As a newly qualified EFL teacher in my first year I’ve been struggling immensely with information overload. There are hundreds of books, online resources, websites etc and what I ended up doing is to gradually, every couple of lessons learn something new, something practical that doesn’t take up a lot of time to adapt (no much free time I’m afraid, especially for new teachers!) and incorporate it into my teaching, I can’t possibly spend all of my time checking every single piece of information sent to me or even worse available online.
I don’t know about you, but ever since I switched to online teaching due to the Coronavirus nightmare, I’ve been bombarded with webinar links, lesson ideas, resources, almost every day, way more than I used to.
I found it extremely overwhelming and frankly I have no time to go through all of it, so again I read one thing or two, I focus on practical ideas, rather than activities that need a lot of time to prep (no time for that) and add it to every couple of lessons so I still enhance my teaching but I don’t fall into the trap of clicking on each link that comes my way.
I’ve been reading Interaction Online by Clandfield and Hadfield (2018) which is full of practical ideas, some of which I adapted as warm ups for my online lessons, mainly with my older teens and adults.
So if you’d like a few practical ideas, I put together a PPT with 5-6 of Clandfield and Hadfield excellent book and I thought I’d share so everyone can use. PS I highly recommend the book!
Hope you find it useful. Let me know if you try any of these.
Eleni
Lessons I learned after I turned 30 
I can’t imagine how hard it is to be a new teacher right now. Much luck on the strange journey.
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Thank you Lisa. It was hard enough before, but having to switch to online after only 5 months into teaching has been a challenge to say the least!
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Hi Eleni, I can definitely relate to your comments about the overwhelming amount of information to sift through. I’m newly TEFL qualified and waiting things out in lockdown in NZ before I make a decision about ESL teaching. I look forward to hearing more about your experience of online teaching and what you’ve found works for you as a new teacher 🙂
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Hi Katrina. Good luck with everything. It is a strange time indeed to be a new EFL teacher right now. I’ve posted about it before but I’m putting together a post (and a vlog) on online teaching as well, a whole new chapter! Stay safe!
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