English Teaching professional blog from Michelle Ocriciano

Backwards Design seems to be everywhere now. But what does it mean? It’s becoming clear it is not a philosophy of teaching nor an approach to teaching – it is a planning framework. Read on to find out more and what it means for us as teachers, and our teaching.

How much do you know about SEND? Do any of your students have ADHD? In this post, Michelle reveals more about the disorder, which is considered to be the most common neuropsychiatric condition in children, and its common characteristics, before looking at how you can help those learners in the classroom.

What methods do you use when teaching English? Why do you do this or that activity? What’s its purpose? These are questions we may ask ourselves, if we had the time to do so. So, how can we adjust? This post sheds light on these questions and much more.

Have you ever been told to be (more) resilient? What does it mean anyway? Although some might say resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, read this week’s blog post to discover a new way of looking into resilience.

We have never talked as much about online teaching as we have in recent times! But how do you organise your learning around your technology use? Read on to learn about TPACKS, how it defines the role of technology in teaching and what learning you can add to MyCPD.

Everyday life is surrounded by online reading and writing, you can’t get away from it! The understanding of such language begins with the notion of text as a central theme in language study. But how can we use it in teaching? Read on to learn about the relationship between multimodality and ICT.

Do you ever make connections between your learners' cultures, first language(s), or life experiences with your teaching? If you don’t, should you? Read on to find out more about Culturally Responsive Teaching, and what changes can be made to give culturally responsive classes.

What do we mean by multiliteracy? How can multimodality help us get a message across? In this blogpost, Michelle Ocriciano provides a simple definition of literacy, explores the concept of multiliteracy and multimodality and wraps up by talking about the international literacy day.

Have you noticed that people are becoming more anxious around you? Are you getting the same sense from your learners? How can you help them? This blogpost discusses how student anxiety seems to getting more common and how your learners might feel, whilst giving tips about what can be done to reduce such anxiety.

Writing assessments is usually a challenging task. This can be especially true when it comes to online assessments in language learning. In this blogpost, Michelle discusses how online assessments shouldn't be the same as traditional face-to-face ones.