28 March 2017 / by Radmila Gurkova

An engaging Friday meeting on classroom engagement

In his previous blog post How to engage students in the classroom & beyond, trainer Vincent Chieppa shared some insight about classroom engagement. The team at Oxbridge, as part of their continuous teacher training and development, devoted a meeting to brainstorm and role play the proposed tips and guidance. We walked in our students' shoes by becoming learners for one hour. The results was very revealing: we all remembered better when the vocabulary was contextualized and when we were engaged in the topic.

Memorizing, as part of the learning process, often occurs at a subconscious level while being engaged in what we are doing. The conclusions of this meeting really made the difference and teachers have better notions now of how closely related the degree of engagement and motivation is to the process of remembering and learning.

In this meeting Vincent achieved exactly what the purpose of this learning activity was: to engage teachers in a fruitful discussion and to make them aware of how to appeal to students' emotional side and use suspense to boost motivation and concept retention.

The smiles and laughs speak for themselves. Objective achieved!

 

26

May 2015
Teaching in Barcelona
by Elena Riches
If you're looking to become a TEFL teacher in Barcelona you might want to know when the best time to go there is and what the pros and cons are of teaching in Barcelona. English teaching tends to have a annual cycle as many Spaniards and Catalans sign up fo...

19

May 2015
Learning Styles
by Elena Riches
In one of my blogs I wrote about teaching styles in 'The Art of Teaching English', today I'm going to write about learning styles. As diffe...

12

May 2015
Approach to Successful ESP Classes
by Elena Riches
How does English for specific purposes (ESP) differ from English as a second language (ESL)? In ESP classes the student has a purpose to learn English whereas with ESL they simply want to learn English to be able to converse with English speakers. What kind of people want to learn ESP? ESP students are u...

05

May 2015
Using Authentic Materials In The Classroom
by Elena Riches
Following on from the previous two blog posts, which you can read here and ...

01

May 2015
How to... design paperless ESL activities
by Vincent Chieppa
...

28

April 2015
Classroom atmosphere
by Elena Riches
In the blog I wrote before this one (which you can read about, here) I talked about how student attitude is an important factor of success in learning a foreign language and went on to talk abo...

24

April 2015
Chaotic classroom case studies: Tackling the troublemakers
by Vincent Chieppa
...

21

April 2015
Teacher/Student Relationship
by Elena Riches
An important factor of success in learning a foreign language is the student's attitude towards it. A student who considers the learning of English as a positive and rewarding experience is less likely to suffer from foreign language anxiety. However, their attitude is very often influenced by the following: a) teacher/student relationship...

17

April 2015
Extensive and intensive ESL activities: Gist for the fun of it
by Vincent Chieppa
...

14

April 2015
The Challenges of Becoming a TEFL Teacher
by Elena Riches
Life is full of challenges; from learning how to walk to learning a new job, throughout your years, you will come across things you can do easily to things you find extremely difficult to master. The question is, do you continue trying or do you simply give up? In my previous blog I spoke about it ...