Creative activities for delivering language lessons remotely
Live Online Teaching examines best practices for teaching live online, outlines key strategies and provides practical activities to implement these practices and strategies so that teachers can focus on the art of teaching rather than the mechanics of using an online platform, and enjoy doing what they do best, teach.
We are in a period where teachers have had to turn to live online teaching, perhaps for the first time. They have had to address many problems, beginning with getting acquainted with the mechanics of using platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. They have then had to work out how to adapt their teaching to the constraints of the platform.
Live Online Teaching aims to help teachers with live online teaching on platforms such as Zoom, Teams etc. The book offers practical tips to help teachers with the various tools offered by the platforms. This includes features such as shared screens and breakout rooms. In addition, it offers creative activities for teaching online asynchronously. The book addresses the immediate situation that teachers find themselves in post Covid: having to teach classes remotely, and even in hybrid classes. It takes teachers beyond the emergency teaching for the pandemic into the future normal.
The activities are classified in sections according to the tools used to create a communicative situation and involve students. Each section includes some general methodology and technical tips. This is followed by practical activities to show teachers how to implement the recommended practices into their online classroom teaching. In addition, there is a section that focuses on activities for live classes which acknowledges that sitting for a long time in front of a screen is not always optimal for learning. The authors, therefore, have a range of activities under the topic ‘zooming out’. These involve students getting away from the screen by sending them into their local environment to find something and come back and share it.
All the activities contain a short summary at the start which outlines:
the aims of the activity,
what teaching topic it can be used for,
how long it should take,
what levels it is for,
the preparation needed.
This gives the teacher a good idea of what to prepare and do before embarking on any given activity. Teachers can also locate an activity which practises a specific language point and a section which answers questions they may have about online teaching quickly.
