1. EAQUALS 2019 Webinar Series 

Date: 27th November 14.00 (UK time)
Click here to join webinar at 2pm (UK time) on 27 November

Jill Coleman: Make Outstanding the Norm

‘Satisfactory’ is no longer good enough. Bell is a well-known provider of language courses in the UK and overseas, and as a management team we decided that our goal should be to achieve excellence in language teaching and learning in every classroom.

Students expect an excellent learning experience when they study in a language school. This talk will look at the practical initiatives which we have recently introduced in order to show the teachers in our schools what we expect of them, to encourage them to be reflective in their practice, to strive for excellence, and not simply be satisfied with ‘ok’ lessons.

These are linked to each other and include:

‘The Bell Way’ – 6 principles underpinning our approach to teaching and learning and demonstrating our commitment to our learners. These feature in each new teacher’s induction programme.
A comprehensive CPD programme, which takes into account the fact that some teachers are newly qualified with a CELTA, while others may be teacher trainers or have 30 years’ experience.
Annual quality assurance observations, which set the agenda for the year in terms of the performance management process for individual teachers. Analysis of the results of these informs the future direction of INSET sessions.
Developmental and peer observations, which play an important part in helping teachers to focus and reflect on specific aspects of their current practice.
A programme of teacher research, mainly in the form of supported experiments conducted by individual teachers. Every year each teacher chooses a research question and devises a robust cycle of experimentation / research which seeks answers to it. Conclusions are shared with colleagues.

Meet Jill Coleman

Jill has worked in education throughout her career and has been at Bell since 2008, in various roles. For the past two years she has been Learning and Teaching Manager at the Cambridge School. She works as part of a team promoting the highest possible standards of teaching and learning – so she strives towards ‘making outstanding the norm’.

2. Macmillan Education Webinar: Jon Hird – Extended Speaking in the Classroom (and the Importance of Planning)

Agenda: This practical webinar considers the importance of pre-task planning in classroom speaking activities and looks at research evidence of how this can result in significantly increased fluency, complexity and grammatical accuracy. We will look at how a planning stage can be integrated into a speaking activity and along the way we will listen to and briefly assess a student undertaking a classroom speaking task. The session will be illustrated with material from Language Hub.

Date & Registration links:

20 November 2019
10:00 AM Europe/London
Register

20 November 2019
04:00 PM Europe/London
Register

About the Speaker

Jon is based in Oxford, UK, where he divides his time between teaching English at the University of Oxford, teacher training and writing ELT materials. Jon has a particular interest in Grammar, English for Academic Purposes and dyslexia and learning English. He has written and contributed to a number of ELT publications, including co-authoring the B1 level of Macmillan’s brand new course book series ‘Language Hub’.

3. Happy Teacher’s Day!

We would like to take this opportunity to celebrate our Teacher’s Day.