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1. Building and Sustaining a Culture of Belonging

   In: American English Webinars Format(s): Text, Video

   This session, "Building and Sustaining a Culture of Belonging," explores activities to build student-student and teacher-student relationships within a language class setting that affirm students’ identities and improve students’ sense of belonging.

2. Practical Activities for Balanced Listening Instruction

   In: American English Webinars Format(s): Text, Video

   This webinar will introduce activities to develop students' listening skills in all of these areas; these activities can make your listening instruction both easier and more effective.

3. Changing Homework Habits: Rethinking Attitudes

   In: English Teaching Forum 2003, Volume 41, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   There are a number of reasons why students forget, ignore, or reject homework, but what can a teacher do to encourage students to complete homework? The author argues that students' habits are a reflection of the teacher's attitudes about homework. The article introduces eight points that can help create a more homework-positive classroom. They include assigning the right amount of homework, always remembering to correct homework, accepting late submissions, and changing the time during the lesson you assign homework.

4. Keep it Moving: Ideas for Fun, Active Classroom Activities

   In: American English Webinars Format(s): Text, Video

   During this session, Regional English Language Officer Kevin McCaughey shares his approach to a dynamic classroom space: The Movable Class. Kevin explains how this approach will help you to use more group work, design student-centered activities, and become a more confident classroom manager, all while you and your students have more fun!

5. Morning Discussion as a Communicative Activity

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 4 Format(s): Text

   This article describes freshman university students in China. They started their day with Morning Discussion, a student-hosted discussion of relevant topics. BBC and VOA reports were useful sources. The discussions offered opportunities for negotiation, clarification, and building communicative competence. As students took responsibility for the topics, classroom set up, and participation, their confidence grew. This was very successful, as shown by comments in students’ weekly diaries. Instructors stayed out of debates and did not interrupt to offer corrections.

6. Sing Out Loud Word Play: Music Resources for English Language Teachers

   In: American English Webinars Format(s): Text, Video

   This session, "Sing Out Loud! Wordplay: Music Resources for English Language Teachers," shares a new resource you can find on the American English website—diverse, music-based instructional materials that include free, downloadable audio tracks, videos, and classroom-ready activities. These low-prep activities are student-centered and fun for both teachers and learners!

7. Understanding and Teaching Generation Y

   In: English Teaching Forum 2012, Volume 50, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article responds to the challenges of teaching Generation Y students, who are tech-savvy and feedback-dependent visual learners. Because "Gen Y" students are less likely to engage with traditional classroom teaching methods, this article is helpful in identifying specific activities teachers can employ to utilize students' attraction to digital media, multi-tasking, and a sense of global purpose.

8. Tools for Activating Materials and Tasks in the English Language Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2009, Volume 47, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   This article presents techniques to make classroom materials and tasks more interactive and student-centered and thus motivate learners to take more control over their own learning. It demonstrates these techniques through elicitation, gapping, and adaptation/extension strategies. The article offers examples of classroom activities with detailed instructions to show how teachers can use materials and tasks in the English language classroom to address students’ interests, needs, and goals.

9. Keeping Discipline in the Classroom

   In: English Teaching Forum 2004, Volume 42, Issue 3 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the challenges of keeping order in the classroom and provides suggestions for fostering an environment of mutual respect. The article looks at what students expect of teachers as well as temporary games and long-term strategies that students use to take control from the teacher. Some practical solutions to discipline problems include keeping students’ attention, establishing clear rules together, and addressing discipline problems by using nonverbal and verbal cues before reacting to the problem.

10. Word Bricks- Parts of Speech

    In: Activate: Games for Learning American English - Word Bricks Format(s): Text

    In Part of Speech, teacher gives the players a specific pattern to use, and their sentences must follow this pattern. Students use Word Bricks to build sentences individually, in pairs, or in small groups. This activity is great for lower proficiency level students, as it provides scaffolding to help students generate a correct sentence.

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