Teaching and Learning Activities
Higher Levels of Learning
*How to produce big gains in your student learning
While preparing to teach, or throughout the semester, ask yourself what am I doing to encourage my students to:

learn how to learn
be motivated
help them change their values
learn how to interact better with other people [...]

·        Absence Thinking: Think about what is not there .
·        Art streaming: Keep creating until you get through the blocks.
·        Assumption Busting: Surfacing and challenging unconscious assumptions.
·        Attribute Listing: Listing attributes of objects and then challenging them.
·        Brainstorming: The classic creative method for groups.
·        Braindrawing: Good for reticent groups.
·        [...]

Almost all teachers come across a student, student personality type or even whole nationality or age group that meet their grammatical explanations, suggestions for self-study or ideas on how much error correction they need with a sceptical look or even a “That’s not right”. With other types of people the fact that they do just [...]

Peer observations are when people are observed by someone at the same level, usually meaning a fellow teacher rather than a senior member of staff such as a Director of Studies. The person who observed then gives some feedback, which could be anywhere from a simple “Thanks, I thought it was great” to written feedback [...]

Gargoyles
Students design gargoyles for modern buildings, e.g. metal ones for Guggenheim in Bilbao
 Armour
Students design armour for a present policeman, solider, American football player or teacher in a rough school using medieval technology
 Pilgrimage
Students play a board game on taking a pilgrimage, role-playing difficult situations such as meeting bandits and pirates
 Humane inhumanity
Students roleplay a lord and someone [...]

by Judy Yero
 Many research studies have suggested that the most important factor in student learning in schools is the quality of teaching. Why, then, is so little attention paid to teacher thinking and its relationship to effective teaching? Why do so many books, professional development workshops, and reform efforts focus on what teachers should be [...]

ABSTRACT
Motivation has long been a major problem for most teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) not only in India but also elsewhere. One of the successful ways, if the teacher is resourceful and judicious enough, to overcome this problem, is to use quotations appropriately. The present author employed quotations at the beginning of [...]

All of us recall special teachers - people who not only taught us but inspired us in ways that changed our lives. William Arthur Ward once said, “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
Here are five life-changing values inspired by unforgettable teachers.
The Teachers I Will Always [...]

Tips for the automated teacher- Keeping your self-motivation up and the experience new as the years go by
For a beginner teacher, the idea that you might be able to the get to the point where you can go through a class on automatic pilot usually seems like an unattainable dream, and exactly the skill level [...]

I’m sure every teacher has shaken their heads at one time or another and thought or said “Why don’t those students do their homework?” Although that is usually a rhetorical question that is quickly forgotten once planning the warmer for the next lesson kicks in, I think looking at the real answers can be the [...]