruzzano, the Sunday(ish) newsletter will give you teaching tips, lesson plans, videos, events and much more.
​
​All for free, straight to your inbox every Sunday morning ​
​
You can also opt in to receive our free PowerPoint template for your oral exam of the concorso docenti.

What do you want to recieve?

Sunday newsletter for teachers

PowerPoint lesson plan template

Subscribe

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6 international speakers

8 interactive talks

100+ activities shared

200 teacher participants

… in two words: LanguagEd Day!

It was a lot of work but now that I have had some time to recover from it all, I can look back on it and say it was really all worth it.

The day was filled with loads of learning, some nice coffee breaks, e-meeting lovely people and furiously scribbling down ideas that I know are going to make my teaching better.

Did you miss it? If you did and you want to catch up over the holidays, it’s no problem: we have put all the video recordings and slides together so you can enjoy them as a mini-course in lesson planning!

You can sign up whenever you like and enjoy 100+ teaching ideas. The course includes 8 videos from the LanguagEd Day, 8 sets of slides and, as bonus content, 2 videos of the Q&A events we ran in October.

But what were my 5 favourite ideas? It was hard to pick since more than 100 were shared during the day, but I’m going to try.

Here they are in video form…

… and for those of you who like reading (can relate!), here they are in written form:

1. Using the coursebook to promote creativity
2. Gap-fills for bottom-up listening
3. Using emergent language for focus on form (“you said/you could say”)
4. Task repetition and visualisation
5. Performance vs. learning

If you’re keen to learn more, read on for the details and the very slides that were used during the day.

1. Using the coursebook to promote creativity, Sandy Millin

ELT writer and former International House Director of Study Sandy Millin shared and gathered from the audience a huge number of ideas to exploit the coursebook quickly and easily.

She took one single page from a very widely used coursebook, English File Intermediate. The page had a dialogue on it and she used it to show how many different ways you can use it.

She shared how we can use the coursebook for memorisation, pronunciation, adding challenge, changing interaction and promoting creativity:

The words “coursebook” and “creativity” don’t normally go hand in hand, right? But Sandy shared activities that do promote creativity, like taking the wrong answer in an exercise and creating a context where it would be right, or replacing key words in a dialogue with “banana” (or any other silly word) to see if your partner can give other ideas or remember the original words.

Sandy was a proper volcano of ideas – she shared so many not only in her presentation but also during her Q&A… can you believe she came up with a board game off the top of her head? Watch her video recording to learn more.

2. Gap-fills for bottom-up listening, Chiara Bruzzano

I know this is a little like tooting my own horn, but many of you know by now that listening comprehension is the love of my academic/teaching life. I’m close to a decade of research on it and I love sharing what I’ve learned in my journey.

I talked about what students from Italian schools say about listening in English (i.e. the topic of my research) and how listening activities may not help students learn how to listen.

Then, I shared how we can make listening activities better. One way is to have some alternative kinds of gap-fills. You know how in gap-fills, students normally have to identify content words, like key verbs, nouns or adjectives? Well, to mix it up and help them develop their bottom-up listening (i.e. ability to recognise sounds, syllables and words), why not focus on grammar words instead (e.g. “I’m”, “you’re”, “and”)? These words are super frequent in language but often pronounced in a reduced form, which makes them hard to understand. Another idea is to give students choices of similar sounding words (e.g. “ways, waze, lazy”), which again forces them to listen very carefully for the sounds.

If you’re wondering what else I talked about, it was mostly listening games to motivate students and then I gave a tutorial in which I showed how to use three free but powerful websites: YouGlish, TubeQuizard and LyricsTraining.

Based on the feedback, I think the tutorial was the bit that people liked the most (so, again, thanks guys for your words of appreciation!)

3. Using emergent language for focus on form, Rachel Tsateri

What can I say about Rachel’s talk? It was insightful, organised, creative. She went through a whole lesson plan and explained why she did what she did (which is exactly what concorso applicants have been doing). If you’re looking for a practical example of how to write a lesson plan and justify each step in relation to frameworks, theories and students’ needs, this is definitely a must watch!

My favourite activity? The use of emergent language (i.e. the language produced spontaneously by students) to “fill in the gap” between their language and the target language:

As the students speak, Rachel makes notes of what they said, puts examples of these on the board and then offers alternatives that are closer to the target language. In this example, she was teaching modals for speculation (e.g. ‘she must be your mom – she looks just like you!’): she took what the students said, like “he’s your husband” and offered a better alternative that incorporated the modals she was teaching, i.e. “he must be your husband”. This activity promotes grammatical accuracy because it helps students notice the gap between their production and the target language production – the idea of “focus on form” in TBLT.

Rachel shared her whole eclectic method for teaching grammar. If you’re looking for a flexible method you can use to teach grammar or plan a lesson with a grammar element, Rachel’s is the talk to watch.

4. Task repetition and visualisation, Sarah Priestley

An idea that was discussed from various perspectives during the LanguagEd Day was that of task repetition. Task repetition means repeating a task at different times or in different ways: for example you may first do an activity in pairs, then individually. Task repetition has long been known to help second language acquisition – see what Scott Thornbury has to say about this, for instance.

Sarah discussed this in the context of helping lower level students and managing mixed ability classes in speaking activities. Mixed ability classes are not only, like Sarah said, pretty much all classes; they are also the reality of most school-based learning, particularly in Italy.

One activity that I loved from Sarah’s talk was the Venn Diagram:

Here, two students don’t just do a speaking activity in which they say what they are/aren’t going to do at the weekend: they build a Venn Diagram to show which activities they have in common with their partner. They then repeat the same task with another partner. This helps them visualise their learning, use a tool that they know from maths, make their learning more tangible and consolidate the vocab/grammar by doing the task twice.

5. Performance vs. learning, André Hedlund

Our cognitive scientist in charge André Hedlund closed the day with his talk on aims, assessment and outcomes, a topic that I know is close to the heart of many who are doing or have done the concorso.

André shared what I think is a very important truth:

So how do we assess what sticks with us? André suggested doing it through “visible thinking routines”, i.e. activities that make thinking visible, so we can access what our students are really learning. You will find loads of examples of visible thinking routines on the Project Zero website at Harvard University.

So, what is your favourite activity? Let us know in the comments!

If you would like access to the 100+ teaching ideas that were shared during the LanguagEd Day, access them via our website:

Indeed, some teachers are still waiting for their concorso ordinario and concorso straordinario bis oral exams. Some others are just wondering whether the day could be useful as preparation for future concorsi.

The short answer is: yes.

We know that there will be both teachers who are preparing for the concorso and teachers who have already passed it or are not doing a concorso at all, so we have made sure the day caters for all these teachers.

Here are 7 ways the LanguagEd Day can help you pass your concorso:

1. It focuses on lesson planning

All the talks are concerned with different aspects of lesson planning, from structuring a lesson with the coursebook to using activities for oral skills, to mixing frameworks. This will help you understand how to plan a lesson more quickly and easily and with a clear rationale.

2. The sessions are tailored for secondary school

Because our audience is 99% school teachers, the speakers have customised the sessions so that they are useful for middle and high school students. This also means low and mixed levels, with reference to A1, A2 and B1 levels. These are the levels and types of students covered in the concorso tasks.

3. You get the right mix of theory and practice

As you know, the presentations you will have to do for the concorso (and/or any future essays or exams for future concorsi, if the past exams are anything to go by) are based on your understanding of the theory and your use of the theory to justify your teaching practice. In the LanguagEd Day, the speakers will present some theory and use it to justify their teaching tips.

4. There is a focus on assessment and learning outcomes

Various sessions, including especially André’s Making Learning Visible through Aims, Assessment and Outcomes, include an explicit focus on how to reach your learning outcomes and how to assess them. This is part of what you will be required to do at the exam.

5. You get free access to the LanguagEd self-study courses

For 27 November only, you’ll get a one day free pass to try the LanguagEd self-study courses, which are all specifically tailored for the concorsi and have helped hundreds of teachers pass the concorsi and gain their qualifications.

6. You can use all the videos and materials for a year

All the sessions are recorded and all the speakers will make their slides and worksheets available: you get to enjoy access to all these materials for a year, so it becomes a mini-course for you!

7. There is a focus on easy and practical teaching ideas

There’s no way around it: with the concorso being the way they are, you have little time to prepare and need to think on your feet. During the LanguagEd Day, you will learn dozens of easy to implement teaching ideas. You will then be able to apply them easily to your exam task when the day comes.

I hope this answers your question. If you’d like to join us on 27 November and/or watch all the video recordings later, register now!

It includes articles, videos, photo albums, social media accounts and more!

Lesson Plans

First off, here are three lesson plans on the life of Queen Elizabeth II and monarchy:

• Lesson Plan: The Life and Legacy of Queen Elizabeth II – The New York Times

• Queen Elizabeth II – Famous People Lessons

• The role of a monarch – BBC

The Sapphire and Platinum Jubilees

The Queen died during her 70th year as a monarch, i.e. her Platinum Jubilee. Prior to this, she celebrated 65 years as a monarch, i.e. her Sapphire Jubilee. Here are some Queen Elizabeth II lesson plans on the jubilees:

• Elementary news lesson: Elizabeth II celebrates 65 years as British queen – OneStopEnglish

• Queen’s Platinum Jubilee – Breaking News English

• Why is the Platinum Jubilee important? Primary Lesson Plan – Historic Royal Palaces

• The Queen’s Jubilee – Canadian Geographic Education

A life in pictures and words

Have a look at the following resources on which you can base a short lesson going over the Queen’s life via pictures and key remarks from her speeches:

• Queen Elizabeth II, in her own words: Her most memorable remarks – The Washington Post

• 57 Photos of Queen Elizabeth II’s Life and Reign Through the Years – Oprah Daily

• UK’s Queen Elizabeth II dies at 96 – Al Jazeera Newsfeed

The Royal Family websites and social media

These are perfect sources to do a WebQuest activity where students can find information on their own:

• The Royal Family – Twitter account

• The Royal Family – Instagram Account

• The Royal Family – website (where your students can also sign a book of condolences)

Controversy and colonialism

Although Queen Elizabeth’s death has had huge resonance worldwide, it has not been without controversy: not only has the republican cause in the UK gained traction, but many have been quick to point out how the monarch was a symbol of and an aide to British colonialism, the consequences of which are still felt by many today. Here are some resources you may want to look at if you want to have a Queen Elizabeth-themed lesson on these issues:

• Republic – website of the Republican movement, with resources on how and why they want the monarchy abolished

• Five ways the monarchy has benefited from colonialism and slavery – The Conversation

• Elizabeth II Was an Enduring Emblem of the Waning British Empire – Smithsonian Magazine

• Queen Elizabeth’s death revives criticism of Britain’s legacy of colonialism – NBC news

• ‘Monarch of a thieving empire…’: Carnegie Mellon Prof’s tweet on Queen Elizabeth II sparks fury – Mint

I hope you have enjoyed this post and let us know if you use any of these ideas. If you want to find out more about how you can turn these ideas into lessons, have a look at our lesson planning courses!