Thursday, 25 January 2018

Activity of the week! Webquests



This week's activity is designed to keep our technology mad students motivated!

Webquests are basically tasks given to students that they must complete by hunting for the information online. The idea is to encourage students to use their love of technology to learn for themselves, with the teacher's supporting and directing in the background.
Webquests are motivating and fun for students, encourage learner autonomy and are an easy way to bring technology into your teaching!

Why webquests?

There are lots of reasons for using webquests in the classroom. They are an easy way to make use of the learning opportunites provided by the internet, which many students have access to on phones or home computers.  Webquests can be used to practise English, but can also easily be used for work on other subjects too.   You could ask your students to find information about history, science or art, for example. 

Webquests encourage critical thinking skills like comparing, categorising, making deductions and analysing mistakes.  They are really useful tools in Competency-based Language Teaching! 

What are the stages of a webquest?

The introduction stage is normally used to introduce the topic of the webquest.  It's here that you'd give background information and introduce any language that the learners will need to understand while completing the task.  

The task section explains very clearly what the learners have to do to complete the webquest.

The process stage is where the learners start working on the webquest.  They are guided and directed by the teacher through a series of activities or research tasks. The activities are web-based and are usually presented in a task document with links the students can type in or click on to access the relevant sites.   

The evaluation stage includes self-evaluation, comparing and contrasting what they've learned with other groups and giving feedback on what they found out or achieved.  It will also involve feedback from the teacher to the students.  

Try example webquests connected to London and zoos here and here

There's more information on webquests here.  

And there's a framework for creating your own webquest here

And look out for a very simple webquest in tomorrow's Friday competition on our Dinternal Education Facebook page. 

Listening as a Lifelong Skill: Free Seminar in Kiev with award winning writer JJ Wilson

Hi Everyone,

With so much focus on Listening for ZNO this year I'm really pleased to be attending JJ Wilson's seminar on listening strategies for real life and exams.

The event takes place in Kiev on Saturday Feb 10th and it's absolutely free!

JJ Wilson is an award winning EFL writer and is the author of books such as 'How to Teach Listening'  and 'Speakout', which is one of our most popular adult and teenage courses.

JJ has taught and trained teachers in over 30 countries and it's a great opportunity for teachers all over Ukraine to get advice on teaching listening and to meet the multi-talented man himself!

Register for free here:

http://events.dinternal.com.ua/wilson10/

See you there! 

Friday, 5 January 2018

Happy New Year

The holidays are almost over and a new term awaits. We hope you've had a wonderful time since we last saw you!  If you were too busy to catch them last month, our December webinars are all now available on Dinternal Education's YouTube channel.  While Michael Hudson's webinar on word lists won't be repeated live, he will be writing a January blogpost for us with some more ideas for vocabulary activities, so keep watching this space. You can also sign up here for our new webinars on ZNO Listening (January 16th and 25th). 

To kick off 2018 we'll be running Friday competitions on our Dinternal Education Facebook page between January 12th and 26th.   As an early clue, the first one will have a small connection to a special visitor who'll be doing three big events for us in February.....


On the subject of competitions, we started an exclusive one for Pearson Partner Schools at the end of 2017. If you missed the details, you can read all about them here.  The closing date is March 31st 2018 so there's still plenty of time to take part.   During January we'll also be making some how-to guides to help students put their videos together and win a trip to discover Britain for themselves this summer.  

Wherever you are in Ukraine, a very happy new year from all of us at Dinternal Education!  Together, let's make 2018 a very special one...



All the best,
The Dinternal Education Team