Ever have sleepers in your classroom?

Here is a post from Edutopia that deals with students that have problems staying awake in class. For more information click on the link below. 

 http://www.edutopia.org/blog/keep-classroom-sleepers-awake-todd-finley
 

Upcoming Industry Events

Here is an event in Singapore that will focus on Supporting Classroom Teaching and Learning. This should be a good one because it will have more presenters from South East Asia. For more details click on the link below and the "webinars/professional development" page in this blog. 

http://www.tesol.org/events-landing-page/2015/06/17/excellence-in-language-instruction-supporting-classroom-teaching-learning#SubscriberID####RND##&PageID=32414 

Professional Developement

Learning and teaching is a lifelong commitment so we as educators must continually find ways to improve ourselves and lift up our industry. If you are a teacher like me, sometimes it is difficult to find time or money to go to a seminar, a conference, discussion group, or meeting. And the content of these is not always relevant to our individual teaching environments. I have been to many professional development events where I have just sat in the room watching these "experts" explain their theories and techniques and I just say to myself "this wont work with my students" or "why am I here"? 

So here is an article from TESOL Connections where you can start your own professional development plan individualized just for you. If you want to teach in Thailand long term it is necessary to get and renew the teacher license which requires verifiable professional development. Click on the "webinars/professional development" page on this blog for more options. 

http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolc/issues/2015-07-01/2.html 

     

Resources for teachers overseas

EFL Sensei has some resources that we have all used before, new and old. This site is geared towards the English teacher overseas. Just click on the link. 

http://www.eflsensei.com/ 

 

Teaching Tips

Here is a site that I found while I was surfing the other day. It is on general topics in teaching, but some things might be useful for ESL.   Just click on the link.


http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/more/management/timesavingtipsforteachers.htm 

From the TESOL Blog

Here are two interesting posts from the TESOL Blog. The first one is about Creating classroom communities in ESL/EFL. 

http://blog.tesol.org/creating-classroom-communities-in-eslefl/ 

Creating Classroom Communities in ESL/EFL

Creating Classroom Communities in ESL/EFL

The second post is about developing writing skills through personal journals. As always the TESOL International Association is a portal to all things in our industry. Please check out these links and the main website. 

http://blog.tesol.org/developing-writing-skills-through-personal-journals/  

 

Criminal record checks for English Teachers

This just in from the Thai Visa Forum. Education institutions in Thailand told to carefully screen English teachers with child sex abuse records. The rules are different for all nationalities. Please check with your local consulate. So if you are applying for a job at a school that asks for this be aware that the process will take more than 3 months. 

Here is the link:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/838672-thai-schools-told-to-screen-foreign-english-teachers-for-paedophilia/?utm_source=newsletter-20150707-1421&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news


And here is a link to the Teaching Thailand Forum which has links on how to get a criminal records check from Thailand. 

http://www.thailandteaching.asia/threads/schools-told-to-screen-foreign-applicants-for-paedophilia.61261/   

OBEC is making headlines again.

Here are 2 posts from the Bangkok Post. First OBEC wants the millions of tablets back that it passed out to Thai schools. I wonder how many of these tablets were actually used for real educational purposes? click on the links below.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/607480/obec-wants-back-1m-tablets-given-out-in-yingluck-scheme



Next OBEC plans to reduce class sizes. Smaller class sizes are a good thing so teachers can spend more time with students on an individual basis. 

http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/607260/thai-schools-to-cut-class-sizes 

Upcoming Industry Events

The TESOL International Association is sponsoring a conference in Mexico. It is supposed to focus on the changes and innovations in our industry in the last 10 years.  Click on the link below. 

http://www.tesol.org/attend-and-learn/academies-conferences-symposia/upcoming-symposia/2015/06/16/innovations-and-breakthroughs-in-english-language-teaching

More from the TESOL Blog

Here are three posts from the TESOL Blog. We as educators must constantly keep up to date in new trends in our industry. This first link is a reading list of books and other sources for teachers.

http://blog.tesol.org/hot-summer-reads-for-esl-teachers/



If you are like me you might sometimes have a student hand in a writing assignment that seems much higher than the student's usual writing abilities and is suspect. Here is a post that deals with plagiarism.  


http://blog.tesol.org/stopping-plagiarism-before-it-becomes-a-problem/


Let's face it, it is very hard to teach sentence structure in any class. It is boring and most of the time students don't like it. Here is a post that gives some interesting strategies for teaching with visual metaphors.  


http://blog.tesol.org/2-visual-metaphors-to-teach-about-sentences/