T'was the week before Christmas...

...and all through the school (cough, cough) sorry about that, I'll just nip that one in the bud, I think.

We're getting in the Christmas spirit here at A+! Here's a video of our students decorating the tree that was kindly donated by Sue who teaches the TESOL course. The common room now looks very festive and people keep coming into the office and bringing us boxes of chocolates, which is lovely, but we also keep eating them and I've definitely got to go on a diet in the new year! Anyway, there's a lot of eating and drinking and making merry to do before then, so Merry Christmas one and all!

A+ Film and Drama Club

Those of you who attend the school may have noticed a few posters scattered around the common room and classrooms advertising the A+ Film and Drama club. Well, we've been meeting for a couple of weeks now and have produced our first film already! Before we had even started, the students had decided on the characters they wanted to portray and during our first session, we brainstormed ideas for a story we wanted to film using these characters. I then set some homework (yes, homework from an after school club, it just goes to show how dedicated our students are that they actually did it!) to write the script. In our next meeting we read through the script and the students practised their parts. We decided to film it the next day and got most of it done. The students again showed how much they wanted the film to succeed when they volunteered to come in at half past eight the next morning to film the last two scenes. I'm incredibly proud of their performances and the effort they all put in. So here it is, our very first production.

First night nerves

Well, I did it! I taught English for the first time in several years. I'm not going to pretend that it all went well, because that would be a lie. I made mistakes, but the important thing is that I know what they are and will correct them next time.

To recap, we were given our first teaching task to plan a 10 minute lesson in pairs and had to teach it to the rest of the TESOL class. My teaching partner (Anwar) and I had chosen to teach 'how to order food in a restaurant.' We actually planned most of it while we were still at the school - yes, we're clever like that :) - so the next week was spent gathering materials and working out how to deliver the lesson. Anwar found some pictures of food that he forwarded to me and I set about polishing the lesson plan. The level we were aiming at was Elementary so we had to consider the language we used very carefully.

From the Director's Desk

Hello everyone,
Sheffield is very chilly at the moment, it was -1 C this morning and I had to scrape the ice off my car!  It was all worth it though to get to the school and teach the students in the Bronze class.  Thanks to you all for greeting me with a cheerful smile.  I have heard the students practising their new production in the film club and hopefully we should be seeing the fruits of their labour very soon on the blog…  Watch this space….

 I hope everybody has checked out our updated website and our exciting new online courses, learning English from home – wherever that might be!  

Everything here is gearing up for Christmas and we will be closed over the Christmas period from the 22^nd December 2012 to 2^nd January 2013, but before that we will be having our Christmas outing to Sheffield City Hall on 20^th December and our Christmas party for staff and students on 21^st December in the A+ common room.  We’re all looking forward to that.

This just got real!

Those of you who've been following my adventures in TESOL will have seen we've had quite a sedate introduction to the topic; lots of grammar, a few observations of real teachers here and there and some pieces of homework. This week, however, the pace quickened slightly when it was revealed we would be teaching our first lessons! OK, we'd just be teaching them to each other, but I think in some ways that's worse. At least students (well, elementary level students at least) can't understand half of what you're saying, so don't notice too much if you stutter and stumble over your words due to nerves. If you're teaching other trainees who are fluent in English, you have nowhere to hide.

From the Director's Desk

Hello again,

Well, I am so very proud of our trainees on the CertTESOL which was moderated on Friday.  Many thanks to our Trinity College London Moderator who spent the day looking at the trainees work, interviewing them and giving feedback to us about our course.  They all passed with flying colours and the feedback we were given was excellent!!  Really, really well done to all our trainees and and the A+ staff.  Now all they need to do is find their dream job wherever in the world they choose to go.  

All the best to you all.

Who goes to the island?

We know we've got some incredibly talented students here at A+, but it's time we shared them with the world so everyone else can see how amazing they are. Silver class have been begging to do more acting since their debuts in the A+ soap so this week they worked on their own auditions for a reality TV show. I'm hoping that a director one day stumbles upon these gems and whisks them off to Hollywood. You can vote for your favourite in the comments section and we'll make sure they get through to the next round of auditions.

A+ go on safari!

On Saturday, A+ staff and students went on safari! We didn't have to take a plane to Africa, though, it turns out we can see animals from all over the world just up the road at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster.

A+ English: My experience so far

Hi, my name’s Christine and I’m a placement student here at A-plus.  I’m an English and Education studies student at Sheffield Hallam University currently in my third year. Part of my degree requires me to take undertake a placement in an educational environment for seven weeks each year. This time I decided to self organise and was lucky enough for the people at A-plus to offer me the opportunity to do my placement here! I have a special interest in English as a foreign language and I am doing my third year research project on second language acquisition so this is the perfect place for me to find out everything I need to know!

I’m on my fourth week here and

Modals, gerunds and second conditional, oh my!

So, I've been a TESOL trainee for a few weeks now, and I have to say I like it! I admit to a lot of grammar avoidance when I first started studying. Being faced with seemingly incomprehensible sentences such as, "A dependent clause always contains a past participle in non-finite sentence," would have sent me running for the hills just last month. To be honest, it leaves me feeling a bit wobbly now, but at least I've got the confidence to stand my ground and attempt to work it out instead of my brain just turning to mush and dribbling out of my ear! 

We've done much more than learn grammar on this course, I'm very pleased to report. On Tuesday night,

From The Director's Desk

Hello again readers
Just took a few days off on holiday, a nice break and now back with the team at A Plus Centres.  Our latest CertTESOL trainees are a week and more into their 4-week course and are doing really well.  I have observed some of the teaching and am very impressed with their resourcefulness and the amount of energy and enthusiasm they have.  I also caught up with our part-time CertTESOL course members who turn up on Tuesdays and some Saturdays and brave the dark nights and our lovely November weather come rain or shine to take in sessions on inductive and deductive teaching, modals, passives and conditionals amongst others, with a smile.  Well done to all and keep up the good work. 

First things first

So, you left me last time sitting at a desk in a room a few doors down from where I spend my working day and feeling the trepidation of a new chapter of my life opening up. I had insider knowledge that we were expecting three others and I couldn't help being the hostess and offering each person a cup of tea or coffee when they arrived. Nerves got the better of me, though, and I ended up getting a couple of the orders wrong. I think the others were confused when I finally joined the lesson; with the way I met them at the door and made sure they were comfortable, they probably thought I was just there to make the tea and sweep up at the end!

My Cert TESOL journey

Hi,
It's Tom here and I've got a confession. Many of you know me as the online coordinator for A+English, but what you may not realise is that one night a week I turn from mild-mannered A+ employee into my alter-ego. Yes, I'm revealing to the world that I'm a secret part-time TESOL trainee!

It all started a few years ago when I was living in Peru. I knew of a local English language school that desperately needed a substitute teacher to fill a gap before a new teacher arrived and I volunteered.

The A+ Soap

Our Silver class were set a project to write, produce and direct their own soap. They all did fantastic work and we thought the results were too good not to share!

So, watch our talented students in their first production! There are some real stars of the future here - expect to see more of them on a screen near you soon!

Task Based Learning

Hello, my name’s Neil and I’m the DOS (Director of Studies – we English teachers love our acronyms!) here at A+. I’ve lived in Sheffield for nine years and worked here for four and a half years, but originally I’m from Buxton in Derbyshire. I’ve been a teacher for five years (I taught in Peru for a few months in 2007) and I’ve just recently trained to become an IELTS examiner. Being DOS can be pretty busy at times – I’m in charge of timetabling staff, organising classes, observing teachers, writing and reviewing our syllabus, running our teacher training course, writing lessons for our online course and a few more things! But I love it really....

Anyway, one aspect of teacher methodology I’m quite interested in is Task Based Learning (TBL), a theory that was best developed by Jane Willis in the 90s. In her book, A Framework for Task-Based Learning, she identified the main stages of a TBL lesson as:

Message from our Director

Hello Readers,

 I am new to blogging so forgive me if this is not the kind of thing you are used to, but here goes….

I think I am going to approach this as a stream of consciousness thing where I can let you know how life splits itself into different levels depending on where you are and who you are talking to. 

It is Halloween and I forgot!  Both kids are away with Grandma and Grandad and so there is no Halloween evidence anywhere in the house – just another ordinary day until I got to A Plus Centres.  Here was a witch, a devil and a pirate complete with eye patch, skull and cross bones hat , penny whistle and stuffed parrot .  Well done A Plus teachers and admin staff!

At the time of writing this I have already had a meeting about our current General English classes, future English classes, Online English classes and the Trinity College London Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.  I have written a long list of ‘things to do’.  This is particularly it seems, for our CertTESOL courses.  We have a part time course running at the moment which started in October 2012 and we have a full time course starting on Monday 5^th November 2012.  Really looking forward to meeting all our students coming in for that, I so much enjoy watching them come in as trainees and leave as teachers.  It’s a privilege to be part of that process.

A+ go to Bakewell

Hi, I'm Tom Hazelden, the online coordinator for A+ Centres. I joined the school quite recently to develop the new online English courses that we offer. I also organise school trips and welcome new starters into the school on their first day.




We had a school trip to Bakewell recently. Bakewell is a small town in the heart of the Peak District, a national park that is very near the school. Some of our students, Neil (the director of studies) and I all had lots of fun feeding the ducks, walking around the town, visiting the church and seeing the famous Bakewell pudding! 

Welcome!

Welcome to the A+ Centres blog!
We're very excited to have launched this today and look forward to telling you all about life at A+. Here you will find posts about the staff at A+, details about school trips we've been on and updates on how our trainee teachers are progressing. Join us on our English language journey!