Here is a presentation that focuses on techniques to manage your class and to teach different language skills.

Teaching Techniques from Lucy Castanon

This is a list of 2011 best posts. They are mainly about lesson plans and teaching methods. Some readers were also interested in class management and student-teacher relationships.

Situational Language Teaching
The importance of lesson plans
The Audiolingual Method
Communicative Language Teaching
The Direct Method
Why do teachers need lesson plans?
Grammar Translation Method
The Lexical Approach
The Natural Approach
Ten ideas for a fresh school year strat
Why dictation?
Should L 1 be used in EFL classrooms
Explicit or implicit grammar teaching?
Glossary for ESL and EFL teaching
Teach with love and logic
The main reasons for lesson plans
The silent way
Practical tips for giving instructions
Community …

Stop teaching! That’s what I say to myself when I feel I’m too invasive in my teaching, when I interfere too much in the classroom activities, when I jump at every hurdles that my students encounter. Being invasive is mainly due to my quest for perfection, when I want every little bit of my teaching to be perfect.  We have been told that teaching is being actively involved in everything. Being constantly active is considered as a value.
Lately, I have read an article about not interfering in the teaching by …

Reflective teaching is a kind of action research, a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by teachers to understand their practice and improve the way they address issues and solve problems.  It helps teachers become aware of what’s happening in the classroom by identifying common problems and hypothesising about possible causes and solutions  and attempting to apply an action plan.
Many of our impressions about our teaching practices necessitates systematic thinking. If students seem to have problems with a certain lesson, if a certain misbehavior arises in the classroom, or …

New teachers might be busy thinking about what they should do  to manage their first year in the profession like how to prepare lesson plans, how to involve students in the learning process, how to deal with low achievers etc… Although these concerns are important, I think new teachers should also be worried about what they should avoid doing in order to spend a peaceful and rewarding school year. Here are some examples:

Getting too friendly with your students
Students must be taught discipline. This could be done only by respecting a …

Difficult Classes
Have you ever had a difficult class? How was it? What makes a class difficult ? How do you define it? Well here are some of the answers you may come up with:

Side conversations
Complaining
Violent, angry, belligerent, combative behavior
Talkativeness
Overcrowded classrooms

One would suggest that a difficult class includes one or some of the above characteristics. Well what if a class has all of the above?
This year, I moved to a new high school. It ‘s located in a poor neighborhood. I have six classes. All of them are critically problematic. You …

This article is about instilling discipline and disciplinary action in the classroom. For a definition of discipline and the causes of indiscipline visit the link below:
Definition of descipline and the causes of indiscipline
Classroom Rules
In a previous article I defined discipline as a code of conduct that both teachers and students agree upon and cooperate in its enforcement. As I said I insist on cooperation and agreement in classroom management because when  the rules are set by all learning and teaching participants, it will be hard for them to deny or …

Importance of discipline
Discipline is paramount for every learning . It is very essential for any teaching. It is also very important for peace and harmony in any learning environment: peace between students, teachers and administration. That’s why it is always necessary for discipline to be instilled in the classroom to get the best out of your students.
In this article I will present a definition of discipline and the causes of indiscipline. In the next article I will suggest ways to instill discipline and how disciplinary action should be undertaken to …

Teaching instructions
The way teachers talk to students, the manner in which they interact  is crucial to both successful learning and teaching. Perhaps the most important point that determines how successfully students will learn is the way instructions are formulated and sometimes it is this point which distinguishes good teachers from bad ones. It is important, therefore, that teachers directions relating to academic activity and behaviour are clear, precise and effective. It goes without saying that the best activity in the world will turn into a disappointing failure if students don’t …

Physical Lay out of the Classroom
Teachers shouldn’t be afraid of changing the room’s physical layout. The arrangement of desks, for example, may make the classroom a more attractive place to study.
Desk Placement
Most of the classroom space is devoted to the arrangement of desks. although most teachers preferences may vary, nearly all of them agree that the days of the desks lined in neat rows and facing the teacher’s desk  are long gone. Instead teachers now are more imaginative in terms of classroom setting. Here are two of the most widely …