Teaching Resources

The words and phrases in the Glossary are used a lot in the activity guides. For convenience, the words are coloured blue, so that if you see a blue term, you know that you can find its meaning in the Glossary. 

Team Learning is a system developed originally by Associate Professor Maggie MacDonald from Wright State University, along with her colleague Zena Thiravithul. Maggie’s son was working at a school in Thailand, and complained that it was not possible to run student-centred communication activities with classes of 40-60 students. Maggie developed Team English as a system to:

1. Motivate students through ongoing competition.
2. Get students to work cooperatively, with strong students motivated to mentor team-mates.
3. Get students to maintain their own discipline.

Team Learning is not an activity itself, but a system that makes other activities work better.

For Team Learning to work well, it is very important to take some time to set up your teams. This is very different to quickly forming teams for one game during a lesson. The teams will stay together for a whole semester or longer, so it is much more important to make well-formed teams from the beginning, who can work well together, and develop team loyalty and pride.

Line Challenge is a very good activity for learning vocabulary, short phrases, or phonics. It can be used to practice either reading vocabulary, or simply saying it, by identifying pictures. This Activity Guide covers identifying pictures only.

Line Challenge is always run at the same time as Team Coaching, and its main purpose is to motivate the students to stay on task in Team Coaching. See the Team Coaching Activity Guide for details of that activity.

If possible, Line Challenge should be run for at least two rounds in a lesson, so that, when a team has finished the first round, they continue to work hard in Team Coaching. It also helps to gives teams a bonus if they improve their scores from previous rounds.

Listen and Run is a simple, fun activity for practising listening skills for low level students. It can even be used at kindergarten level.

The basic structure of Listen and Run is that the teacher calls out a word, phoneme or phrase, and one student from each team must run and select a corresponding flashcard from their team’s pile.

Listen and Run can be extended in various ways. For example, the teacher might call out: “I go to the market by motorbike taxi”, and the students must first find a motorbike taxi flashcard, then “ride it” to find the market flashcard.

Matching Relay is a high energy activity that addresses reading, listening and pronunciation skills. It simulates real life by putting both speed and accuracy pressure on students. The fastest teams get more bonus points, but teams also score points for correct matches. Students learn that teams that rush to finish first may not win because of poor accuracy, and that it is important to balance the two.

Matching Relay is an excellent source of feedback to both the teacher and student coaches, so, if time permits, run the activity twice, with Team Coaching sandwiched between.

Matching Relay can be used to practise many different language points, including phonics, vocabulary, grammar and set phrases – in fact any pairs-matching exercise can be easily converted to a Matching Relay.

คู่มือการทำกิจกรรมนี้แสดงให้เห็นถึงการทำอุปกรณ์การเรียนการสอนสำหรับกิจกรรมต่างๆ และนอกจากนี้ยังเป็นอุปกรณ์ทั่วไปที่จะใช้สำหรับTeam Learningอีกด้วย 

Phonics 1 Vs. 2 Drilling is a very simple but powerful technique that helps students with:

• phoneme distinctions that don’t exist in Thai (e.g. “van” Vs “wan”)
• phonemes that are not final consonants in Thai (e.g. “bag” Vs “back”)
• Phonics Rules (e.g. “cent” Vs “Kent”)

In 1 Vs. 2 Drilling, we also tone as a distractor. It is important for students whose L1 is a tonal language such as Thai, NOT to pay attention to tone when listening to English. So 1 Vs. 2 Drilling serves two purposes:

1. Helping students to pay attention to the phonemes that affect word meaning in English
2. Ignoring tonal variation, which does not affect word meaning in English

1 Vs. 2 Drilling needs no special equipment other than a blackboard/whiteboard. 

Phonics Bingo addresses listening skills primarily, and includes Writing Practice during the set-up stage. It also contains elements of Team Coaching. Team Leaders coach their team-mates, first in writing the words, then in helping them to listen for the target words.

When most of the class can read basic CVC syllables, you can run Phonics Bingo Version 2, in which students must work individually. This provides a smooth transition from collaborative teamwork to individual responsibility.

Phonics Dictation practices both listening and writing skills of students individually.

Students must listen and write as the teacher calls out first single phonemes, then CV blends, then CVC syllables. Eventually students should be able to write down words that include consonant clusters and several syllables.

Phonics Dictation is also important for practising spelling rules, such as use of ‘ck’ after short vowels.

It is also useful for assessing your students’ progress. Data from Phonics Dictation activities will help you make decisions about how fast to progress, and which activities to prioritise in upcoming lessons.

Phonics Drilling is similar to other traditional teacher-centred techniques. However, instead of getting students to recite the spelling by rote, the teacher uses phonics to promote good pronunciation, as well as reading.

There are three types of Phonics Drilling:

• Identifying single graphemes
• blending graphemes/phonemes into syllables
• Using phonics to teach pronunciation and spelling of real vocabulary

This Activity Guide deals with graphemes and blending. Vocabulary will be covered in a separate guide.

Lucky Dip is a fun and powerful activity that promotes cooperative learning as well as phonics development. We can also say that Lucky Dip is the simplest, purest communication activity. One student says something; others must listen and react somehow to what has been said.

Phonics Lucky Dip is a special form of this activity that addresses reading, pronunciation, listening and spelling skills. By integrating these skills, students also remember vocabulary better, because they can associate a word’s spelling, pronunciation and meaning as a unified system, rather than individual elements that must each be learned by rote.

However, an important limitation to remember is that, while Lucky Dip does promote cooperative learning, team leaders tend to dominate in this activity. It is used to develop the team leaders’ skills initially; then other activities are introduced that better encourage them to mentor their team-mates.

Phonics Rain is similar to Phonics Reading Challenge, but is a much higher energy activity. Also, unlike Reading Challenge, you can allot a fixed time for it – you do not need to test every student in the class.

Like Reading Challenge, scoring for Phonics Rain is graded according to the ability of the student, which encourages more advanced students to coach less advanced team-mates, rather than take all the turns for themselves. However, in Phonics Rain, the coaching aspect is much less formalised than in Reading Challenge. Students pick cards up from around the room, then, if they need help, they can seek out a more advanced team-mate before approaching the teacher.

Phonics Rain does take quite a bit of preparation initially, but you will find that it is worth the effort. Don’t be afraid that you classroom seems messy in the early part of the activity; it is designed so that by the end, all of the materials are back in order.

Reading Challenge is run during a Team Coaching session to assess students’ reading and pronunciation skills. The teacher challenges groups of students of the same level (with the same Team English number) to read target word activity cards from the current unit.

Reading Challenge is very efficient for several reasons:

• While the teacher is challenging one group of students, the team coaches continue to drill the rest of their team-mates, so students are kept on task
• Team coaches get instant feedback on their coaching, as their team-mates are challenged and the scores are displayed
• The weakest students get the most coaching time before they are challenged.

Reading Challenge is also helpful in assessing your students’ progress. Use data from Reading Challenges to help you make decisions about how fast to progress through the course, which activities to prioritise in upcoming units, and which team coaches need the most mentoring. Reading Challenge is rarely completed in a single lesson. Since Team Coaching is so important, and used so often, generally only 4, 8 or 12 students need be challenged in any one lesson. Every time Team Coaching is used, challenge one or more groups of students until you have worked through the entire class. Then begin again.

There are two forms of Reading Challenge – phonics and vocabulary. This Activity Guide covers the phonics version, which is used while students are still learning the basic grapheme-phoneme correspondences and how to blend them into syllables. A separate Activity Guide is provided for Vocabulary Reading Challenge, which is used when students are able to apply phonics to learning regular vocabulary.

Team Coaching is the single most important technique you can use to develop all your students! In most classes, only a small percentage of students pay attention, because teachers do not have enough time to give every student the individual attention that they need. It becomes necessary for teachers to focus on those students who are interested, and accept the fact that the rest will achieve poor results.

Using Team Coaching, every student in the class can get the individual attention they need. However, many teachers and students struggle with Team Coaching at first, because the role of the teacher is so different to what they are used to. Instead of teaching content directly to the students, the teacher’s role is to mentor the coaches – show them how to drill effectively, as well as checking that they understand the content properly themselves.

Because of this, do not expect Team Coaching to be immediately successful. It may take several lessons for you and your students to adjust to the new environment. However, it is well worth the time and effort. Once Team Coaching starts to work properly, you will find that most of the students you had given up hope for, develop better English language skills.

Just as in football, coaches and team-mates need an upcoming competition to motivate them. So Team Coaching works best when followed immediately by competitive activities, such as Reading Challenge, Matching Relay or Phonics Dictation.

Team Coaching has many forms. This guide covers Phonics Drilling and Phonics Dictation, but with a little imagination, almost any whole-class drilling technique or activity can be adapted to take advantage of the more intensive experience that Team Coaching provides to individual students.

This document is used for note-taking after an in-class training session. Generally, both the trainer and the teacher will take notes during the feedback session. Then, we keep a copy of both versions in the teacher’s file for future reference. 

Use this form to set objectives for the semester.

See the Semester Objectives Guide (below) for details

This guide offers suggestions for setting objectives for the semester in 5 areas:

• New activities to try with your students
• Phonics Units
• General Content (vocabulary, grammar etc)
• English in the Classroom
• Student Independence

It is intended to be used with the Semester Objectives Form

This form is used to plan training for the next two weeks. It is used to take notes during the Feedback session in a training day.

It includes a section about what the teacher will do in the “off-week” before we visit again, and a section about the training we will give on the next visit.

It also has a section for materials preparation, so that everyone knows what needs to be prepared – and who needs to prepare it!

Activity Assessment Forms are used to assess teachers’ competency in various activities and teaching techniques. Teachers who pass an assessment are awarded a “Certificate of Competence” for that activity or technique.

Each form lists a set of competencies and, for each competency, an evidence guide to help our assessors decide if a teacher is competent to our standards. Teacher who are interested in being assessed can study the evidence guides to help them prepare for the assessment.

Team Learning Set-up is used to assess whether a teacher can set up teams, and deliver an introductory Team Learning lesson. Use this form together with the Team Learning Set-up Activity Guide.

Activity Assessment Forms are used to assess teachers’ competency in various activities and teaching techniques. Teachers who pass an assessment are awarded a “Certificate of Competence” for that activity or technique.

Each form lists a set of competencies and, for each competency, an evidence guide to help our assessors decide if a teacher is competent to our standards. Teacher who are interested in being assessed can study the evidence guides to help them prepare for the assessment.

Line Challenge – Identify is used to assess whether a teacher can run this activity. Use this form together with the Line Challenge – Identify Activity Guide.

Activity Assessment Forms are used to assess teachers’ competency in various activities and teaching techniques. Teachers who pass an assessment are awarded a “Certificate of Competence” for that activity or technique.

Each form lists a set of competencies and, for each competency, an evidence guide to help our assessors decide if a teacher is competent to our standards. Teacher who are interested in being assessed can study the evidence guides to help them prepare for the assessment.

Listen and Run is used to assess whether a teacher can run this activity. Use this form together with the Listen and Run Activity Guide.

Activity Assessment Forms are used to assess teachers’ competency in various activities and teaching techniques. Teachers who pass an assessment are awarded a “Certificate of Competence” for that activity or technique.

Each form lists a set of competencies and, for each competency, an evidence guide to help our assessors decide if a teacher is competent to our standards. Teacher who are interested in being assessed can study the evidence guides to help them prepare for the assessment.

Phonics 1 Vs. 2 Drilling is used to assess whether a teacher can use this technique. Use this form together with thePhonics 1 Vs. 2 Drilling Activity Guide.

This set consists mostly of verbs that students need to learn early in their studies, such as “walk”, “run” and “play”. It also includes verbs for classroom language, such as “stand up” and “sit down”. As with all our flashcards, we use images if possible to show the meaning of the vocabulary, but for some words such as “go” and “arrive”, it is difficult to convey the meaning clearly with images, so we have provided Thai translations. 

This is one of our most developed sets of flashcards, currently with 69 items, ranging from tiny insects to a humpback whale. There are also cards for the English conception of animal sounds, such as “woof” and “oink”. Note the large file size, so you will need a fast internet connection or plenty of time. 

As well as clothes and accessories, this set also contains useful adjectives, such as “checked”, “spotted” and”plain”. There are more adjectives in the “Describing” set, so you may want to download that too. 

This set contains common adjectives such as “big”, “small”, “fast” and “slow” as well as some basic colours. Because these words are best understood in contrast to other adjectives, each image represents two contrasing adjectives, or several in the case of colours. 

A grapheme is either a letter, or group of letters, that represents a single phoneme. For further information, see the Glossary.

This set of flashcards contains 96 of the most common English graphemes. Each of these graphemes will eventually be covered in our Phonics Units series.

This is another large set, as eating and drinking are vital to all of us, so students are very interested in this vocabulary.

In addition to a mixture of Thai and international foods, there are cards for meal times, and cards for tastes such as “sweet”, “sour” and “spicy”. We use Thai translations for tastes, as it would be difficult to convey their meanings via images.

This set contains a range of indoor and outdoor activities, as covered in most textbooks. Most of the items are presented as base verbs, such as “sing”, “dance” and “draw”, or verb+object pairs, such as “go fishing” and “do jigsaw puzzles”. You may need to teach students to manipulate these verbs in sentences such as: “I like dancing,” and “I like going fishing.”

This set is quite small as yet. Mostly, it contains cards for common heath problems, such as “backache”, “diarrhea” and “have a cold”. As usual, we use images where possible – except for “diarrhea” of course!

This set includes vocabulary for various topics connected with the home, including rooms, furniture, kitchen implements and toys.

It is still in early stages of development, and should grow to about twice this size eventually.

This set contains a variety of occupations, most of which are commonly featured in Thai text books. Other items have been selected with a focus on what would be most interesting, and useful, for rural Thai students.

These flashcards help students learn how to say numbers from 0 to 999. We advise teachers not to teach numbers by rote, but to teach how they fit into a logical system. To help with this, we colour-code the numbers:

• Units are coloured black.
• Tens are coloured purple, and the suffix “-ty” is written at the bottom of the card.
• Hundreds are coloured green, and the word “hundred” is written at the bottom of the card.

This helps students to decode the numbers, and understand the system.

The set also includes basic arithmetic symbols: + – x ÷ and =, so it can be used to teach basic mathematics in either English or Thai.

This is another set that is in early stages of development. For now, most of the common vocabulary is included, such as “eyes”, “hand” and “feet”.

Parts of the body are presented in context. For example, “ears” are shown on a head. They are enlarged, and the rest of the head is faded to make it clear that the ears are the focus.

Eventually, this set will include all single and plural pairs where appropriate, such as “eye”/”eyes”, “tooth”/”teeth” and “finger”/”fingers”. It will also include verbs of the senses, such as “see”, “hear” and “taste”. Keep checking in to see when updates appear.

People mostly focuses on family relationships, such as “mother”, “husband” and “grandchild”. There are a few other items such as “king”, “children” and “baby”, and this section will grow over time.

For family relationships, we use translations rather than images, partly because it is difficult to convey the meanings of these words via images, and partly because English and Thai family systems are so different. For example, Thais often confuse “niece” and “granddaughter”, because the same word (หลานสาว) is used for both in Thai. Similarly, many Thais don’t realise that your “uncle” can be either an older or younger brother of your mother or father.

To make the meanings as clear as possible, translations of difficult items include warnings marked in red such as for “niece”:

• The daughter of your brother or sister
• Not the daughter of your child!

As well as places and types of transport, this set also includes common prepositions such as “in”, “on the left of” and “between the … and the …”, and the determiners “this” and “that”.

This set contains question words and phrases such as “when”, “how many” and “what time”.

Rather than images, this set uses Thai translations and information. For example, as well as standard translations, the card for “how many” notes that it is used with countable nouns, whereas “how much” is used with uncountable nouns.

This large set contains several areas of vocabulary concerning education, including:

• stationery and other common objects found in the classroom
• furniture
• school subjects
• classrooms and other locations in the school

At the moment, this set contains days, months and a couple of special events – Christmas and Loi Krathong.

Since names and days and months are abstract terms, and have direct translations, we have used Thai translations rather than trying to depict them via images. However, the days of the week are colour-coded according to Thai traditions (Sunday = red, Monday = yellow etc), and months are labeled with their corresponding number (January = 1, February = 2 etc). If there is sufficient demand from teachers for alternate flashcards without the Thai translations, we will add them to the set.

Eventually, this set will also include clock faces for teaching time, frequency adverbs (sometimes, often etc.), periods (second, hour, day, year, decade) and so forth.

This set contains the names of seasons for both temperate (Winter”, “Spring”, “Summer”, “Autumn”), and tropical (“Hot Season”, “Wet Season”, “Rainy Season”) climates.

It also contains adjectives for weather, such as “still”, “windy” and “foggy”. As with the adjectives in our Describing set, each adjective is contrasted with another, such as “windy” verses “still”, and “cloudy” verses “clear”.

This handout shows how to pronounce the phoneme corresponding to each English grapheme, especially when drilling.

It covers 6 areas:

• Consonants that can be sustained
• Voiced and voiceless consonants that cannot be sustained
• Comparison of English and Thai vowels
• English consonants that sound the same as Thai consonants (if they are syllable-initial)
• How to pronounce English consonants that do not have Thai equivalents
• The “Complex Code” – alternative graphemes and their basic equivalents

A handout of 16 rules, which help students to understand the relationship of spelling to pronunciation in English.

There are many lists of such rules, but this list has been compiled with Thai speakers in mind. There are even three special rules – just for Thai speakers!

The Phonics Colour Coding in the flashcards shows how the rules apply. Letters highlighted in pink have a subscript that references these rules, so that students can learn the rules practially, as they learn vocabulary.

Phonics units contain the materials you need for the various phonics activities listed in the Activity Guides. This includes flashcards, activity cards of target syllables for various activities, a Phonics Bingo set, a Writing Practice sheet, a table for 1 Vs 2 Drilling, and a Reading Challenge scoresheet.

Each unit also contains detailed teaching notes in both Thai and English.

This overview gives a roadmap of our entire phonics course, showing the order of introducing content such as graphemes (letters and groups of letters), phonemes (the sounds that the graphemes represent), and phonics rules, which show how letters may change sounds according to the other letters around them.

If teachers spend 1 hour per week on phonics, it will take about 5 years to complete the entire course, so this overview helps teachers to see how their work fits into the overall development of the students.

Phonics units contain the materials you need for the various phonics activities listed in the Activity Guides. This includes activity cards of target syllables for various activities, a Phonics Bingo set, a Writing Practice sheet, a table for 1 Vs 2 Drilling, and a Reading Challenge scoresheet.

The 7 graphemes/phonemes of Unit 1 were chosen because they are all easy for Thai students to pronounce, and to hear the difference between them.

Phonics Unit 2 continues with graphemes/phonemes that are easy for Thai students to pronounce – at least in syllable-initial position. These 5, added to those from Unit 1, give students confidence with this relatively easy content before tackling the more difficult Unit 3.

Students do often confuse “a” with “e” (which is why “e” was not introduced in Unit 1), so there are some examples in the 1 Vs 2 Drilling chart to practice hearing the difference. Also, Thai students are not used to pronouncing or hearing “f” in syllable-final position, so there is practice for distinguishing between “f” and “p” at the end of a syllable.

As with Unit 1, there are materials for all of the phonics activities in the Activity Guides.

Unit 3 is where phonics really starts to be useful in developing listening and pronunciation skills, as well as reading and spelling skills. The phoneme for “z” does not exist at all in Thai, and is usually pronounced the same as voiceless“s”. The phonemes for “b” and “d” exist in syllable-initial position, but not syllable-final, where they are replaced by the voiceless “p” and “t” respectively.

To help with this, Unit 3 contains three extra 1 Vs 2 Drilling charts to help students practice the difference between voiced and voiceless phonemes.

There is also sheet music for singing “Happy Birthday” with a “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” sound to practice making this strange (for Thai students) phoneme.

Unit 4 introduces the first Phonics Rules, and the first grapheme that consists of more that one letter – ‘ck’.

Pronunciation Rule 1: ‘c’ is usually pronounced /k/, but /s/ when followed by ‘e’, ‘i’ or ‘y’.

Spelling Rule 1: If a /k/ sound comes before ‘e’ or ‘i’, it is usually spelled ‘k’.

Spelling Rule 2: If a /k/ sound comes after a short vowel, it is usually spelled ‘ck’.

The next two units continue to introduce Phonics Rules, as well as adding new graphemes/phonemes.

Unit 5 introduces two more Phonics Rules, and a second grapheme that consists of more that one letter – ‘gu’.

Pronunciation Rule 2: ‘g’ is usually pronounced /g/, but /j/ when followed by ‘e’, ‘i’ or ‘y’.

Spelling Rule 3: If a /g/ sound comes before ‘e’ or ‘i’, it is usually spelled ‘g’.

Unfortunately, whereas Pronunciation Rule 1 is rarely broken, there are many exceptions to Pronunciation Rule 2, such as ‘get’ and ‘give’. However, there are many words that do follow this rule, and also, there is a strong relationship between Rule 1 (from Unit 4) and Rule 2, which helps students begin to see consistent patterns in English spelling.

Unit 6 introduces the long vowel graphemes “ae”, “ee”, “ie”, “oe” and “ue”.

The advantage of introducing long vowels via these particular graphemes is that they follow a simple pattern – adding an “e” to a short vowel changes the phoneme to be the same as its name.

However, these graphemes do have a complication! If there is a final consonant, it usually sits between the two letters of the grapheme. So, in addition to these five long vowels, Unit 6 introduces four Spelling Rules about those final consonants:

Spelling Rule 4: If ‘ae’, ‘ie’, ‘oe’ or ‘ue’ have a final consonant, it sits between them.

Spelling Rule 5: If ‘ee’ has a final consonant, it may be in the middle, or at the end.

Spelling Rule 6: If a /s/ sound comes after a long vowel, it is usually spelled: ‘vowel + ce’.

Spelling Rule 7: If a /k/ sound comes after a long vowel, it is usually spelled ‘vowel + ke’.

Unit 7 introduces the grapheme ‘ng’, which is relatively easy, as many Thai students are already aware that these two letters together represent the same sound as ง.

The more difficult part of Unit 7 is pronouncing the final /k/ in words such as ‘bank’, ‘pink’ and ‘tank’. Teachers are advised to spend some time on 1 Vs. 2 Drilling to help students hear the differences before trying to pronounce them.

Another complication with ‘ng’ is when it is followed by ‘e’, ‘i’ or ‘y’. These letters change the sound or ‘g’ to /j/ (as we learned in Unit 5). Many Thais are unaware of this, and pronounce, for example, ‘orange’ as ‘oreng’.

Pronunciation Rule 3: ‘n’ is pronounced /ng/ when followed by ‘g’ or ‘k’ (unless the ‘g’ is followed by ‘e’, ‘i’ or ‘y’ – see Rule 2)

Unit 8 introduces the graphemes ‘l’ and ‘r’.

The most difficult part of this unit is that students have been taught that there is supposed to be a difference between ล and ร in Thai, but the distinction only really exists in ‘high class’ Thai – not the variety that students use in their daily life. So students tend to believe that this should be the same for English.

In fact, ‘l’ and ‘r’ sound different in all native varieties of English – from all regions and all social classes, although some people pronounce ‘r’ like ‘w’. Native speakers are more likely to pronounce ‘rice’ as ‘wice’ than ‘lice’!

One way we try to avoid confusion is by not comparing ‘r’ with ร, although we do compare ‘l’ with ล. We teach that ‘r’ sounds like the growl of an angry dog! Students then enjoy making the ‘r’ sound by imitating an angry dog, rather than confusing it with ร. In fact ‘r’ only sounds like ร in the Scottish accent – for most native English accents, the phoneme is quite different.

In any case, students need to learn to distinguish between the two letters, so most of the activity cards for this unit contrast ‘l’ and ‘r’. Teachers should focus on listening activities such as 1 Vs. 2 Drilling, Phonics Bingo and Phonics Dictation.

Unit 9 introduces consonant clusters.

Consonant clusters in English are different to Thai in several ways:

• English has many more possible clusters than Thai.
• English has clusters after the vowel as well as before the vowel.
• In English, clusters are generally pronounced clearly, even in very informal speech, and by people from all walks of life.
• In Thai, in many cases, what appear to be clusters from the spelling, actually have an inherent vowel between them. This does not happen in English.

In Unit 9, we introduce consonant clusters after the vowel. Even though this is a very strange concept for Thai students, we have found that students can hear and pronounce these clusters more easily than clusters before the vowel.Clusters before the vowel will be introduced in Unit 10, and four special clusters that involve Phonics Pronunciation Rules are introduced in Unit 12.

The target syllables for Unit 9 include many common words that students, and especially teachers, have been pronouncing wrongly for many years. In fact it is much more difficult for teachers to correct their pronunciation, because they have had many more years to practise bad habits. However, please try to set a good example for your students. If they see you making a strong effort yourself, they will be motivated to do the same.

Part of Maggie MacDonald’s original design of Team Learning (at that time called Team English) is that all teams receive rewards at various milestones, rather than according to which team is leading the competition.

This is an important strategy to keep all teams motivated – even if a team is lagging behind other teams, they still receive a reward eventually, when they reach a milestone.

This first certificate is awarded when a team reaches 200 points, which often occurs after just a week or two of Team Learning activities. It is quite small (four certificates to one A4 page), and plain. As teams gain more points, the certificates become larger, and more elaborate.

This file (and other editable files from our Teaching Resources Repository) is in Open Document Text (.odt) format, which is the standard document file-type being adopted by many countries, including Thailand. It can be easily edited, using Libre Office, which you can download for free from the Internet.

 The 500 point certificate is twice the size of the 200 point version, has space for a team photograph, and lists the English nicknames of each team member. It also has space for a second signature, which could be the principal of the school, or a trainer from Teacher Plus Foundation.

This file (and other editable files from our Teaching Resources Repository) is in Open Document Text (.odt) format, which is the standard document file-type being adopted by many countries, including Thailand. It can be easily edited, using Libre Office, which you can download for free from the Internet.

Team Learning Formations are designed to promote efficient learning in teams, as well as improve classroom management. They help team leaders (#1 and #2) to control their team, and assist the team members that are most likely to need help.

Each of the three formations is designed for a purpose:

• “Listen to the Teacher” is the default formation for teacher-centred work.
• “Circle” is for student collaboration.
• “Team Coaching“ is a special formation in which the team leaders coach their team-mates. See the Team Coaching Activity Guides for details.

These resources are used in many Team Learning activities.

The set includes:

• team labels for the scoreboard
• team labels for containers
• level of difficulty labels for containers
• cards for randomly selecting individual students or teams
• multiple choice answer cards for teams

See the Materials Preparation Activity Guide for instructions on how to prepare these resources.

One of the important features of Team Learning is that points are accumulated over a semester or academic year. This scoresheet is a very simple , but powerful, tool for motivating students.

It is best displayed prominently in the classroom, next to the Teams Chart. As points accumulate, you will be amazed to see students clustered around the scoresheet, estimating how many more lessons it will take before they can claim their next reward!

Our scoring guide has been developed over a number of years, and some of our strategies will suprise many teachers.

For example, students get points for incorrect answers! This is very important, as education theorists tell us that making mistakes is an essential part of learning, and students should be rewarded, not punished, for making an attempt. Students also get points for saying “I don’t know”, and more points if they can give the answer after consulting with team-mates. This encourages communication and co-operative learning.

If students can answer correclty by themselves, they receive points on a scale, depending on their ability – less advanced students get more points! This encourages the team leaders to help develop their team-mates.

Team charts serve several important purposes:

• They help to build team identity and spirit.
• They are useful to the teacher during various activities, especially those that involve students’ English nicknames.
• In many activities, students get points according to their Team Learning number, so the chart ensures that students do not swap numbers to gain a points advantage.

We provide templates for two, three and four teams, depending on class size. Generally, we try to keep teams between 6 and 12 members.

See the Team Learning Setup Activity Guide for details on how to set teams, and how to prepare the charts.

This file (and other editable files from our Teaching Resources Repository) is in Open Document Text (.odt) format, which is the standard document file-type being adopted by many countries, including Thailand. It can be easily edited, using either Open Office or Libre Office, both of which you can download for free from the Internet.

Team charts serve several important purposes:

• They help to build team identity and spirit.
• They are useful to the teacher during various activities, especially those that involve students’ English nicknames.
• In many activities, students get points according to their Team Learning number, so the chart ensures that students do not swap numbers to gain a points advantage.

We provide templates for two, three and four teams, depending on class size. Generally, we try to keep teams between 6 and 12 members.

See the Team Learning Setup Activity Guide for details on how to set teams, and how to prepare the charts.

This file (and other editable files from our Teaching Resources Repository) is in Open Document Text (.odt) format, which is the standard document file-type being adopted by many countries, including Thailand. It can be easily edited, using either Open Office or Libre Office, both of which you can download for free from the Internet.

Team charts serve several important purposes:

• They help to build team identity and spirit.
• They are useful to the teacher during various activities, especially those that involve students’ English nicknames.
• In many activities, students get points according to their Team Learning number, so the chart ensures that students do not swap numbers to gain a points advantage.

We provide templates for two, three and four teams, depending on class size. Generally, we try to keep teams between 6 and 12 members.

See the Team Learning Setup Activity Guide for details on how to set teams, and how to prepare the charts.

This file (and other editable files from our Teaching Resources Repository) is in Open Document Text (.odt) format, which is the standard document file-type being adopted by many countries, including Thailand. It can be easily edited, using either Open Office or Libre Office, both of which you can download for free from the Internet.