TeachingEnglish newsletter 09 May 2018

TeachingEnglish - the global home for teachers 09 May 2018 Welcome to the TeachingEnglish newsletter This week we have a new free book for you to download - ELT Research in Action: Bridging the Gap between Research and Classroom Practice. To celebrate UN International Day of Families, we have a new lesson plan for your young learners - 'Day of Families'. For teenage learners we have a lesson about how King John broke his promises after sealing the Magna Carta. And we have a speaking activity for adults in which they choose a city to live and work in. We are also offering you a free training module to try on language assessment. And finally, our featured talk from IATEFL 2018 this week is 'Effective peer assessment as a step towards independent learning'. We hope you find these resources useful. Deb TeachingEnglish team Teaching kids In 1993, UNESCO declared 15 May as being International Day of Families. Most primary coursebooks include a unit on families, but they are usually very traditional, with mum, dad, a brother and a sister. This lesson provides teachers and primary children with an opportunity to see different kinds of families that might better reflect their own experiences. Children do a series of simple and supported vocabulary and reading activities which lead to them writing about their own families. [Go to the lesson plan]( Teaching teens This lesson is about the Magna Carta and the promises that King John broke after he sealed it. The lesson provides students with information about the sealing of the Magna Carta and lists ten promises that King John broke. It allows students to develop reading skills, identify and use 'will' for promises and develop legal vocabulary. [Go to the lesson plan]( Teaching adults In this speaking activity, students think about and discuss a city they would like to live in for a year. The activity is based on themes from the British Council OPENCities project. Students brainstorm what they know, consider what information they need to know and research the information. They can then work in groups to create a small poster about the city they research and present this to the class. [Go to the activity]( Development This free training module provides an introduction to the topic of language testing and assessment (LTA) and why it is important for both teachers and students. The materials in this toolkit were developed as part of a British Council-funded research project which explored teacher attitudes to assessment and their training needs. In this module we will explore what is meant by language testing and assessment literacy and why they are important for both teachers and learners. [Find out more]( Events In this week's featured talk from IATEFL 2018, Agnieszka Luczak focuses on the importance of peer assessment and various ways of incorporating it into classroom routine. She shows how this practice helps her students develop independent learning skills. She also provides some practical ideas on how to enable students to assess each other's progress effectively in an engaging manner. [Watch a recording of this talk]( Magazine IATEFL Research SIG has published an open access book entitled ELT Research in Action: Bridging the Gap between Research and Classroom Practice. The book is aimed at teachers who wish to be more actively engaged with research in ELT, and it seeks to continue the conversation between researchers and practitioners. Edited by Jessica Mackay, Marilisa Birello and Daniel Xerri, the book is divided into three sections and consists of contributions by a wide variety of authors from different international contexts. [Read more]( You have received this newsletter because you registered on our website or previously showed interest in British Council news. If you wish to opt out of future newsletters, please unsubscribe [here](. British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London, SW1A 2BN United Kingdom [SafeUnsubscribe™ {EMAIL}]( [Forward this email]( | [Update Profile]( | [About our service provider]( Sent by teachingenglish@britishcouncil.org in collaboration with [Constant Contact]( [Try it free today](