Pearson is offering a series of webinars this week, the details of which you can see below:

Webinar 1: How to choose the right assessments along the journey to proficiency

Presenter: Nick Laul

In this session we will discuss how to select the right assessment, based on your needs. We’ll explore the various questions to ask and parameters to consider when choosing a type of assessment. We’ll discuss the various outputs you may receive from an assessment and discuss how best to interpret and use them.

Follow the link for further information and registration

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Webinar 2: Breaking protocol: The new realities of assessment with social distancing

Presenter: Andrew Khan

With traditional testing methods still disrupted, many schools, universities and companies have needed to think creatively about how to assess achievement and proficiency.

In this session we’ll look at different models for testing in the COVID-19 era, as well as some of the positive and negative responses to the idea of assessing learners at home, and cover test tips and lessons learned from the delivery of Versant English Tests with Remote Monitoring.

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Webinar 3: Creating a solid base for assessment: Best practices for creating and using scoring rubrics in your classroom and in testing

Presenter: Bill Bonk

In the past, the only way to quickly and easily score second language performance was to make questions that could be objectively scored (such as multiple choice, matching, etc.). But we all know that the world we live in requires us to produce language for communication, not choose A, B, or C.

Performance assessments including interviews, scenarios and conversations are becoming more valued but the required human judgement comes with the cost of extra time and effort, scheduling, training, subjectivity… and scoring rubrics!

At Pearson we use many of these scoring rubrics as the basis for our automated scoring systems which drives our assessments like the Versant English Tests and PTE Academic.

In this session, we will share best practices about how to design and write good rubrics and discuss how you can incorporate them into your own classroom assessments and grading practices.

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Webinar 4: Techniques to help students overcome exam anxiety in speaking exams

Presenter: Dan Shepherd

Students all over the world are underachieving in speaking exams because of nerves – yet it’s something that is often overlooked in class. Whether your students are preparing for in-class speaking tests or official exams like PTE General, IELTS or Cambridge B2 First, there are a number of techniques that you can use to help learners face the big day with confidence. In this practical webinar, we will explore a range of classroom activities and share useful resources that you will be able to use immediately in your lessons.

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Webinar 5: Planning, prioritising, organisational skills for keeping on top of things

Presenter: Rachael Roberts

What we can control: planning, prioritising and organising skills for students and teachers.

Times of great uncertainty like these can cause a great deal of stress as so much is both unpredictable and out of our control. However, despite everything, we still need to help our students develop both their language skills, and their abilities to deal successfully with the world of work in future (whatever that may look like).

In this webinar, Rachael will look at some practical strategies that English teachers like you can use to not only get yourself more organised and in control of what you can actually control, but that can also be used in regular classroom (or online classroom) activities to help your students improve their planning, prioritising and organising skills.

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Webinar 6: Supporting students’ mental health through mindfulness

Presenter: Amy Malloy

How are you? Really? It goes without saying this has been and continues to be an unprecedented time. Without habitual patterns in our day to day lives, it can be hard to know how to predict our own wellbeing needs, let alone our students’. In this practical and theoretical session, we explore what students have been through, what they continue to go through, and how to use both a top-down and bottom-up approach to mindfulness to support their mental health both during and after this difficult time.

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Webinar 7: Building and nurturing creativity

Presenter: Laura Vazquez

Creativity is in all of us. It is that ability that raises humanity above the other living species in our world. Our own attitudes are the key to the realization of the potential within us and our students. To create a climate of creativity in your classroom, you must foster three key elements: physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. In this webinar I will show you how.