About this page
This page is designed to give you a summary of all the activity happening across our TeachingEnglish channels during the month. This includes information about our free online training courses, our Facebook and Instagram Live events, and our online events happening on Zoom - all designed to support your professional development in a specific area of English language teaching and teacher education, and to help you develop as a teacher or teacher educator. We also have a list of practical resources for your classroom that help you focus on different days celebrated by the United Nations.
What's happening in April 2023?
This April we are focusing on the theme of 'Promoting 21st century skills', looking at creativity, digital literacies and 21st century skills for employability. Below you'll find details of our online events, training and classroom resources.
Online training
Online skills for 21st century skills
Enhance your understanding of digital citizenship and your ability to help learners protect themselves online, be kind to others and assess information they find.
In this free online course, you will learn about the following:
- Your and your learners' digital footprint
- The impact that your and your learners' words and actions can have online
- How to differentiate between different types of digital media
Find out more and enrol on this free course
How to teach speaking
Develop your understanding of speaking skills and explore teaching techniques and activities which promote oral communication in the classroom for a range of ages and levels.
In this free online course, you will learn about the following:
- Key terms and issues about teaching speaking
- How to select and adapt speaking activities
- The benefits of pair and group work for speaking
- A range of language practice activities for speaking
- How to adapt speaking activities for different ages and levels.
Find out more and enrol on this free course
How to motivate learners
Get learners actively involved in your lessons with effective, engaging learning activities they want to do.
In this free online course, you will learn about the following:
- How to get your learners actively involved in lessons
- The difference between types of motivation, and how you can work with them
- What makes a motivating teacher
- How to improve learners’ levels of motivation
Find out more and enrol on this free course
Online events and webinars
Creativity and 21st century skills in English language teaching: mini-event (online)
Join us on 28 April 2023 for this free mini-event featuring four different session. This mini-event will feature four 60-minute webinars with ELT experts from around the world. Each webinar will focus on a different aspect of focusing on creativity and 21st century skills, for teachers of primary, secondary and young adult learners.
The event starts at 11.00am UK time and runs until 16.00pm UK.
- Session 1: There are no wrong answers- confidence and creativity for teens (Teresa Bestwick)
- Session 2: Bringing text alive - Producing a Play (Jasmin Cazal)
- Session 3: English for employability: why and how English teachers should prepare learners for their career journey (Ehsan Gorji)
- Session 4: Drama and creativity in the teen classroom (Siham Merzouk)
Find out more and register for the event
Facebook and Instagram Live events in April 2023
We will be hosting weekly events throughout April via our Facebook and Instagram channels. These 30-minute 'live' sessions are an opportunity for you to join teachers from around the world to engage with English language teaching experts on a range of topics and themes that will help you develop your teaching skills, and share ideas and questions with a vibrant global online community.
See what's happening in our community on Facebook
See what's happening in our community on Instagram
Podcast episodes
British Council TeachingEnglish podcast series
Listen to episodes from our TeachingEnglish podcast that focus on creativity and digital literacies.
Episode title: How can we use virtual reality to teach English?
In recent times, the influence of virtual reality, artificial intelligence and the metaverse in our daily lives has increased. This influence has also been very noticeable in English language teaching in many parts of the world. In this episode, we talk to Nergiz Kern, a leading expert in this field, who talks to us about the past, present and future of these educational technologies. She shares with us advice about how we can get the most out of VR in the classroom with whatever resources we have, wherever in the world we may be. You can find out more about Nergiz's work and research into VR here: https://nergizkern.com/virtual-reality/.
In our field report, we are invited into a VR lesson to see for ourselves how they work, and how they can make our teaching even more effective.
Listen to the episode and download the show notes
Practical teaching resources
Lessons plans on TeachingEnglish
See a range of lesson plans below that you can use to highlight different United Nations days during the month of March.
International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (06 April 2023)
Title of lesson plan: Sports in (climate) crisis
Age group: Upper secondary learners
Level: Advanced (CEFR level C1 and above)
In this lesson, learners will learn about the impact of major sports events on the living planet and the impact of global heating on sports, and explore possible solutions and compromises that the world of sport might need to take to lessen its impact. It would be a suitable lesson to supplement a unit in the coursebook on sport, or at the time of a major sports event.
Click or tap to go to the lesson plan and download the material
World Health Day (07 April 2023)
Title of lesson plan: Are you active or not?
Age group: Primary learners
Level: Pre-intermediate (CEFR A2 and above)
In this lesson, which supports Goal 3: Good health and well-being, learners take part in a short exercise routine and classify activities according to their intensity. They think about the importance of doing physical activity and plan their own short routine which they lead for their group. Then they think about how much activity they need to do and how much they actually do with a simple quiz. Finally, they make a daily exercise chart for themselves which they can try to follow outside of class.
Click or tap to go to the lesson plan and download the material
International Day of Human Space Flight (12 April 2023)
Title of lesson plan: Life on other planets
Age group: Secondary learners
Level: Pre-intermediate (CEFR A2 and above)
This lesson looks at recent developments in the search for habitable planets and opens up the topic of the possibility of life on other planets.
Click or tap to go to the lesson plan and download the material
World Creativity and Innovation Day (21 April 2023)
Title of lesson plan: Creativity and Innovation
Age group: secondary and adult learners
Level: Upper-intermediate (CEFR level B2 and above)
The lesson begins by looking at what is involved in being creative, trying to expand this beyond the usual areas of art or creative writing. The students then do a reading activity where they match the headings to each section. They then identify the synonyms which will have enabled them to do this task and focus on the idea of avoiding repetition. They read the text again and discuss which ideas they personally find most useful. The lesson finishes with a creativity task, followed up by a final discussion.
Click or tap to go to the lesson plan and download the material