Teaching Effective Thinking: Brainstorming and Brainwriting
This is my second blog post on promoting creativity in the classroom, following on from EAP Teaching Effective Thinking: Introduction.
Entries by Sharn
EAP: Teaching Effective Thinking Introduction
The World Economic Forum identifies four capabilities 21st century students require: Critical thinking / problem solving Creativity Communication Collaboration These skills are sought after in the Arts, the Sciences, Business, Education, everywhere, really.
CPD Course 6: Teaching English Online
Another FutureLearn course in association with Cambridge University Press & Assessment. This one was really useful. It’s worth taking courses on online teaching regularly as everything online changes so quickly. The courses need to be updated regularly too. This one seems to be quite up to date although they do mention Edmodo at one point […]
CPD Course 5:: Teaching English through Literature
This is a free British Council course. It’s different from the graded reader course as it includes poetry and how to exploit literature to work on all four skills. There wasn’t much that was new to me but I got some good example texts to use.
CPD Course 4: How to use Graded Readers in the English Language Classroom
This is another short course by ‘Language Fuel’ and FutureLearn. It’s a good introductory course explaining Extensive Reading and giving practical ideas for using graded readers with students. I researched this as a resources creator at British Study Centre 20 years ago and the activities were similar. Update: Nik Peachey’s course on ChatGPT […]
CPD Course 3: Using Creative Problem Solving FutureLearn
This is a FutureLearn course created in conjunction with the National Yang Ming Chaio Tung University. It’s another very short, asynchronous course. It is more practical than ‘Unlocking the Creative Brain’, giving a lot of practical suggestions for utilizing the neurological processes involved in creativity.
CPD Course 2: Unlocking the Creative Brain FutureLearn
This is the first FutureLearn course I’m taking, it’s been created by Central Queensland University. I want to understand how to encourage creative thinking in classes, particularly when with EAP students, children and teenagers as teaching creative thinking is becoming more of a feature in mainstream education.
RefuAid
RefuAid is a really positive non-profit organisation which helps asylum seekers in the UK to access education and training to further or adapt their skills to the UK context.
Poems for Business Classes
One common question asked throughout Adrian Underhill’s course was how could we adapt the activities for our more serious courses, the ones whose students tend to have very particular and definite aims in mind, such as Business English courses?
Poetry Festival
Today we finished Adrian Underhill’s two-week course, ‘Pronunciation, Performance and Poetry‘. Everyone had a poem they’d chosen and had been working on over the last week, crafting the stress, pauses and intonation. One student, Lauretta, made a poster, found a performance background image and compered the event. Everyone performed. It was a beautiful way to […]