Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to homeschool quite a few students. The experience was often difficult; having few resources was common. I learned a lot about what it means to learn at home, and I hope sharing this experience will help anyone else faced with the decision to homeschool or not.
I have been teaching English in Morocco for quite a while. I came to the coastal city of Agadir in 2014 and found a lovely community of people from all over the world. Some where here part-time, others made Agadir their home.

Teaching English often means being asked to prepare students to take the IELTS English tests. This can be a daunting task if you aren’t familiar with these tests or how they work. They aren’t the same as taking a general English assessment. The IELTS is a standardised test designed to assess a students readiness for studying abroad. Teaching IELTS can be difficult, but there are ways to make it a lot easier. Here are 5 of them.

Working as a private English tutor offers a lot of freedom and a lot of challenges. It allows you to make your own schedule, control your earnings and build your business. There are many rewards for those who are up for it, and creating a better online lesson is a great way to stay ahead. […]

With the current circumstances, more and more educators are making the switch to teaching English online.

This is a great opportunity to explore the advantages of teaching English online. Classrooms do have their benefits, but online education opens doors for students and teachers to connect anywhere and anytime.

More and more teachers are moving to online teaching as the need for language learning grows. It’s important to be able to deliver an effective lesson to students online, and these 5 tips will get you there.

First, let’s talk about why students are interested in learning online, and what benefits it provides. The most common reason is location. When we’re talking about learning English, there are so many students who just don’t have access to courses or teachers in their area. Learning online provides the opportunity to connect with experienced and qualified teachers.

The way a flipped class works is that you provide your students with the lecture material and examples that would have normally been delivered by the teacher in the classroom. Students are then prepared to practice those lessons in the form of project work, discussions or other activities the teacher has prepared.
This method requires the student to spend more time working with the language than they otherwise might have. They are required to look over the lesson notes in preparation for the class-time activities. The result is faster language acquisition and improved confidence in students.

The best place to start is at the end. I had a friend who would always read the last page of a new book before she started reading it so she knew where it would go. I could never understand how she could read the rest of the book when she knew the ending already.

When you’re only given minimal resources and you have to create a lesson from a book it can be overwhelming. Having an English book to work from can make it easy to get a bit lazy with the planning and just work from the book itself. The problem with this is the book lacks the kind of activities that make the lesson fun and engaging.

Building a lesson plan can be one of the most difficult and overwhelming things for new teachers. Where do you even start?
Depending on how much support is available from your school and what resources you have access, it can be quite difficult.
Sometimes, a curriculum is clearly laid out. The goals are visible and achievable with the resources are easily available. Other times, you are given an old book and told to use your expertise as a teacher to develop a plan.
We all hope for the former but sometimes are faced with the latter.
I’m going to give you a few great tips to help you with lesson planning in this article covering 3 main situations teachers may find themselves in.

Adolescence is a trying time. Hormones, new responsibilities, higher expectations, and more autonomy. It’s a lot to deal with. Knowing how to talk to teenagers can go a long way in helping them understand and retain the information you’re passing on to them.
Careful dialogue
It’s common for teenagers to feel insecure and as a result, on the defensive. When we insist that they have to pay more attention, work harder or focus more, it only makes them push back in a negative way. However, they know what they have to do, and they don’t want to be treated as children.
As educators, we should be approaching teenage students with respect, the same way we would an adult student.

Studies are finding that we do some of our best learning when we aren’t actually paying attention to it. It comes when we’re in situations where we find the information useful, or when our minds have a moment to rest and process the new information.
In fact, studying a language for an hour before going to sleep might get you better results than sitting in a desk for an hour before lunch working in sentence structures.