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Support for teachers and teacher educators

See a list of our practical resources, professional development material, as well as insights and research to support you during the Covid-19 crisis.

The British Council is committed to supporting the use of technology for the continuation of education in a crisis. As many teachers find themselves in an unfamiliar situation of having to teach their classes online, with little or no experience, the British Council TeachingEnglish website is committed to providing as much support as possible to help you navigate your way through the world of online teaching.

Below is a list of initiatives that we are currently providing, or planning to provide in the coming weeks.

Insights and research

Covid-19 insight reports 

The two reports here provide insight into how education systems and teachers and teacher educators have responded to the impact on education of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Covid-19 case studies

These case studies celebrate the work of teachers and teacher educators during the Covid 19 pandemic and school closures. They provide examples of specific challenges that teachers have faced and the solutions they have found to those challenges, especially in terms of providing remote teaching and learning. 

Other research

Lesson plans

The majority of our lesson plans are for face-to-face classroom use. However, we are adapting a number of our existing lesson plans for use in online classrooms. We are also developing new lesson plans designed to help you with your remote teaching.

The teachers' notes include general guidance about teaching online, as well as step-by-step activities and a variety of options depending on the platform you are using. The online class materials are available as a PDF version of a PowerPoint presentation. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be adapting more lessons to an online teaching context for all ages and levels.

A list of these will be provided below as they are completed.

For older secondary and adult students 

For secondary students

For primary students

Webinars

We have been running a series of webinars specifically for teachers and teacher educators working online, with further webinars planned. These are held in Zoom or Microsoft Teams with a capacity of 1,000. Please visit our webinar pages for more information.

The first, on Friday 20 March, looked at 'ways of using your coursebook with online classes' and 'ideas for using breakout rooms'. You can watch a recording of this webinar, and download the presentations and extra materials.

Upcoming webinars

For more information about our upcoming webinars, please visit our dedicated webinars pages

Previous webinars in this series

ELT Research Awards (ELTRA) webinars

Other relevant webinar recordings

Online support sessions (Facebook question and answer sessions)

These online sessions take place on our TeachingEnglish Facebook page. They give teachers and teacher educators an opportunity to discuss themed issues they may be having with online teaching or management, and get advice from online teaching experts, as well as from colleagues around the world. See a schedule of our support clinics below and visit our Facebook page regularly for more detailed updates:

Professional development and guidance

Our professional development sections for both teachers and teacher educators provide hundreds of resources, including articles, video tips, webinar recordings and publications to support your career development. We are also running all three of our Teaching for Success MOOCs via the FutureLearn platform, as well a number of other online training courses. Visit our training pages to see what is currently available and also the British Council page on FutureLearn

Remote teaching tip series

The Remote Teaching Tips series provides practical ideas and guidance for teachers supporting their learners using a variety of platforms and approaches, across different contexts. We currently have guidance to help you in the following areas:

Articles

Social media

Our Facebook page and teacher community are an excellent way to find resources from a wide range of sources, and attend Facebook Live sessions to help you with your professional development. Join our community and share ideas for online teaching and ways of managing your work during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Blog

Some of the posts below are not written exclusively for teaching online, but will give you some ideas about activities and techniques you can adapt for an online teaching context

Read this post by Larry Ferlazzo: Four questions - and answers - about teaching English online

'There are so many challenges facing us as we move to teaching our students online. And, since this situation is likely to be with us for quite a while, what are some ways to overcome them?'

Please check this page regularly to see updates about the resources and initiatives we are developing to support you. 

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Comments

Submitted by Meldoni on Thu, 07/13/2023 - 10:50

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Hey, thank you so much for provided information and keeping us updated. Hope this knowledge will be useful for us.

Submitted by Belal Abdullah on Fri, 07/09/2021 - 16:47

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Thanks a bunch for this amazing step towards our professional development and training us to provide high-quality, safe, and inclusive learning environment.

Submitted by anfghjxcv on Thu, 07/16/2020 - 12:39

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So I've never taught before and I can't find anything on here about how to teach, where to start and what to do- where should I look?  That way when I do give my first few lssons I'll at least know what i'm doing. Can someone point me in the right direction please, thank you

Hi

There are plenty of resources to help you to develop as a teacher on our site. It might be a good idea to look at our professional development section - here you can find information about the British Council's professional practices for teachers - there are 12 areas, including lesson planning, using ICT in the classroom and managing lessons. Under each area there are articles, blog posts written by teachers from around the world, as well as videos and materials. You can find the page here: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers

You could also take a look at our teaching resources, where you can find ideas for lesson plans, activties and classroom tools to use with young learner and adult students. These resources are all free to use. You can find them here: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/resources

Finally, you might want to look at our training pages where you can find out information about courses on many different aspects of teaching.

I hope you find the site useful,

Best wishes,

Cath

TE Team

 

Submitted by fatyra22 on Sat, 05/09/2020 - 17:50

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Learning mustn't stop with Covid-19. Thank you. Be safe and stay healthy.

Submitted by christina.aziz on Sat, 03/28/2020 - 20:44

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I would express my great gratitude for such a resourceful website that helps teachers in all aspects of their educational process.

Submitted by Paul Braddock on Thu, 04/02/2020 - 15:36

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Thank you Christina. I hope we can continue to support and help you during these challenging times. 

Research and insight

Browse fascinating case studies, research papers, publications and books by researchers and ELT experts from around the world.

See our publications, research and insight