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Teaching teenagers can be a rewarding yet challenging experience.

When planning classes, we need to consider the environment in which the students are growing up. Most of our teenage students do not know a life without the internet, instant messaging or Google.

Commonly referred to as ��(or Gen Z), they are the most tech-savvy generation to date; this should be reflected in how we teach them.

However, not all of us have access to computer labs, interactive whiteboards or class tablets. But there is something that many of our teens bring to class in their pockets and bags every day.

You’ve guessed it - a phone.

By bringing students’ phones into your classes, you can bridge the technology gap between the learners and the curriculum, keep them engaged for longer and make them feel more empowered at the same time.

Here are four low-tech activities that use phones in class.

1. Review target language with your very own quizzes

Activity requirements: one phone per student (or group of students) and a pre-made quiz.

is an app designed to help you create quizzes online, which can be a fun, engaging way to challenge your learners in the classroom.

Quizzes are an ideal activity to use at the start of a class to recycle previous vocabulary or to pre-teach new language.

For example, you could choose 10 British English phrases or idioms. Write a series of four possible definitions for each word, phrase, or idiom (with only one correct answer).

In class, ask your students to take out their phones, find the app, and link to the quiz.

Tell the students that they must vote for the definition they think is correct. They can keep track of their scores directly on the app while competing with their friends.

Not only will it immediately engage your learners and help them interact with what’s being learned, but they’ll also have a lot of fun.

2. Become expert translators using Google Translate

Activity requirements: a phone with the Google Translate app installed and a pen and paper per pair.

Did you know Google Translate has a feature where you can ? This is a perfect tool for text that you might find on a poster, in a book or uses an alphabet which you are unfamiliar with.

Bring in samples of different languages to class – the more complex, the better. If you don’t have anything suitable at home, find something online and print it out.

Get one student to take a photo of the text using the app and with their finger, select the section of the text they’d like to translate from the original language to English. (Note: if you download the Google Translate language file to your phone, it will translate everything automatically).

Then, have them dictate what it says to their partner, who has to write it down.

Finally, they work together to improve the English translation. After all, everyone knows Google’s English isn’t perfect (not yet, anyway).

3. Take photos outside the classroom to use in class

Activity requirements: a mobile phone with a camera per student.

Do your students love taking photos? Tap into their love of photography and make activities more exciting by incorporating the photos on their phones into your classes.

Adapt speaking activities from common exams such as the B2 Cambridge First. Instead of using the pictures in the book, put the students in pairs and get them each to choose a more relevant photo from their phones. You may find they have more to say and will communicate naturally while still practicing the necessary language and skills required in the exam.

Another idea is to get students to take photos of things they encounter in English in the street. This could be on a sign outside a restaurant or in their favorite clothing shop. Use these photos to start the next class with a discussion about where they saw it, what it means and if the English is correct.

You could also nominate one student each week to bring a photo they took that weekend. Share it with the class and get everyone to write Instagram captions. You wouldn’t believe how many already do this in English, so why not help them?

Keeping your teens on task with mobile tech

If you are worried about the misuse of mobile devices in your class – don’t be! Here are our top three strategies to help avoid students getting distracted:

• Create a class contract. At the start of the course speak to them about when it is acceptable (e.g. during one of the activities above or to check the meaning of a new word on ) or not (e.g. during an exam or when you are explaining something) to use their phones. Then have someone write down everything you’ve talked about, get the whole class to sign it and stick it to the wall where everyone can see.
• Give them a tech break. Halfway through the class, allow students 60 seconds to check their notifications to relieve their anxiety.
• Reward good use. If you see they’ve been using their phones appropriately, reward them by playing their favorite game. The more you punish or tell them not to do something, the more they’ll want to do it.

Gender equality in the publishing industry

The impact of any learning material goes far beyond its subject matter and pedagogical objectives. Everything included, from the choice of language, to the imagery, to the text and front covers, has the potential to reinforce stereotypes unintentionally. This can shape a learner’s sense of self and others around them and affect how they feel and behave in a social setting.

A wealth of evidence suggests that early gender bias influences future inequality. It can affect career aspirations, influence the choice of school subjects and ultimately contribute to gender disparity as children grow into adults.��This is a challenge for all sectors and industries across society. Guidelines have been developed for ����app to ensure that our materials are gender equal and showcase positive female role models.

The guidelines are broken down into three different areas surrounding gender equality:

1. The representation of people and characters in content

The guidelines help to ensure that women are represented equally to men in our learning and teaching materials. This includes ensuring that women's representation does not reinforce negative stereotypes. For example, content that shows women as single parents can also present them as single parents and workers. The idea is to .

Another common example is with regards to science materials.

Often, when students are asked to describe a famous scientist, they describe a character similar to Albert Einstein with white hair and a white coat. Female scientists are often overlooked in this respect, and historically, they have not been given as much attention as their male counterparts.

This type of unconscious bias is something the guidelines aim to help change. Our goal is to represent both women and men from various backgrounds across all subjects. For example, some content shows women in traditionally male roles, such as pilots, engineers and soldiers. The objective is to highlight that .

Another issue is the objectification of women. Often, women are presented as not having agency or purpose, and too much focus is placed on their appearance, rather than their intentions, behavior and aspirations. The new guidelines set out to change this.

2. The use of language

Our language is gendered and therefore steeped in stereotyping. We aim to promote the use of terminology that is non-gendered. For example, using ‘police officer’, ‘firefighter’ and ‘maintenance worker’ instead of ‘policeman’, ‘fireman’ and ‘handyman’. Although this is a small change, it contributes to removing the unconscious bias surrounding jobs and professions.

Adjectives can also play a role in perpetuating gender inequality. We often associate particular adjectives with genders. For example, words like ‘hysterical’, ‘shrill’, or ‘frumpy’ are typically used for women. Whereas men can be described as ‘assertive’, women are more likely to be seen as ‘bossy’.

Furthermore, parallel language is something that needs to be looked at. Words like ‘girls and boys’ can be replaced with ‘students’. In this way, the guidelines are here to ensure that there is no gendering within materials. This will influence gender equality among our users.

3. Referencing third-party content

Another key issue involved in the material is the referencing of third-party content. For example, stories based on classic fairy tales are often used to represent certain points, and these typically show the strong male hero saving the weak female damsel in distress.

Although these are stories that our society has grown up with, they could be more helpful in offering a gender-balanced view of society. ����app’s guidelines are in place to ensure that students see women and men as equals throughout the materials.

What can teachers do to help in the classroom?

To help fight against gender inequality, teachers can think about incorporating more female stories and role models into their lessons. For example, rather than simply focusing on Issac Newton or Albert Einstein in science class.

At a management level, schools can be more aware of what materials they are choosing to bring in, assessing whether the content is balanced, before accepting it. These simple actions can help our learners grow up with a more balanced view of gender.

Reading can transport students to new places, immerse them in incredible adventures and teach them more about the amazing world around them.

What’s more, in today’s globalized world our students are exposed to written English more and more every day. It’s essential they have the skills needed to be successful in this environment. Many students are also going on to study in English at university and require a number of academic reading skills.

It’s important you work on these areas in class to prepare learners for their future. Here are seven reading strategies to get you started including tips for both primary and secondary teachers.

1. Predicting what’s to come

Even before students start reading, we can use extra information on the page to get them thinking about the ideas and vocabulary they will find in the text. This encourages them to consider what they may already know about the topic. And, by adding an element of competition, we can also use it as a strategy to motivate them to read.

Divide the class into teams and write the title of the text on the board. Have them work in their teams and write ten words they predict will be in the text, based on the title.

After a few minutes, have teams swap lists and, as they read the text, check the words the other team correctly predicted.

If you are teaching primary, you can do the same activity using any images which accompany the text. Have students describe the image in pairs first and then work in teams to predict the article's content, as above.

2. Summarizing

This strategy can focus on both the general idea of the text (the gist), and the most important details within it.

To work on using summarizing for gist, give students a text and three short summaries of it, no longer than a sentence each. After students scan the text once, have them choose which of the three summaries best matches the general idea of the text.

Then, to practice these skills, have them work in pairs to produce a summary of the text they just read. This summary should be approximately one-fifth the length of the original text.

This not only encourages students to identify the text's main points but also requires them to use paraphrasing skills to put the ideas into their own words.

Note that primary learners may need your support to create a summary. It’s a good idea to create a gapped text which they can complete with the keywords of the text. This will also help build their vocabulary.

3. Identifying topic sentences

Whether your students are reading for gist or detail, a topic sentence can give them the necessary information. Topic sentences are found at the start of a paragraph and are frequently used in articles and academic research to give the reader the main idea of what is to come. If you are unsure what a topic sentence looks like, the first sentence of this paragraph is an example!

One idea to introduce students to the idea of topic sentences is to find a text with four or five paragraphs and remove the topic sentence from each.

Give the students the gapped text and the topic sentences and have them match each sentence to the correct paragraph. This will highlight how topic sentences provide a summary of the main idea of each paragraph.

This can be an effective task for both primary and secondary students, though it’s likely that primary students will be working with shorter texts. If you have a text with only three paragraphs, you can write a couple of distractor sentences to make the activity more challenging.

4. Comparing and contrasting

As with any aspect of language learning, if students can create a personal connection to the content, they will be more engaged and more likely to remember the information.

We can use compare and contrast questions with any text. For example, for texts which tell a personal story, we can ask:

• How are you similar or different to this person?
• What would you do in that situation?

For texts which talk about a particular issue, we can ask:

• Do you think this is a problem in your country?
• What would you do in this situation?

Students of any age should be allowed to reflect on their learning and have the chance to empathize with the people and situations they read about. Even for younger learners, questions can be graded to their level to allow them to compare their experiences to the content of the text.

5. Understanding numbers

Non-fiction texts often include a lot of facts and figures and it’s important that students are able to understand what these numbers mean so they can really understand the text.

Our younger learners might need help appreciating long distances or large quantities, so providing them with something more tangible can help them greatly.

When working with distances and sizes, try to use familiar locations, such as the length of the school playground or the area of the classroom, and compare these locations to the measurement in the text.

Similarly with quantities, find something which students can relate to easily. For example, if a text talks about the number of people, compare that amount to the number of students in the class.

6. Working with vocabulary

Teaching students how to use a dictionary is important, but it’s also essential that students can use other skills to understand new words when they can’t reach for a dictionary.

As teachers, it’s important for us to identify the keywords in a text which we want students to remember and use after the lesson. You may choose to pre-teach this vocabulary so that students can approach the reading with a good understanding of the key lexis.

However, there may be times when you want students to predict the meaning – of key and subsidiary vocabulary – from the context. It’s helpful to teach students to read around unfamiliar words as this helps them to identify the type of word it is (noun, verb, adjective, and so on), which helps them understand a particular word’s meaning within a sentence.

7. Separating fact and opinion

While many texts our students read are factual, there will be times when they also need to distinguish between fact and opinion.

Sometimes, we can infer the writer’s attitude towards a topic by looking at the type of language they use and identifying whether words are neutral, or if they give us clues as to the writer’s opinion. This can be a difficult distinction for our students to make but we can do activities with the students to raise their awareness.

Take a subject students are likely to have different opinions about, such as a famous footballer. Ask the students to tell you about that person, then categorize the words they give you as to whether they provide a fact or an opinion. Words such as tall, Brazilian and blue eyes would be facts about the player. Whereas amazing, stupid or the best player ever would show their opinion.