Teachers shape every aspect of our learning experience, especially when it comes to language learning. Great teachers give learners not only the skills but the confidence to go out in the world, start speaking up and discovering new opportunities.
We’re celebrating those exceptional educators with the app English Teacher Awards 2024.
With five different categories and a Gold, Silver and Bronze winner in each, there are 15 chances to take home thousands of pounds worth of top prizes for the winning teachers and their schools.
Find out more about who can enter and the different categories in this article.
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The app English Teacher Awards celebrate educators across five different categories, and closely tailoring your application to the category description is a great way to stand out to the judges.
Teachers can only be nominated for one category, so take a look at the five categories below to find out which is the best fit for your nominee.
Those very first experiences of learning English can shape a love of language that lasts a lifetime.
This category is for primary educators who’ve set young learners up for long-term success in English through their nurturing, engaging approach.
From fun-filled lessons to creative ways to give young learners opportunities to use their new skills, we want to hear about the educators that have filled children with the confidence to get their language learning journey off to a great start.
Filled with exams, competing priorities and big decisions, the teenage years can be a make-or-break moment for language learning and the future paths it unlocks.
Making progress with a language rests on feeling confident enough to put skills into practice, which can be difficult for all learners and especially for teenagers.
This category recognizes dedicated teachers who’ve helped teen learners maintain their engagement and commitment to learning English. We’re looking for teachers who have helped teenagers build the confidence they need to speak up and start to discover the joy of being themselves in English.
Learning English as an adult comes with its own unique set of motivations and challenges. Learners are often balancing a whole range of competing responsibilities, with high-stakes opportunities, like studying or employment, that rely on language proficiency.
This category celebrates educators who enable and inspire adult learners with their empathetic, innovative approach, giving them the confidence to learn, perform at their best and unlock new opportunities by learning English.
Teaching is a dynamic discipline that changes with every year, every class and every learner.
Sometimes, it means finding a completely new way to help learners understand and connect with a subject.
This category celebrates those who are always striving to bring the best new technology and techniques to teaching English. We’re looking for educators who have challenged traditional practices, implemented innovative teaching methods and inspired change in the way English is taught.
Teaching is a journey, just like learning English. This category recognizes those with less than three years of experience at the very start of their English language teaching career.
We’re looking for educators who’ve arrived in the classroom with a whole host of creative ideas and techniques for building learners' confidence.
Winners in this category will already be leading the way at their school when it comes to shaping the way English is taught and giving learners that “I can do it” confidence.
Once you’ve decided on the right category, it’s time to start your nomination.
All applications are online via the English Teacher Awards entry pageand there’s just one question to answer:
How do you/your teacher/your colleague build learners’ confidence to be themselves in English?
The deadline for nominations is midnight (CST) on 1st November.
Your nominee will receive an automated email letting them know they’ve been nominated. Our team will contact them again if they’re shortlisted as a winner ahead of the online awards ceremony in November 2024.
When you’re teaching English to young learners, you might find that there are a few students in your class who are struggling. But sometimes it can be hard to tell why. Is it because their language level is low? Or are they finding classroom work difficult because of a general cognitive difference, like dyslexia?
Do you ever find it hard to keep students focused and on task? Young learners get easily distracted and it can be hard to find ways to keep them engaged.
So what can we do to get, and more importantly, keep our students’ attention? Here are our five top tips.
Young learners have relatively short attention spans. In the classroom, it is rare to have the whole class fully engaged in something for a long time, since the children will have different interests and levels, so it is essential to plan a number of activities for each lesson.
The more variety you can include in the activities and tasks you plan, the easier it is to provide something enjoyable and relevant for each child. Choose short tasks and try to have a couple of extra activities up your sleeve if something you planned doesn’t work well. However, don’t worry if you don’t have time to do them all – you can always save them for a future lesson.
Another way of keeping students engaged is to mix up the classroom dynamics, having a combination of individual heads-down work, pair work, group work, and whole class discussions or games. When planning your lesson, consider how your students might feel at each stage. After doing some reading or quiet work, students may start to become restless, and this is the ideal time to get them up and moving about.
While you are in class, pay close attention to the mood of the class. When you sense that students are becoming distracted or bored, change the dynamics of the activity.
Ever notice that students become lethargic and show a lack of interest? Why not try introducing brain breaks at strategic points in your lessons? Brain breaks are short physical activities or games designed to get the blood flowing and to re-energize students to help them get ready for learning. They range from short activities that last a couple of minutes, to longer breaks that may be suitable if your lessons last more than an hour.
We can vary different aspects of the lesson using the previous strategies, but one thing that rarely changes is the role of the teacher! One way of keeping students involved is by giving them more responsibility and allowing them to take a more active role in their learning.
Peer teaching completely changes the classroom dynamic and has students teach their peers while you take a step back. For primary classes, ask one or two students to take charge of a ready-made activity, e.g. one from your course book. They should give instructions, demonstrate, monitor as necessary, and check answers.
When students are used to doing this, you can start to have them work in pairs or small groups to plan their own activities to use in class.
Of course, nobody is perfect and there will be times when you lose students’ attention and they are not on task. For these occasions, you can use a wealth of classroom management strategies to regain the class's attention. Here are a few techniques:
Finally, if we want our students to be motivated and engaged in our lessons, we must show enthusiasm for what we are teaching. The more lively and animated you are about the lesson, the more the students will want to join you and learn.
There is a strong link between well-being and friendship, which is just as accurate for children as it is for adults. that children with stable friendships are happier, more able to cope with stress, and have higher self-esteem. Moreover, too, and children who experience friendship adjust more easily to school and perform better academically. School friendships are also a valuable way of learning social skills like sharing, resolving conflict, and engaging with peers positively.
Having friends is an important part of school life, and teachers can play a significant role in creating a positive classroom culture and helping children and young people to form friendships. How can you promote friendships between your students? Here are some ideas:
If there is an example of a good friendship in a book you are reading with students or in your lesson materials, draw your students’ attention to it. For instance, The Jungle Book is an excellent example of a story about friendship. Encourage your students to think critically about the friendships that they read about. You can ask questions like:
By discussing friendship regularly in the classroom, your students will learn about the behavior and characteristics of being a good friend.
You can create lots of opportunities for students to build friendships with one another during class time. Design activities that call for pair or group work, and include at least one or two in every lesson. Focusing on a common goal or problem is a great way to encourage your students to bond with one another.As a bonus, this collaborative way of working promotes important 21st century skills like communication and problem-solving.
Another way of promoting friendships between different groups of students is moving them around. Adjust your seating plan regularly to ensure that all your students interact with and work alongside different classmates, to promote positive, friendly classroom vibes.
Friendship is a social skill that children need to learn – and you can help by teaching them. Be explicit about exactly what you expect from them. Saying, “Be kind” is an abstract, vague concept that children might struggle to put into practice. Instead, give them concrete examples of behavior, such as:
When you see a student engaging in these behaviors, draw attention to them and praise them.
But to really convey the importance of school friendships and kind behavior, it’s not enough to tell them. As the teacher, you must model the behavior you’d like to see in your students. Be consistently positive and upbeat in your interactions with students, thank your learners when they offer help with something, and try to refrain from sounding impatient (even when you are!). All these steps will help to build a positive classroom culture where students feel secure, supported and happy.
Conflict is an inevitable part of school life, but you can help students to navigate arguments and other difficult situations in the classroom. If two students argue, you can help them to resolve it with the following steps:
Following these simple steps teaches children a framework for resolving conflict and gives them the tools to process strong emotions.
An excellent way to promote a positive classroom culture is to do friendship-focused activities with your students:
You could do a Venn diagram activity, where students work in pairs to discuss and write down things they have in common and areas of difference. It’s good to pair students who don’t spend much time together for this activity.
Another positive activity is a 'Honey Roast'. Give students enough squares of paper to have one for each of their classmates. Get them to write their classmates’ names on the paper, and then, on the other side, write down a compliment or something they like about that person, for example, “I like your handwriting”, or “You always use kind words”. Collect the pieces of paper and read out some nice examples to the class. Alternatively, give them directly to the students to read to themselves.
