About this page
This page is designed to give you a summary of all the activity happening across our TeachingEnglish channels during the month. This includes information about our free online training courses, our Facebook and Instagram Live events, and our online events happening on Zoom - all designed to support your professional development in a specific area of English language teaching and teacher education, and to help you develop as a teacher or teacher educator. We also have a list of practical resources for your classroom that help you focus on different days celebrated by the United Nations.
What's happening in May 2023?
This May we'll be focusing on the theme of 'Assessing learning', looking at Assessment for Learning and giving effective feedback.
Online training
Assessing learning
Help all your learners benefit from and get actively involved in assessment in the language classroom.
In this free four-week online course, you will learn about the following:
- Inclusive assessment approaches
- Engaging with assessment for learning
- Understanding teaching for tests
Find out more and enrol on this free course
How to teach speaking
Develop your understanding of speaking skills and explore teaching techniques and activities which promote oral communication in the classroom for a range of ages and levels.
In this free online course, you will learn about the following:
- Key terms and issues about teaching speaking
- How to select and adapt speaking activities
- The benefits of pair and group work for speaking
- A range of language practice activities for speaking
- How to adapt speaking activities for different ages and levels.
Find out more and enrol on this free course
How to motivate learners
Get learners actively involved in your lessons with effective, engaging learning activities they want to do.
In this free online course, you will learn about the following:
- How to get your learners actively involved in lessons
- The difference between types of motivation, and how you can work with them
- What makes a motivating teacher
- How to improve learners’ levels of motivation
Find out more and enrol on this free course
Online events and webinars
Assessment for Learning - week-long event (online)
This week-long online event is happening from 15-19 May and will feature five webinars with ELT experts from around the world. Attend a webinar each day at 12:00pm (UK time) which focuses on a different aspect of assessment for learning. The webinars are for teachers of primary, secondary and young adult English language learners. This is a free online event.
Each session starts at 12.00pm UK time and lasts for one hour.
- 15 May 2023: Assessment for learning: the road to improvement (Annie Altamirano)
- 16 May 2023: How to assess a cookie: Developing scoring rubrics (Claudia Rey)
- 17 May 2023: Alternative assessment: The portfolio in writing (Vasiliki Vlachou)
- 18 May 2023: Feedback and growth mindset (Jarmila Valkova)
- 19 May 2023: AfL in the primary classroom: practical activities (Adrienn Szlapak)
Find out more and register for the event
Facebook and Instagram Live events in May 2023
We will be hosting weekly events throughout April via our Facebook and Instagram channels. These 30-minute 'live' sessions are an opportunity for you to join teachers from around the world to engage with English language teaching experts on a range of topics and themes that will help you develop your teaching skills, and share ideas and questions with a vibrant global online community.
See what's happening in our community on Facebook
See what's happening in our community on Instagram
Podcast episodes
Listen to episodes from our different podcast series that focus on assessment.
TeachingEnglish podcast - What are your top tips for teaching English?
In this episode of series 2, we ask 19 experienced ELT professionals to give us their top tips for teaching English effectively. These tips cover five key areas, namely: the importance of personalisation and context; criticality; humanistic approaches to teaching language; using social media; and general pedagogy. These concise, focused suggestions will hopefully maximise the learning experiences and learning outcomes in your classes and make your own ELT journey more pleasurable.
Listen to the episode and download the show notes
Education in Focus podcast - Features of successful education systems
Dr Rukmini Banerjee, CEO of Pratham Education Foundation, India, talks about the importance of realistic assessment and other aspects of successful education systems. We also hear from Maya Menon, Founder-Director of The Teacher Foundation, who highlights the importance of long-term education planning and shares her experience of working in India.
Practical teaching resources
Lessons plans and activities on TeachingEnglish
See a list of resources below that you can use to focus on assessment in your language teaching classrooms.
We also have lesson plans that highlight different United Nations days during the month of May.
Assessment for Learning activities
On this page you will find a series of short activities to use in your classroom to support Assessment for Learning, specifically focusing on ways of collecting information, the strategic use of questioning, giving feedback and introducing peer and self-assessment.
Click or tap to go to the activities
International Day of Families (15 May 2023)
Age group: Primary learners
Level: Elementary/pre-intermediate
This lesson provides teachers and primary children with an opportunity to see different kinds of families that might better reflect their own experiences. In this lesson primary children do a series of simple and supported vocabulary and reading activities which lead to them writing about their own families.
Click or tap to go to the lesson plan and download the material
International Day of Living Together in Peace (16 May 2023)
Title of lesson plan: Asking for change
Age group: Secondary learners
Level: Upper-Intermediate (CEFR level B2 and above)
In this lesson, students will read some extracts from famous speeches asking for change, analyse the use of rhetoric (ethos, pathos and logos) in the speeches and then work to write their own persuasive speeches asking for change.
Click or tap to go to the lesson plan and download the material
World No Tobacco Day (31 May)
Title of lesson plan: Smoking stinks
Age group: Secondary learners
Level: Pre-intermediate (CEFR A2 and above)
This lesson begins by focusing on some anti-smoking posters with students discussing the message and effectiveness of each one. They then learn some vocabulary to talk about four key reasons not to smoke: (health, cost, the impact on your attractiveness, and the impact on others). Students then choose one of these reasons and write a paragraph about it, using the vocabulary as appropriate. As an optional final activity, the students design their own anti- smoking poster.
Click or tap to go to the lesson plan and download the material