I have viewed about a dozen different tasks and my impressions are that:

1. There’s a wide range in how broad topics are: for example, a rubric had “talking about online activities” as a topic, which seems a lot broader than, for example, a rubric focusing on a specific piece of literature, such as Macbeth.
2. Task rubrics also differ in terms of the number of parameters they specify: some include specific parameters (e.g. a student has just arrived from Ukraine and speaks English quite fluently; the class is 2nd year lower secondary), some do not.
3. There is a focus on technology in the sense of incorporating technology and digital tools in your lesson. So, if you decide to use textbook materials, try also to incorporate some tech in your lesson and make sure you explain your rationale for it.
4. So far, I have seen no explicit references to Unità d’apprendimento.
5. Some tasks make explicit references to aspects you need to consider in your presentation, for example:

Nella presentazione dovrà esplicitarsi la progettazione di un’attività didattica, comprensiva di:

• Indicazioni normative
• Il contesto educativo
• Finalità e obiettivi educativi e didattici
• La descrizione delle attività da svolgere
• L’allestimento degli spazi
• La durata prevista
• I materiali e gli strumenti adottati (con esempi anche di utilizzo pratico delle tecnologie digitali).
• Metodologie impiegate nella conduzione dei gruppi, se l’attività è prevista in forma laboratoriale.
• Le strategie di personalizzazione.
• Le modalità e gli strumenti per la verifica e la valutazione.

Even if these points are not mentioned explicitly, I would still recommend considering them in your presentation because they are all important to show you have thought critically and carefully about your choices.

How can I organise my presentation?

Good news: we have a free downloadable template that you can use to go over the points outlined above!

Download it:

Example: An AB24 task

Here is an interesting example of a task rubric for AB24:

Outline the plan of an activity to introduce and contextualize the novel Clarissa by Samuel Richardson.

Choose an excerpt to present the book to the class and elicit personal response, taking into consideration the author’s style, vocabulary and key themes.

Decide the type of school, the class, the average CEFR level of the students for whom you are preparing the materials.

Illustrate your choices of content, teaching approaches and teaching strategies.

Present your activity using digital technologies and an innovative approach.

How to go about it? Well, you can complete this whole task with the help of our course Teaching Literature in the Language Classroom! Here are some examples of units that will teach you how to complete it:

Unit 2: Approaches to teaching literature

• Part 3: Personal Response and Reader Response

Unit 3: From theory to practice: Comprehensive Approach and literature in the CEFR

• Part 1: A comprehensive approach to L2 literature teaching
• Part 2: Literature in the CEFR
• Part 3: Practical principles of instruction

Unit 4: Classroom procedures

• Part 2: Stimulating learners’ interest in literary texts
• Part 3: Maintaining learners’ interest

Unit 6: Working with genres: short stories, novels, poetry, drama

• Part 2: Working with genres: Novels

Unit 7: Multimodal literature

• Part 2: Multimodality in language teaching
• Part 3: Pedagogical principles
• Expansion task: evaluating an extended lesson plan

Unit 8: Assessment

• Part 2: Assessment and the CEFR
• Part 3: Pedagogical principles and tasks

Curious? Try our course for free:

I’ve just come back from my holidays and I’ve found a few messages from teachers asking the question:

How can I stay on track with my study?

And isn’t this a fair question? After all, we know the concorso is coming up soon, but we also deserve some time off after the year we’ve had.

So, to help you stay on track, in today’s newsletter, I’m going to share a few free tools and apps with you that you can use to plan your study… and stick to the plan.

1. Effective study techniques

Struggling to stay on task? Read our article on 5 research-based study techniques that will make you more productive: organising your study, using the Pomodoro technique, spaced practice, interleaving and active retrieval through quizzing.

2. MyStudyLife app: planning your study

Do you need to make a plan? You can do it with the free MyStudyLife app: sign up, add your tasks and your exams and follow the plan!

3. Cornell notes video: remembering what you study

Are you learning a lot of materials but struggling to retain it all? Fear not, as you can try a new method: Cornell notes. Watch the video to find out more.

4. Evernote app: managing your notes effectively

This is one of my personal favourites: it helped me get through my doctorate in one piece, so I have a lot to be thankful for. You can use the browser or app version to make your notes, organise them, tag them and search them quickly and easily. An absolute life-saver and time-saver!

I really hope some of this is helpful: it certainly isn’t a great time for studying, but I hope that with these apps and tips, plus our guided self-study courses, you’ll be able to do the best you can!

Want to learn more about this? Subscribe to our newsletter and receive our free materials!

Lately we’ve been thinking about alternatives to your traditional writing feedback and we’ve experimented with screencast technology. Essentially, you can easily create a video of yourself speaking about a learner’s writing assignment! Here is how we did it:

1. Open Zoom
2. Share a Word file with the learner’s assignment
3. Hit “Record” on Zoom
4. Talk to your learner about your feedback for 5-7 minutes

As you click “end meeting”, Zoom will start converting your file and create a video on your computer (or save the video to a cloud, if that’s your setting).

We have created a sample video for you to watch and maybe get inspired! In the video, the teacher gives her learner feedback on his IELTS Writing Task 1. As you will see, she highlights sections in yellow, deletes and re-writes things when necessary and speaks directly to the student: ​

We received great feedback from students on this. They find the videos more accessible and engaging. They also commented that they feel this type of feedback is much more personable and it is likely to be more memorable for them.
On the teacher’s side, once you get the hang of the technical side and you try your hand at a few of these, giving feedback also becomes more interactive and can provide a good alternative when you really can’t face looking at a screen and typing your feedback anymore.

Have you ever tried screencast feedback? Let us know in the comments section!

Do you want to learn more about teaching and assessing writing? Have a look at our best-seller course Language Teaching Methodology – try it for free!