We 'use' the Unlocked books for 7-19, but next year for 7-9, we will use Pearson and Cambridge Unlock for Reading and Writing.
Just a heads up, but Cambridge is canceling their exams for the year.
We have been told the assignments should take 30-90 minutes. Here is what I am doing with my students.
For 11th grade speaking and listening:
-The last unit we had covered was on tourism so I had them make a poster promoting a city or country of their choice. At some point I will have them do a presentation on it.
-Corona virus: create a 2-3 minute video presentation on the Corona Virus.
Some questions to answer
-How is it affecting your life?
-What are your thoughts on the government's reaction and response? Too slow, just right?
-What could have been done differently?
10th Grade(Speaking, Listening, reading, and writing)
-Find some motivational videos on YouTube and then have them write an essay on it while answering a few questions based on the video.
-Reading a short short that already has some questions attached. Here I am nice and not making them write essays, but a couple sentences to answer the question.
I also teach Jr. High, but in speaking and listening, but since that is more practical, the reading and writing teacher is doing the assignments for them.
Thanks for this. What I did find interesting was that your school seems to arrange classes around those two clusters of macro skills. Is that a productive approach for you? It's interesting to see how different schools do things. Our school doesn't use textbooks, that was a bit odd to me at first but I'm getting used to it...
Your activities seem to offer a lot of choice and I imagine that they are quite motivating for the kids. I've found task-design to be fun but quite time-consuming. Trying a structured discussion with my grade 8s this week on the new Burger King 'Rebel Whopper'. We're a veggie school but the kids aren't necessarily that way inclined outside of school. Hopefully it keeps their attention.
We are a national plus school(a Christen school too) and I'm the only native teacher, but we have two teachers from the Philipines(one for math and the other jr. high English). They do give me lots of flexiablity on how I present things. I prefer this over some of the material EF has and what EF has taken away.
For Listening and speaking, they only meet once a week where reading and writing meet twice a week.
I try to get them to use critical thinking and explaining their answer and 10th grade hates me when it comes to essays. I also have the mindset of not just getting them to pass the class now, but prepare for the next level.
Some of the tasks I give them, I want it to be time-consuming. I want to give them the time to think and process their thoughts. I had high hopes for some of my 10th graders for the Cambridge Exam and almost all of 11th grade in the IELTS.
The teachers on this thread may find this facebook group helpful.
Log into Facebook
Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.www.facebook.com
120K+ members in a matter of a few weeks from opening.
This may not make you a better teacher but.....!
Cambridge are running a week of webinars from 18-22 May. Free, but only (only!) to the first 5000 sign ups.
You can see the topics and sign up here - https://www.cambridgeasia.org/