Teaching Courses for excellence in your Community Language School
_{Free for NSW Community Language Schools}

Welcome! Learn how the courses here can help you to target areas of your teaching that you might want to improve.

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An introduction to the different levels of planning, from 'big picture' for a whole year, to individual lessons.

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A Teaching Program is like a map (with not much detail) for the learning journey you want to share with your students. It's where you start your planning, thinking about the big picture of your lesson content for each term.

Learn how to write a Teaching Program.

An introduction to the art of planning a balanced, well-structured lesson

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Discover effective classroom management strategies to prevent and respond to problem behaviour.

There are lots of things you can do to prevent disruptive and anti-social behaviour from happening in your class.

My favourite is to use the beautiful behaviour flashcards, in language, to establish and reinforce the behaviour we want to see. Access these flashcards and lots more in this course.

Learn how to use techniques that will enliven and actively engage your students while, at the same time, giving you opportunities to measure students' learning - their understanding and skills - to do formative assessment.

These techniques are gold!

Learn about the type of questions to ask, the importance of the pause, and really listening to the answer to use it as formative assessment.

The 2022 NSW Modern Languages syllabus states that communication is the central goal in language learning.

The Pair-share is a perfect way to give students opportunities to strengthen their communication skills. Learn how to set it up for success.

Pointing is an active way for students to engage with print that gives you feedback for your formative assessment.

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Do you always call on students who raise their hand to give an answer? Or do you call on students randomly?

Both approaches are useful, but not many teachers call on non-volunteers. In this course learn why this is a great strategy to use in your teaching.

I love using mini whiteboards in language classes. They are a powerful and engaging way to get every student to write in language and when you invite them to "chin it", you get feedback in an instant on everyone's learning.

In this course, learn lots of different ways to use the mini whiteboard in your language class.

Also learn how to make your own low-cost mini whiteboards.

Giving great feedback improves student learning, research shows this to be true.

Feedback is a really important part of your students' learning.

Learn what makes feedback great in this course.

In Part 1 learn how to make your feedback timely and effective.

Learn about giving feedback on both products of students' work and their learning process.

In Part 2 learn how to relate your feedback to your learning goals.

What are Learning Goals and what do they have to do with feedback? Learn all about this in this course.

Part 3 is a bonus! In Part 3 learn how your verbal responses to what students say can really enrich their language learning.

Learn these special techniques: Echo, Elaborate, and Explain

Watch examples in Community Language Schools.

This course contains various strategies to help students (and teachers) to transition mentally and physically into time for focus and learning.