Guess who's back?

Dear Reader,

Was your inbox feeling a little lonely these past two months? Might it have missed me? If so, I hope I can assuage its concerns: I'm back!

Now, you might be wondering something along the lines of:

To which I can give a good explanation: I was training some future teachers - the best job in the world. The background to this is that for a long time in the last few years, I was unable to travel and work in person due to my dodgy health; so, now that I can, I took the opportunity to do a bit of travelling (for work, I promise) and accepted a job teaching a summer course at a university here in the UK, training a group of future teachers from Asia.

The course was lovely but very intensive, and when faced with the choice between sending a mediocre newsletter or sending no newsletter for a while, I will always prioritise your precious time, so I opted for a short break. If the thought "I wonder where that girl is?!" crossed your mind while stuck in traffic in these two months or you're one of the people who wrote to me, thank you from the bottom of my heart: I've missed writing to you and I'm delighted to be back ✨

How have you been? Have you managed to leave all things school behind for a bit or are you still buried in paperwork? Are you prioritising sleep, healthy eating and good books or have you been partying until the wee hours and doomscrolling until the very end of your phone¹? Both acceptable options, and I want to hear about it all.

But insofar as my return to your inbox is concerned: what do I have in store for you today? Well, since I last wrote to you, it turns out I have acquired much knowledge, dear reader, and I feel compelled to share all of it with you. So, I have put together a little photo diary of my last two months on this earth, with a few cool facts and yes, some cool teaching tips because this is still, and forever will be, an education-first newsletter. The diary will come in two parts: today, you'll get the trips; in the next newsletter, photos from the course I taught.

So, are you ready to come on a little trip with me? Get your iced tea and let's dive in! 🏄

Scarborough: Queen Victoria and the heatwave

If you thought climate change had spared these more northern parts of the world, think again: as you might have heard, half of England is currently in a drought. But that also means we've had a few heatwaves and personally, I exploited one of them for a weekend at... the beach. In England, of all places!

Turns out, coastal towns in England are not half bad:

*The path to the beach, which my child promptly rolled down*

While statistics vary, some suggest that there are more than 1,000 coastal towns and villages in the UK - somewhat unsurprisingly since it's an island.

Scarborough, pronounced /ˈskɑːbrə/ if you're IPA-inclined, is on the North Yorkshire coast. It boasts over 1,000 years worth of history, having likely been founded by the Vikings, and it is often touted as Britain's first seaside resort due to its spa, which its 300 years old. Scarborough is full of history, which of course includes a tribute to her:

Incidentally, can you guess how many statues of Queen Victoria there are in the UK? No worries, I'll give you the answer at the end of this letter².

Barcelona: sunburn, friends and a cool lesson template

At the end of May, I went to my first in person conference in ages. It was so refreshing to meet old friends and colleagues, learn something new and be in Barcelona, of all places! Although I was far too blasé about the sun, thinking I could never get sunburnt in 25° weather (spoiler: I can), I greatly enjoyed the city's whimsy:

*I'm fully on board with decorating your balcony with hearts*

And I learned a lot, particularly about emergent language. Forgive me if you already know, but in a nutshell, emergent language is the language that naturally comes up in lessons, mostly unplanned, and teachers can record it on the board, focus on it and, if needed, upgrade it.

I work a lot with emergent language, but one of the most challenging aspects of it is recording it in such a way that a) it makes sense and b) I can easily recycle it in subsequent lessons. Considering how many words there are in the English language (speaking of which: can you guess?³), how to collect and organise emergent language is an aspect of my teaching that I have been vowing to improve for a while.

One idea came from the very creative Teresa Bestwick: the tree. The idea is simple and I've used it thus: at the end of a lesson, I've drawn a tree on the board and asked students to draw a tree on their notebook and write the words we had learned in the lesson in the tree. They had to distribute the words between the roots, the trunk, the branches and the leaves of the tree. This encourages them to categorise the words: some did so by word class, some by lexical set, some by length (e.g. individual words, binomials, trinomials, longer idioms).

The other idea came from the also incredibly talented Alice Copello. I had the privilege of observing a class she taught live, and in it, she used this simple but effective template:

In the centre of this template, where you currently see a white space because I'm not overly keen on sharing other people's personal work, she would project the content of the lesson, in the form of, among other things, tiny URLs or QR codes leading to a reading comprehension text. The use of this template kept the lesson organised and collected the emergent language in a tidy, predictable way, with pronunciation features displayed separately. If, like me, you sometimes make a mess of your whiteboard work, you might like to try something like this!

Cambridge: a reminder on myths, a walk down memory lane and some architecture

Finally, my last and latest adventure was a one day trip to Cambridge, which took me very close to a nervous breakdown: between two late trains, with two consequent trains missed, a cancelled train and a total of 2.5 hour delay, it reminded me that the myth of northern efficiency and punctuality, is, well... nothing more than a myth.

On the infuriatingly brief stroll I managed to take through the town, I walked past one of the historic Cambridge-based summer schools I worked for back when I had fewer, maybe even zero, grey hairs. The town was absolutely chock full of students on their English summer school experience, followed (or preceded) by dutiful teachers and course assistant. Ah, to be young again!

And then, I went to my final destination:

While I can't share why I went (for now, at least), let me share that our friends at Cambridge University Press and Assessment work in a stunning building, in a lovely area, and are quite lovely people themselves. Add a bit of non-scorching, non-sunburn-causing sun to the mix, and you have yourself a lovely day in Cambridge.

And that is it for today's recap of my travels! I hope some of it has been inspiring and see you soon with Part 2: what I learned by training a group of future teachers, complete with pictures (and a few practical tips I think you're going to like).

But in the meanwhile, let me wish you a splendid Sunday with your loved ones.

Take care, dear teacher ✨ (oh, I had missed writing that!)

¹ An idea that fascinates me. What is at the end of our phone, if we scroll long enough?!

² I talk about this in the course Culture in English-speaking countries: there appear to be 175 statues of Queen Victoria across the UK as recorded by the charity ArtUK.

³ As I'm sure you can imagine, estimates very widely, from 170,000 to over a million words (according to none other than renowned linguist David Crystal). It mostly depends on how you define a word, e.g. are pay and paid two different words? If you're keen and feeling a bit word nerdy, Merriam-Webster can tell you more.

P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: I used the first couple of minutes from this clip recently in a lesson in which someone told me about their children correcting their grandparents' Italian. It's from a South African, but it could have been written by any Italian!

✨Cool things I heard this week

I. got. tenure! I finally got tenure!

What did you think of today's newsletter?

❤️ I loved it: well, thank you so much! Hit "reply" to let me know (it makes my day) or hit "forward" and send it to a friend

👉 I'm new, a friend sent me this: great to have you here! To receive this newsletter every Sunday (ish), for free, subscribe here

🚀 I want more: no problem - check out all my previous newsletters with tips, lesson plans and ramblings here or join our YouTube channel

👎🏻 Meh, I'm not sure: that's absolutely fine: you can unsubscribe from the Sunday newsletter (but still occasionally receive important communications about your courses) or Unsubscribe from all emails.