Over the last year, as many teachers have moved either partly or fully to remote teaching, one question has arisen many times: How do I keep my students engaged online? Whilst many teachers have their go-to folder of ready-to-use adaptable activities, comprised of the likes of board races, role-plays, flashcard games, and many more steadfast materials, the idea of digitising these activities has seemed somewhat impossible. Teachers feel like they have lost their time-savers.
Whilst I can’t offer a solution on how to do a board-race activity through a Zoom lesson (that is impossible), what I can suggest are some alternative tools and platforms that teachers can add to their pre-existing arsenal of hit-the-ground-running classroom activities and exercises. So, in no particular order, here are my top 5 platforms for improving student engagement online. Continue reading
Not only have classrooms around the world moved online, but professional development has too. So, when you’re not in the classroom, you’re now in a different online platform for your professional development as well. The amount of time we spend in virtual rooms and at our screen is higher than ever. We’re always online! But have all of those online professional development events been useful? Chances are you’ve spent as much time trying to find quality professional development as you’ve spent in the training itself! Have you attended webinars where the tech doesn’t work? Where the topic isn’t quite what you thought? Have you rushed from one virtual room, clicked the next link and sat there, bored or uninspired? Or perhaps the webinar was great, but you missed a lot of great points because you were so busy trying to take notes.
This year may have been difficult for everyone across the globe, but it has been especially challenging for teachers. They have had to transform their lessons into online sessions and adapt to rules and advice to keep their students safe and make sure they can continue learning. In this two-part blog series, we contacted 
Have you ever wanted to give your students stress-free practice taking online assessments, without the pressure of taking a real exam? Or have you ever dreamed of finding out where students need more practice, without having to spend hours marking their tests? Our Pretesting Research Partners work with us to trial our exam questions before they become part of our live tests – helping us to shape the future of English language assessment. And it’s completely free! 
Remote teaching is new to many of us, teachers, as well as being new to many students. Even when we are teaching in class sometimes it gets difficult to keep the students on task for various reasons. With schools closing down in many countries, it can be very challenging to engage students for entire online lessons.