Teaching & Learning

Digital citizenship, briefly from Anne Collier

A very spooky and happy Halloween for all T&L followers and readers. An enormous "witchy hug" for my Friends, who made my best Halloween moments ever @ Pine Tree! Miss you... a lot. <3

Websites, networks, blogs and social media pages around the globe are gearing up and going Pink for October!  It's our way of helping out and spreading the word about breast cancer.  No corporate sponsors, no ads, just individuals working together to try and make a difference…  So grab some free pink and join in just like we did! Visit Pink for October and get some free badges, buttons and backgrounds.
Being aware is incredibly important, so if you are in need for an update on this matter, visit the National Breast Cancer Foundation or Liga Portuguesa Contra o Cancro.

To check some ways of really doing it, as far as ELT is concerned, please visit:
- Writing Tasks;
- British & American Festivals and Holidays.

1) Set clear expectations for student participation in discussion sessions.
Let students know the first day of class that a significant portion of their final grade for the course will be based on how effectively they participate in class discussion sessions, both in terms of the number of times they comment and in the quality of those comments. Keep your class roster handy during discussion sessions and mark who speaks and who doesn’t. During conferences, ask those students who do not participate enough to "help you out" by speaking more in class.
You might even specify a class rule: "You are not allowed to say ‘I don’t know’ in this class when asked a question. You are not required to know, but you are expected to think. So if I ask you a question and you don’t know the answer, you are responsible to think of an answer, to guess, to speculate, to wonder aloud."
You can also foster effective discussions by helping students move out of the narrow, reductive agree/d…

This Saturday marks the sad day of the death of Steve Jobs, two years ago. More than Apple founder and its long-time CEO, he was a visionary genius, a leader and an inspiration for all lovers of Technology. Steve, you will be forever in our minds. And in all the incredible gadgets, hardware and software we can't live without anymore... As you once said, things sometimes get hard, really hard. Life is full of ups and downs. Nowadays, we are living a time like that, but we'll keep on doing our best to stay as hungry and as foolish as possible to honour the genius of people like you! Thank you.

Teaching & Learning is going on a break for a couple of months.
It has been a year full of hard work and especially difficult in the end because it has been time to say goodbye to very important friends, colleagues, students, places and get ready to face new, hard and very different challenges.
Meanwhile, do enjoy your Summer to the fullest, forget about your worries and be happy!!!
See you soon. :-)