Hello. Hi, everybody, welcome. Thanks for joining us today. We can see some... Today we're going to be talking about teaching Pre A1 Starters A1 Movers, and A2 Flyers classes online. My name's Donya Estafanous and I'm an Exam Support Manager here at Cambridge Assessment and we're joined today by Claire Ross. Hi, Claire. Hi, Donya. How are you? Really well, thanks. We're so delighted to have you. So Claire has been working in face-to-face and online teacher education since 2005. She's a lead educator for several free online teaching development courses on Future Learn, so lots of you might might recognise her face. Her interests include online teaching and learning multilingualism, and inclusion of refugee learners. And she enjoys teaching primarily, primary learners online. So we're really delighted and lucky to have her with us today to share all of her experience with us. And let's get started over to you, Claire. All right. Thank you very much, Donya, for that introduction. And hello, a warm welcome from me to all of you here. I've just been looking at where you are and then hello to everyone in the Middle East especially because that's where I am. I'm here in Beirut. Thank you for choosing to spend this time with us today where we're talking about teaching children online helping to prepare them for the Starters, Movers, and Flyers exams. So these are the aims of today's session. Some of you, I know, have moved quite suddenly to online teaching. Some of you may have been doing it for a while. And teachers I've been hearing from have been telling me about some challenges. And in this session, I would like to offer some suggestions and some solutions to some of the challenges as well to hopefully make the online teaching experience better for you and for your students. I'm going to be demonstrating some fun online activities that you can use to help children to develop English skills. And, of course, as Donya said, sharing lots of free resources. So you will see lots of websites appearing on my slides but don't worry, you don't need to copy them or write them down. They will all be in the handout at the end. But it's not all listening to me. I'd like to be hearing from you throughout the session and one way we're going to start with is this poll. So please, I would like to know from you, out of these six options which of these have you found the biggest challenge when teaching exam preparation online for young learner exams? I can see the results starting to come in now. I wonder if I can see them all on the screen. Yeah. So there are six. If you can't see all of them just scroll down, you can see there six choices. And I'm going to give you a little bit more time to think about it. Although, I have to say the top two have been there right from the beginning, haven't they? The activities are taking longer is the big one and students getting distracted. This seems like a big issue as well. Okay, so I'm just going to put these down. Yep. There we go. So 32% of you are saying that students get distracted is the big one and activity taking longer, 28% of you. But everyone has certainly mentioned at least some of these challenges. So I hope that will be something in today's session for all of you. Thanks very much. As I said, there will be opportunities to get involved. So sometimes I'll be asking a question and asking you for your ideas. So please do and keep going in the chat. And I would like to hear and learn from you as well because we've all got lots of great ideas. So let's get started. I'm going to go through these six issues one by one and look at some suggestions and some examples of what you can do to try to meet them. So number one. Activities take longer to prepare and to teach online. Maybe it's new for you teaching online and thinking about what to do in a live online class is taking you a lot longer than in your regular face-to-face classes. And maybe it's taking you longer to teach the same activity. It just seems to take ten minutes instead of five. So let's look at some time-saving tips that can help with that. All right, so first of all, thinking about preparation and the first thing I'm going to suggest is to look at what exists already. It's to look at some free lesson plans for online teaching and adapt those. Then you're not starting from the beginning and you can save time that way. "And where do I get these plans from?" I hear you ask. Well, there are lots of them free to download on the Cambridge English website. Here's an example. I know you can't see it but just to show it's really detailed and you have everything you need. You don't need to start from the beginning, you don't need to spend hours thinking "How do I prepare for the Starters class, for this Movers class?" They're already there and there are complete lesson plans. They are around 45 minutes, but they can last up to an hour. There's some optional activities on there as well and there are suggestions for differentiation. That's something we'll come back to later on today. There's a plan for every part of each paper in the exam. So for this example, this is Movers, A1 Movers and this is from the reading and writing and this is particularly looking at part three of the exam. So this lesson is all about this part, looking at the gap text parts. So they're very, very specific to different parts of the exam. You can use them not only online, but they can be used face-to-face as well. If you can see in the examples that are on the screen the lesson stages are there, and there are online options in the column on the right. So you can start using them now and then, hopefully when we're going back to your face-to-face classes you can use the plans again and adapt them in your face-to-face classes as well. Or if you continue to teach online, you can keep using the plans as well. And of course, there are links to lots of useful resources. Now, in this session, I'm going to be showing you lots of examples so you get an idea of what these plans are like. But I should tell you that each one does include some targeted exam practice. That doesn't mean that children are sitting down under exam conditions. It means that there are real tasks from the exam to help learners to get used to them to build their confidence and so that you can support them to get them ready for the exams. So here's an example here from that part three and this is the exam task that's used there. All right, so that was the preparation side. Now let's think about the actual teaching. Somewhere that this goes... where the time can go, I find with online teaching is in feedback. It might be the in your face-to-face class, you've got a very good system you're very quick nominating from different groups. You give a handout with the answers and feedback so very quickly but somehow in the online class, it just seems to go on. So how can we save time in this way? Well, I've got a couple of suggestions. My first one is to prepare it beforehand and if you're using one of these lesson plans that I mentioned you've got the feedback and you've got the answers there. You can just copy paste that and share your screen. So it's not that you have to do the activities yourself like you do with some materials, the answers are there. You could share feedback or answers in the chats so that students can see and check for themselves or something else, I'm sure you're doing as well, is annotating the question sheet. So if you're using a programme that where you can use annotate and you can write on the screen you can show... fill in the gaps as you're going through the answers or get the students to do that. They love doing that. They love using annotate, don't they? That's something you can do to get them usefully involved in sharing answers together. So doing it like this, it's time efficient, encourages kids to self check so it gives them some autonomy and responsibility as well. And here is an example. This is one of the activities from one of the lesson plans for Pre A1 Starters, the speaking part one. And as you know, this is talking about where things are in the picture. So the supporting activity in this lesson is about prepositions, a quick review. And I've shown here three examples. Do feedback efficiently online. So on the left, I've copy-pasted the answers nice and clear and on the right, two options. I've drawn a nice clear blue arrow so you can see that number three was in or I've typed it with annotate over number two. And as I said, you could do this or you could get your students doing that and... so that they're involved. Okay, another way to do feedback a bit more efficiently and to find out what's going on with your students is to use mini whiteboards. Now, these can be fancy mini whiteboards hard where you can use with a whiteboard marker or they can just be a piece of A4 paper put in a plastic sleeve if your kid's parents have got one of them, and they write on this whiteboards and then they can wipe it clean. So it's a really, really cheap, easy solution. What do we do with it? Well, we train kids to write answers really clearly and really big on their mini whiteboards and then they can hold it up to the camera and you can check their answers. Why is this good? It's a quick way of checking understanding. You can check their spelling as well this way. If everyone's doing it, no one is put on the spot. And it's a way for you as a teacher to monitor their progress to get an overall picture of the class because something I'm hearing about teaching my classes online is "I don't feel like I have a real feel of how the kids are doing. "I can't just walk around and look over their shoulder as they're writing." But this is a way where you can find out what everyone has got how they understood. And it's fun and it involves everyone and kids like to write and keep things clean. It's a bit like being a teacher. So here's an example from one of the lesson plans and I can see from Francisco is doing this. Good for you. Hope it's working for you. And this is an example from a plan. So it's Listening Part Two, listen and write the numbers and names. So spelling, as you remember, and numbers are really important in this part of the exam. You can see on the left here. This was the example task that children do in this lesson and followed by this they do a speaking and listening task together. So their task is to choose one of the pets and they give it a name. They think of the name, they write it down. They think about how old the pet is, and they write that down as well. And then there's a pet speaking activity where they tell their partner about their pet. So it could go something like, "Oh, this is my dog. His name is Fred and he's four." And the partner listens and they write it down. Fred, F - R - E - D, and the child is listening to the partner and writing it down and then they can hold up their mini whiteboard and check. So I've trained this learner really well. They've written it really large, but it's a nice way for kids to check. I saw someone saying they don't know where the camera is and you can help them with that. So if they're holding it like this, you can just say, "Okay, move it up a bit okay, in front of your face," and they'll soon learn. And you can train them that way. So many whiteboards, all right. So to summarise, things are taking a bit longer online to prepare and to teach. So here are some ways to save time. Adapt some free plans and save time and feedback by using mini whiteboards and preparing your feedback. Over to you now. Those are my ideas, but how do you do it? How are you saving time when you're teaching online? I would love to hear your ideas. So please, if you have a time-saving tip for teaching online please type it into the chat now. And this way we can all learn from each other's ideas. Like I say, I'm just one person but I know there are a lot of you out there listening now. So I'd love to hear from you. I can see Naphol saying "Why didn't I think of that?" So great, I'm glad we've jogged your memory. "We've got flash cards", someone is saying. "Advanced planning." Yes, absolutely. Oh, I like this, "Use a pencil for Yes and an eraser for No." That's a lovely way to do feedback. Lots of people talking about planning and videos as well, yet preparation again. "Recording a lesson can be a way." Yes, or recording part of the lesson and showing that video in class is a good way. But yeah, again and again, I'm seeing lots of planning. So the secret is there, isn't it? Really a plan in advance and then we don't waste time. And a great tip I saw is checking your technology. I think it does let us down. Doesn't it sometimes? So check all the technology. Oh, and one more tip and clapping for time running out. So if you've got a limit on your meeting or on your lesson you can train your students to notice that, maybe or you can do it yourself. Great. Thank you so much for those ideas. Really, really useful. So let's move on to our second issue, and this was a big one, I think 32% of you said that children are getting distracted in online lessons. Yes, they are. They're learning in a new environment, they're at home. There are things around that... Maybe they are in their bedroom with their toys. There's noise. The siblings are there, their parents are there. Lots and lots of things to get distracted by. And they're not used to, perhaps, learning and focusing on the screen. So what can we do? Here's one idea, it's giving them a physical task changing the pace of a lesson and bringing them back to you. It's something you might do in a face-to-face class. Of course, if you notice, learner is starting to get distracted then you give them something physical, especially with the little ones. It helps to get rid of some of this excess energy. Here are some things that you can do. It could be... "Show me something that's on your desk and tell me what it is." So "I've got a doll, of course, on my desk." It could be hold up something that is blue or should show me something blue is a way to check colours. Put your hands up or clap as a way to involve students without talking or a way to check answers or to get feedback. This way of checking understanding is Total Physical Response so learners show that they understand rather than having to produce language. And again, that was the idea from someone who said hold up a pencil for Yes and an eraser for No. It's another great example of TPR. It helps children to peer check as well. It's fun and it's a break from the screen. We're all spending way too long in front of the screens and kids included. So something physical is always fun. All right, and here's one you can use, it involves movement but if your student is in a very small area that's something to check before you get them kind of dancing around. How much space do they have at home? We need to know this, and this is something they can do just by holding things up. This is from A2 Flyers reading and writing part four lesson plan. This is one of those you can download for free. And as you remember, this is about choosing the right words in this part of the exam. So there's a little review of prepositions. You can see that on the left, they choose the prepositions and write them in and that's their record. And then they get to practise it with a fun activity. So get them to make, again, really neat, really big writing some nice big flashcards "in, at, and on" and then get ready. You tell them a time phrase and they hold up the right flashcard hopefully so you can get again, get a picture of who has got it right. So you might say, "Okay, ready, listen, Monday." And they go, "Oh, well done. "Yes, in Monday, try it again." Okay? Or "One o'clock." "Oh, one o'clock, very good." Okay? And it's quite fun, you know it's quite hard by the way finding the right card at the right time, but really, really nice... activity for kids to do. And I saw a comment there from someone saying "It's nice to have the same thing as the teacher to hold." And I really like that. So, yeah. You do, you show them what to do and get them to write this and then everybody's got the same activity. All right, so that was something physical, a bit of movement. What else can we do? We want to grab their attention, don't we? And I saw a lovely example in the comments here about a music challenge. But grabbing attention, grabbing attention again, which should their engagement back just like you do in a face-to-face class. So here is my question for you. How do you grab your students' attention online? What do you do to keep them interested? If they're starting to get distracted, how do you get them back? Okay we've got songs, games, rhymes. Lovely. Singing, poles is a nice one as well. Yeah, doing a chant really. So holding things up, super. I saw a comment before "Get things from the kitchen," so that can be nice if that's okay and safe with parents. Puppets. Lovely, we've got quick games, icebreakers brain breaks are great for all ages, and they're good for us too, aren't they? Just stop for a moment and do something different. So singing, videos, lovely. Oh, drama. Love it. Super ideas there. Hey, they're going by so fast. So I have some similar ideas. I also love using songs, especially with the little ones, they can sing the song, you can sing the song together. If there's an animation, even better because then there's something to focus on. You can add movement, if you like, showing them a cake. Sorry, I just got really distracted by that. I would be very engaged by that. So, yes. And movements to the song, if you like. Even if it's not an action song you can make up your own movement or just get the children dancing brings the focus back. It brings everyone together. Everyone is singing and dancing. And it's a way to, of course, practise vocabulary. Physical movement revives. So there's lots of songs on the Cambridge website. This is from the Sing and Learn part. And as I said before, no need to write down this link. It'll be on the PDF at the end. But let me tell you about an example, and this is from one of the listening lessons. And you'll be familiar perhaps with this activity where children listen to someone talking about the picture and they draw lines from the person's name to the picture. And it often involves colours to help the learners to recognise the colour and identify it in the picture. So as part of this lesson, they listen to a song, a rainbow song, practise the colours and then that is good revision to go with your listening. So in this lesson, I think we have this as an optional activity. So it's something you could use at any time in that lesson if children start to get distracted. You know, you can do a song or you might do it more than once. Children love to have things and repeated, don't they? I've just seen a wonderful example, by the way, from Sarah Nicholson and how did she engage her learners. She puts on a red nose and a funny hat without any warning. Brilliant. I love that idea. Thank you. And a strange hat or sunglasses. Thanks for sharing that, Sarah. Okay, another way to grab attention. Some of you were saying videos. Absolutely. Animations or avatars can be good ones as well. This means that students get to watch or listen to somebody else talking, apart from you and apart from each other. You can create and you can animate your own avatar. And this one I've taken from the website Voki, which is free and it's got a huge choice of avatars from people children of all ages and animals as well. It's a really, really fun place. You can add a voice to the avatars or you can put your own voice on this. You can choose from a number of different voices. This allows lots of creativity. It brings the focus back, it's something different. Maybe it's something kids have done before. They can personalise, either have a class avatar or they can make their own personal avatars. And for some of the shy kids, it can be good to get them participating. And this... there are lots of places you can get this from but the one that I've used here is Voki. Okay, so just one idea. "And how does it fit with preparation for exams?" I hear you ask. Well, this is how it fits into the lesson plan. So we're looking at A2 Flyers now. And in this part of the speaking exam you'll remember the children have to ask and answer questions to the examiner. So it's like an information gap fill. So they have some information the examiner has some, and they have to ask and answer questions. And this is what we've done here. So in this plan, they do this listening task and then they create their own. So they personalise their own listening task. They choose an avatar. So we've got, somebody chose a unicorn, and then they have to make up the answers. And this was about my character's favourite restaurant. So they make up the answers. "The name of the restaurant is Unicorn Land," for example. And "My unicorn likes eating rainbows." I don't know, they make up those answers. And then as a pair work activity, they ask and answer the questions. So, "What's the name of the restaurant?" "Unicorn Land," and write it down. And, "What does your unicorn..." So a lovely speaking activity. It's personalised, it's from children of their own touch thereby creating their own avatar. Okay, another way to grab attention with a game you've all said this so I just want to tell you about a couple of games that are in the lesson plans. I know you'll have your favourites but get on games like this one digital that can be used for a group competition. You'll need to be in charge of running the game so you can share your screen and get students perhaps in groups, so you... I'm doing this as if they're in front of me. So one, two, three, four, say the names. You are group one, you are group two. Okay, group one, what do you think the answer is? And then you click on the answer according to what they tell you. Or you can get them to click on the screen with annotate that can show you where they want you to press that button so they put all their stamps in that area. And if it's sound, even better, if it's animation, wonderful. It brings the focus back. It's language practice, it's engaging, and we've got some healthy competition as well. And this game that you're seeing here is called Monkey Puzzle. So the idea is you answer questions, write them and the monkey climbs up the tree and gets the bananas. A game that's less digital and old favourite but it can still work online is "I spy," and I love these posters that Cambridge have. They're so full of things. There's so much to look at. It's really, really good for kids observational skills and practising vocabulary. So can anyone guess in this picture I spy with my little eye, something beginning with C? What do you think it is? Type in the chat. If you can see anything beginning with C. Okay, I can see some good ideas. Oh no, it's not that. Okay. Yeah, well done. If identified the chair... No, it's not the chair. Clock. Oh, good ideas. I wonder if everyone is going to say... Yes, I can see someone's got it, well done. So the answer is... the cat. Did you see the cat at the back in the window? Learners have got sharper eyes than us I think, if you didn't spot that one. So a lovely engaging activity, you can do that online. Really, really simple. Something you might do in class, you can do it online as well. So just to summarise for this part. For learners getting distracted, you have lots of super ideas thank you for those and I'm adding to that. Give a physical task, have a physical break, a brain break or choose something that's going to grab their attention again maybe singing or dancing, maybe an avatar and then that will bring us back to engagement. And I can see several questions here saying, "Does this work for adults, too?" I think, yes, you can use these strategies. You probably use different types of games. Maybe you wouldn't. Maybe "I spy" works and your adult learners would enjoy that. Great. Do it, you know, use something that's going to appeal to your learners but certainly having a brake, having a brain brake having attention-grabbing activity is good for all ages. All right, our next question. Parents. They're not involved enough or they're too involved. I saw some people typing some comments in about this. Parents are very much more part of the classes now, perhaps, than they used to be. And we really want them to be a useful part of the children you're teaching of their learning, and to offer support. So I have a question for you. With your children, with the parents of your children, how involved are they? Please choose from one to three. One is not enough. You'd like them to be more involved. Two, just right, or three, they are too involved. You'd like them to back off a little bit. If you click on the polls picture you can see it there with the red dot and you can answer that poll on the screen. And all are actually quite similar at the moment. I wonder which one is going to come out on top. So some people saying that you'd like parents to be more involved. About a third of you saying just right. That's interesting, and then probably the minority at the moment saying that it's too much, too involved. Lovely. Okay, well, thank you for that. Yes, 38% would like the parents to be more involved. 25% would like them to be less involved. Interesting. Okay, well, let's look at how we can work productively with parents so that they can support their children's learning and preparation for the Cambridge exams. Whether they're not involved enough or whether they're too involved maybe they just don't know what to do and they need some advice. This... we could have parents who are doing what they think is best. They've got the best intentions but maybe they're being too overbearing or they're afraid to do the wrong thing. They don't want to step on your toes. But if we get this right, if we give them some advice they can be very, very supportive. So what can we offer them? Well, there's a lovely video of ten tips for parents helping their children to learn online. It's really practical and really, really sensible. Simple things that parents can do. So, the one that you see on the screen is help get kids ready for the class. We've all had the kid that goes in your class, "I don't have a pencil. "I don't have my book," you know, if you're using course books. So practical things that parents get the children got everything that they need before the class. Another tip was be present, be available, but not in the lesson. So it's just to be around, the parent to be around near the child if they need some help, you know, maybe something technical went wrong but to let the child to get on with the lesson. I can see a comment from Jane there saying, you know, it's interesting now parents are not involved enough. And, yes, language can be an issue here. So, if you don't share the first language as the parents of your students you may need to get someone else from the school and involved and open the communication channels that way. Talking of languages. Actually, there's this resource from Cambridge which has got some super ideas for how to support parents, and they're available in different languages as well. And as I say, you'll have this link later but there's lots and tips how the children learn languages and information for parents. So I think if we're giving them these ideas, and maybe it comes from you maybe it comes from your school principal, you know, that's a conversation you can have where you work. But certainly I think that is a way that's going to support parents and children. What else can we do? Oh, Gunnara, I'm really pleased to say that the parents are supporting children sitting next to them in your classes. That's great. And when that balance is right, it works really well because they allow the kids to be independent without interfering but they're there if they're needed. Okay, so another option we have is to give parents activities to use with their children. Again, they might not know what to do, so let's help them. And in the lesson plans, we've got some ideas for you. So something you can do is to recycle activities from class. So in some of these plans, we use the digital games like Monkey Puzzle the one I showed you before, and this is from Word Fun. It's an app from Cambridge, it's free and it's got lots of lovely vocabulary practice and parents and children can play this together. So not in class, but between classes as a way to reinforce learning as a way to recycle language. There's listening practice, reading practice. And in this way, children feel supported. They're doing activities that are relevant to their classes and the parents feel involved, they feel useful and they know what their children are learning. So in the plans we've got for homework, we've got suggestions of sometimes things that kids can do with their parents and some homework tasks either to repeat what's been done in class or for further practice. So you don't need to find them. Everything's there for you in a bit of time saving. And here's another example of that, so this is from A1 Movers one of those lesson plans is for reading and writing part five. The homework for this, as you can see, is some, just like in the exam so that during the lesson you would give them support and practice and then they go away and do this for homework as well. And you've got answers you can share with parents so that they can be the teacher and help the kids and give them some support if they need it as well. All right, yes, and as Manuel says, yeah, collaborative work, absolutely. So if we're giving parents ways to work with their children I think this can only be a good thing. So whether the parents are not involved enough or if they're too involved here are two ways I'm going to suggest that could help to target the problem. Give them some advice how to work with a child and give them some activities. And over to you, so I would love to hear how you support parents. What do you do to help to support them to support their children when they're learning online? Do you give them activities or advice? How do you communicate with them? I'd love to hear. Please put your answers into the chat. And I can see an example here of webinars. So perhaps webinars for parents, listening to them. Absolutely. We need to understand parents concerns. Maybe they have questions... Regular updates. Yeah, I can see lots of people saying I talk to them on WhatsApp. I call them, I email them, I use different platforms. So this is so important, isn't it? When we're not perhaps bumping into them at school like we used to at the end of class. All right, some great ideas. Taking feedback, yeah. Some, and again, some activities materials that you're using and updates and checking look like. Thank you very much for those ideas. All right, moving on. I find myself speaking too much, but I want my students to speak, right? It just seems we're talking so much more when we're teaching online. But don't be afraid. We can still use that pair work and group work that you usually use in your face-to-face classes. And if we incorporate this, there should be more student talk. If you have breakout rooms, use them, if you can safely monitor them. Train your students to use them, make sure they know what's going to happen when they go into the room. And I say this is certainly for the older children that we're talking about here for the younger children, perhaps not. As a whole class you can do a speaking activity. You can still do pair work, nominate your peer so Hammed you're working with Ali, for example. Okay, now you do the activity and they talk to each other just as you could in a face-to-face class, but as open pairs. Same tips as for a face-to-face class to make this successful. So give a bit of thinking time, a bit of planning time. This means then they can talk, you can observe a bit, you should speak a little less, they should speak a little more, and they would get that essential language practice. So here's an example. A good old "spot the difference." This is one of the exam tasks for the A2 Flyers Speaking Part One and I want to just say how we can do this in a whole class and then as pair work. In a whole class, you could show both pictures give students a little time to think about it. Maybe you divide them into groups. So there's a competitive elements. You have group one and group two and then ask for someone from group one to tell us a difference. And then someone else in the group can circle that difference using annotate on the picture. Good. Well done. And then "Someone in group two tell me another difference" and children get the opportunity to speak like this. That's the whole class. Or... I can see... finding the differences... well done. Or you could do this in a breakout room for all the children. So they go into the room and they they find the differences and talk about them together. Add a challenge, give children different pictures, ask them to keep them secret. This involves lots of speaking, but it's quite tough. You'll need to give children lots of support and a demonstration to help them to do this. So another idea is to demonstrate a speaking activity and then let the students lead it. This should lead to lots more talking. We need to give a clear model, provide the language they need, as I said before give a bit of thinking or planning time, and then when students are leading the activity, they feel empowered. You can observe them and notice they're speaking and they get more talking and more practice. But how do we do it? Well, here's one of my favourites from the Movers. And... I don't know if you remember these from when you were little but I've got one of these that I've prepared to show you. And this is for asking and answering personal questions. So the children make one of these either in class or they can do it before class with their parents. Lovely activity, craft activity for parents. And then you demonstrate. So I would like you to choose a colour. What colour would you like? Blue? Okay. B, L, U, E. Now choose a number. Okay, three. One, two, three. Choose another number. All right, number two. Okay, and then over they open it up. What's your favourite food? And the student answers. And you have this really clear model and then off they go and they can do their speaking activity. Yeah, you can use it for lots of different... There's lots of different groups of vocabulary. It's really fun and it's got that physical element as well. Another option here for a similar activity is using a wheel of questions. So on this website Wheel Decide you can put in your own questions or get students to think of questions. So the types of questions they'd be answering in the exam you click to spin the wheel and wherever it lands you ask a student a question or the one on the right, they make their own question wheel. Put a pencil in the middle, spin it, wherever it lands they ask their partner the question. So it's still these fun games, these fun physical things and clear demonstrations and hopefully lots and lots of speaking. All right, we've just got a couple more to go. This one is about differentiation online. Of course, learners in our classes are at different levels. This is a huge topic, so I'm not pretending that I can solve this problem now. There's lots and lots of different ways of doing it. But one way is to add challenge or support to differentiate learning. And one way that these plans will help you to do that the Cambridge lesson plans for online teaching they have suggestions for that. So for many, many of the activities there are options. So to add challenge, do this, to add support, do this and you can select the level of challenge which is appropriate for your class. Or you can offer students a choice or perhaps you might give slightly different versions to different students. And in a way, this can be easier online because you can send them maybe as a private message or you can email them to parents. Nobody knows who's got which activity. So there's no kind of, "Oh, you're doing the easy one," or "Mine is so much more difficult." Everybody is just doing what they're doing, and it's a personal activity. And in this way, whatever the level, it's the similar aim and everyone achieves. So here's an example, a word search. This is from the listening part of the Movers exam and it was about family. So there's some family vocabulary to add to revise. My question for you. If you have this activity for your online learners, how could you either add challenge or provide support for the activity? So I'd like you to pop your answers into the chat. How can you make this word search easier? How can you make it more difficult? What are the ways that we can differentiate it? Okay, some good ideas. Give clues instead of the word. That's nice, just a bit more challenge and set a time limit, yeah, so that could be more support or more challenge. Lovely ideas. They could do it in breakout rooms. Yeah, absolutely. They can do this in... in groups and help each other. Give hints, give questions, clues, guidelines. Super, really, really nice. Use synonyms. Oh, right. That's a tricky one. Yes, I like it. Some ways to add challenge is not to have any words. You could add support by providing words, and online you can offer a choice. Another way to add challenge, students can create their own words. I can see someone put that in the chat as well so you can give them a template or an app. There's websites that they can use, if that's appropriate to the age of your learners. Then they can do each other's web searches. And to add support, they can do it in pairs or groups, perhaps in breakout rooms or you can provide more examples, circle them, circle the word, circle the letter. These are all ways to make it a bit easier. So for your differentiation, there are ways to add challenge and support. These are specified in the plans. All right. And the last problem we're going to look at is giving instructions. Is it more difficult online? Sometimes it feels that way. Sometimes it feels like they just haven't got it or I have to repeat, there could be a break in the connection the audio is not great and they don't know what to do. You've got blank faces. So what can we do? Well, I've got seven tips. I'm not saying it's going to work. All right, but here are some tips. Number one, don't rely on audio because as many of you are saying now as well I can't hear the audio, goes off sometimes, or my connection's now so bad. So you need that visual element. Prepare the instructions beforehand, do a demonstration, share your screen. So you write very simple instructions on the screen or show a picture showing students what they need to do. And if you're using breakout rooms, depending on your platform make sure they've got the instructions there ready or that they take a copy into their breakout room so you can send that through the chat or give it to the parents beforehand, so they've got a copy there. If you're using breakout rooms, you can keep kids on task by sending them reminders. And then for really tricky things and some of you suggested this before, is to perhaps use a video or a screencast. And I think I would do this for making this activity, for example. It's quite difficult to explain. So if you make a really simple video and you can show that and kids can just follow the instructions. All right. And do you have anything to add for how to give instructions online? I'd love to hear your tips as well. All right. ICQs. Lovely. Thank you, Helen. Yes. So instructions, checking questions. Good tip. Luvner says "Be very clear and to the point." Yes, absolutely. Short and clear. Yes. I mean, this goes for face-to-face as well. I just think perhaps we need to be extra specially careful when we're teaching online. Thank you for your ideas. All right, so to sum up we've looked at six different challenges that some teachers are experiencing with online teaching. And we've looked at some solutions for these challenges. So just as a very, very quick summary. Ways to deal with using too much time preparing and teaching. You've got some plans to adapt and getting feedback in a time-efficient way. Ways to deal with distractions. We've talked about physical tasks and ways to grab attention to help parents be involved just right. Give them some help, give them some activities to do. To increase student talking time, demonstrate let the students lead and do use those pair activities either in the breakout room or in the whole class. We've looked at differentiation, how to add challenge and support and finally, thank you again for your tips to give clear instructions online. So that's that's all for me. You'll be relieved to hear. You can get these resources from Cambridge. There are lots and lots of resources for teachers. If you're teaching for the young learner exams including the lesson plans and all the games I've mentioned and support for parents. And as I said, this will be in the download so you can download a PDF of the slides and of the links as well. So that's all from me and I think hopefully we have a little bit of time left for questions. So if you do have any questions about anything we've talked about do pop those into the chat and I will try my best to answer them. -Hi, Claire. -Hi. Thank you so much. That was really, really informative and there's been so many comments from teachers about how helpful all your tips and ideas are. And I think you've answered a lot of the questions as you've been going along. We had a few from teachers asking about students who are quiet and who might not like participating while learning at home. Do you have any tips for them? I mean, I feel for those students because for some of them it's new and they don't like it and they want to be in a classroom with the students. Don't know. Maybe they're not sure, they feel more on the spot. So maybe they're not ready to start speaking just yet. We can give them other options. So depending on your platform you could get them using the chats and typing answers or very simple words or typing a Yes, No. You could get them using thumbs up or showing a thumbs up to show that they understand. You could encourage them to speak by giving them really fun, simple activities you know, use something that they're used to doing in a face-to-face class. And that sometimes helps the kids to, "Oh, you know, this activity." And then like, "Oh, yeah, that's my favourite." And they can get over the shyness that way. But I think we need to we need to be kind and just go slowly. Okay, good, and actually related to what you just said about looking at activity that maybe students know, we had some... we did have some questions about... more comments teachers saying may find it hard to think of new ideas and new activities. But is that necessary to keep thinking of lots of new activities for every single lesson? I don't think so. And I think especially with kids they love to revisit the old favourites. So, use new ideas. Yes, do. Use things that are different online, and that's fun and you've got different technology. But also think about ways you can do the old favourite activities. So if you like playing Back to the Board you can play that online by sending a private message to one of your students. And then they describe the word, or you can play Pictionary with your mini whiteboards and students draw, and they have to guess the words. So, you know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can still do lots of things that we did before and it can still work online. Fantastic, thank you. And then we've had lots of less comments about resources, so as Claire said, the resources will be available in the handout which you can now find in the files tab. So if you click that, you will find the handout with a link to all the resources mentioned and a few extra ones as well. You'll also be receiving an email from us with a recording of the webinar and as well as the recording, you'll be able to download the slides. And we also have a survey that we would love you to take part in to help us understand how you're teaching and how you're using the resources. So if you could, we would love it if you could fill in the survey for us. Okay, so you'll be receiving that in an email in the next week. Okay? I've also just posted a link to the survey and a sticky note at the top of the chat box. So if you have a few minutes now, you can do the survey now. If not, you'll receive it in the email in the next week. Okay. I've just seen one final question pop up, just as I was about to say goodbye... asking about writing for younger learners. If they can't write or read properly what kind of activities can you use for them if they're five years old? I think online, the same kinds of things that you're using in class to develop literacy. So lots of work on stories and listening to, and reading stories, and working on sounds and word recognition as well, because at this stage children are learning to read in their own language as well as in a foreign language. So I think we just, you know, we need to go slowly. Lots of work on phonics. And I'm sure that there's resources that Cambridge has and that they can use to help with those as well. So, yes, I think you go slowly, be supportive give parents things that they can do as well for homework. So if you've been working on particular sounds or words make sure the parents know about them. They can make word cards and practise. The children can practise the words and sounds between classes. Great. Fantastic tips. Thank you so much, Claire. Thank you. -Bye. -Bye, everyone.