Advancing Learning Podcast

Alicja Gałązka picks apart your responses to questions we posed to you in a recent survey aiming to find out more about your experience of teenagers' emotions when they reach teenagehood and how they manifest during learning.

What are the most common 'big emotions' your notice in your classroom?

What strategies do you use to ensure all students feel included and valued in your classroom?

This episode is generously brought you by Find Your Voice. Learn more about this 4-level British English secondary course from Macmillan Education at https://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/courses/teenagers/find-your-voice/course-information

Monica Rodriguez Salvo joins Will and Harry to delve deep into making learning as relevant as possible to make the absolute best of the time you have with your learners.

They discuss if you tap into a student's agency and the things they advocate for, you can find a true purpose for their learning within their own world. The content with which you teach can be based on this information, in order to make a truly engaging and productive learning environment.

Anna Parr-Modrzejewska joins Harry and Will in an episode that digs deep into how grammar is taught in a whole variety of circumstances, from L1 to L2, from implicit to explicit instruction, and from younger to more mature learners.

What's your opinion on how grammar should be taught?
Do you look forward to teaching it, or avoid it wherever possible?

This episode is generously brought you by Academy Stars 2nd edition. Learn more about this 7-level British English primary course from Macmillan Education at https://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/courses/young-learners/academy-stars-second-edition/course-information 

Pere Cortiella Ibàñez and Will Rixon pull apart the true purpose of assessment why it's regarded in the way it is by all its players: the teacher, the student, the parent, the institution and the government.

What is the true purpose of assessment?
How does it help the student?
How might the process of assessing be improved from all the aforementioned perspectives?

The third episode of the Advancing Learning Pod brings Claudia Rey into the fray (rhyming intended). Claudia sets Harry and Will on the straight and narrow with what's important when preparing learners for exams.

I'll give you a clue...it's not repeatedly offering exam practice tasks. It starts with 'fee' and ends with 'dback'.

This episode is brought to you by Macmillan Education's course for young learners, Learning Well. Learn all about it here:

https://www.macmillanenglish.com/learningwell 

Do you feel your classroom is inclusive? To what extent? What does 'inclusive' mean to you?

Sarah Hillyard joins Will and Harry to discuss the multitude of meanings of 'inclusion' and how this might be achieved in the English language learning environment. 

This episode is sponsored by Share with Friends, an engaging 7-level primary course that empowers children to speak confidently in English while fostering respect, inclusion, and empathy. Find out more here: http://bit.ly/3ZDyyx2 

To kick-off the second season of Macmillan Education's Advancing Learning Podcast, Will and Harry are joined by the Eltonix pair, Sea Steele and Sarah Smith to discuss what curiosity is, how brains work when they're curious and how it can be leveraged as one of the most crucial elements to make learning productive.

Learn more about Curious Kids here: https://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/courses/young-learners/curious-kids/course-information 

Harry is joined by Marcela Villan to explore a whole range of classroom ideas that you can use to help your learners to explore the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals in class.

Bookmark this session to keep these ideas in your back pocket for future lesson planning and let's make sure we include our learners in making a positive impact on the environment in how they live and behave.

Claire Bowes, with more than 1.5 million followers across her Instagram and Tik-tok profiles, Englii, joins Will and Harry (not the Princes, the other two) discussing some best practices for getting heard amongst the social media din!

They take a closer look at how teachers can get started if your thinking about creating more student-facing English language content for social media, specifically Instagram and Tik-tok. 

For the second part of this conversation with the wonderful Donna Lee Fields, she probes Harry and Will on their own reactions to certain behaviour in the classroom.

The 3 of them look at 2 scenarios and how might a teacher label them in order to decide on an appropriate response at the moment it happens.

You might also want to know that if this episode is your 'cuppa', then you will almost certainly be interested in Learning Well, an English language course with well-being at its heart. Check out some samples here: https://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/courses/young-learners/learningwell/course-information