Once more a brief blog-entry on the Teaching Advanced levels course which is offered to teachers in order to improve our skills in this area. I have been attending classes, which have been meaningful and fruitful.
My motto these days: Put yourself in your students shoes. While preparing lessons, this has been one of my goals. Instead of just thinking of which topic and grammar point/ outcome, I am doing research on how I can make students think critically so that the lesson enters another level than just the informative one. Well, I have been having lots of moments in which critical thinking was triggered by concept questions. One example was when sts had to match titles to stories, I asked them to imagine what the stories could be about. The outcomes were creative and funny, also some lexis parted from the students, peer correction and collaborative learning were going on.
While browsing the net on the topic I found this entry on Thornbury's blog, an eye-opener really. If you have 10-minutes, read it all. If you have 5, scroll down to his likes and dislikes for the language classroom.
 http://scottthornburyblog.com/2013/09/15/back-to-school/
Thanks for reading once more.

Juliette Gaasenbeek