World Teachers' Day 2023 Thursday 5 October

About Thursday 5 October - Day 1 of World Teacher's Day 2023

This was the first day of our three-day webinar event to celebrate World Teachers' Day 2023. On Thursday 5 October we hosted six webinars by ELT teachers and experts from around the world. 

Recordings of all the sessions from Thursday 5 October are available at the bottom of the page

Session 1: Bringing acting to class: the role of role-plays

Speaker: 

Kris Kirby (Hong Kong)

Session information: 

Join this session to see how role-play can encourage students to communicate more freely. Discover techniques to maximise retention and assimilation and discuss how role-plays can provide a flexible, productive extension to a range of lesson topics and promote student engagement. 

Click or tap to download the handout from this session

Session 2: Teaching not testing: spelling with spelling journals

Speaker: 

Olena Gyrych (Qatar)

Session information:

Gain practical ideas on how to use Spelling Journals. Discover how they can be adapted to become more personalised and as self-help tools for students. Participants will receive a sample with several teaching tools and tips on how to adapt spelling journals to your students. 

Click or tap to download the handout from this session

Session 3: Storyline-based virtual city creation for 21st century skills advancement

Speaker: 

Nenad Miladinović (Serbia)

Session information:

Learn how to foster your students' skills through the creation of a virtual city. You will embark on an immersive journey that showcases how a teacher and students can collaboratively transform a fictional city into a thriving community, simultaneously nurturing a wide range of skills and competencies. 

Click or tap to download the handout from this session

Session 4: Encouraging learning through speaking

Speaker: 

Sheona Smith (Spain)

Session information: 

Discover different ways we can encourage our students to speak more in class, building both their confidence in speaking skills in English and demonstrating their knowledge and grasp of the subjects. The session gives practical ideas to increase engagement in lessons with a focus on oral production. 

Click or tap to download the handout from this session

Session 5: Increasing student autonomy inside and outside the classroom

Speaker: 

Jorge Chacon (Venezuela)

Session information:

Join us for this session to examine teachers’ and students’ roles in the classroom and get practical ideas to increase learners’ autonomy inside and outside the classroom. 

Click or tap to download the handout from this session

Session 6: Fostering real-world learning through inquiry-based learning

Speaker: 

Michelle Worgan (Spain)

Session information:

Join us for this session to explore how we can make connections between the language we teach and the real world to make language learning meaningful for our primary learners through inquiry-based learning. 

Click or tap to download the handout from this session

About the speakers

Kris Kirby started teaching in Thailand in 2007 and has since taught English in Spain, England, Vietnam, China and Ukraine, and currently works for the British Council in Hong Kong. He has taught a wide range of ages and levels and has been involved in teacher training since 2016. 

Olena Gyrch has taught ESL and ESP since 2013 for a variety of levels and ages. She has delivered training sessions in British Council Ukraine and Qatar, for the project English for Civil Servants and Police, in the Pharmaceutical college, in America House, ETRD Kyiv, for the Administration of the President of Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence, and other corporate clients. She has also designed courses for one-to-one students and groups. 

Nenad Miladinovic, Ph.D., has taught for over 19 years as a lecturer at the University of Kragujevac and as an English language teacher. He has worked with thousands of teachers on training projects with the British Council, the US Embassy, RELO, and the Ministry of Education. Nenad also has published 3 books and 15 papers in linguistics and ELT, and presented his work at 23 international conferences. 

Sheona Smith is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer in the British Council Spain, specialising in a range of life stages and methodology courses for state-school teachers in Bilingual Programmes. She has collaborated on CLIL projects across Spain and internationally. As well as being a blogger for the British Council Spain Blog, Sheona has presented at many teaching conferences, including IATEFL 2021. 

Jorge Chacon has been working in the field of ELT and English Literature for 8 years. Jorge holds a BA in Modern Languages from Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas. He works as Teacher of English and SEND Champion at British Council Venezuela. His main interests in ELT include learner training, assessment, and teacher training. 

Michelle Worgan is an experienced mainstream and ELT teacher who now writes primary materials. Based in Spain, she has worked on varied projects for international publishers. She is particularly interested in Inquiry-based learning and Project-based learning, and runs teacher development courses on learner-centred approaches.