Webinars for educators
Led by top experts, this series dives into AI innovations and their impact on pedagogy and assessment. We'll address every-day challenges faced by language educators, while providing practical, game-changing solutions to elevate your teaching.
A free professional development series for English language educators.
Join us for another year of the ɫèAV Assessment Teacher Training Academy. The 2025 program aims to give participants an in-depth knowledge of the ɫèAV assessment portfolio, as well as exploring innovative strategies for tackling challenging question types and integrating AI into your teaching practices.
Earn professional development certificates by completing each training series block. Plus, earn a Credly by ɫèAV digital badge when you complete at least 7 sessions.
Explore how AI can enhance teaching and learning. This session focuses on practical AI tools to improve engagement, personalize learning and streamline tasks, allowing teachers to concentrate on effective strategies.
This session covers the structure of the ɫèAV English International Certificate exam, scoring and preparation strategies to ensure student success.
Enhance student placement with the ɫèAV English Level Test. Discover its key features, benefits, and how to utilize it effectively for accurate student placement and a successful start.
This session highlights the features and benefits of ɫèAV English Benchmark Test, and strategies for tracking progress and guiding students toward their goals.
This session encourages teachers to think creatively, discover innovative techniques and embrace non-traditional study methods.
This session is tailored to ignite teachers' curiosity, expand their horizons, and revolutionize the way they teach for the read then write question type.
“We are all creative, but by the time we are three or four years old, someone has knocked the creativity out of us. Some people shut up the kids who start to tell stories. Kids dance in their cribs, but someone will insist they sit still. By the time the creative people are ten or twelve, they want to be like everyone else.” — Maya Angelou.
We want our kids to excel in everything they do. This is partly down to the media, which has fostered the idea of celebrity kids and football leagues that encourage kids to become professional athletes at the age of eight or younger.
However, we have missed the most crucial thing in their education – and that is to build their character through everyday creative activities which encourage the formation of human connections.
Consider how nervous a first grader must feel after leaving the safe kindergarten playground and entering a strange new 'grown-up' world. The playgrounds are bigger, the kids are older, they have to line up to buy their first meal at the school cafeteria. The classroom has changed too: the desks look different, the books are bigger, and there are new challenges too.
Some are thrilled to feel part of the older kids’ environment. Others, of course, are frightened and insecure. They have to understand and accept all the new rules and regulations, which now apply to them too.
We also have moms, dads and caregivers worried for their little ones. They have high hopes for them. They want their children to become successful learners, multi-medal athletes, excellent readers, mathematicians or perhaps scientists…
Professor David Healy, director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, said:“We want kids to conform to ideals based often on parental insecurities and ambitions.”
Elementary school has therefore become something resembling a battlefield, where children must thrive in spite of (and not because of) their interests. Only top grades and excellence in everything will make parents proud.
But what if a child is not successful? What if their reading skills are below average? What if their daydreaming about a trip to the moon doesn’t allow them to concentrate?
Then we have two lists of kids, the thriving kids with excellent grades and the other ones.
So how can we take the pressure off and help all kids to thrive? Here are some simple creative activities to help.
When did we forget that education is about promoting playfulness, imagination, and creativity to build up confidence?
My very first and most important recommendation would be this:
Before you start a class, give yourself a moment to say"Hello"to each individual in your class. Take that moment to make eye contact with every student and see how they are doing that day.
Make this an important part of your routine. Then have them do the same with their classmates. You could even introduce phrases such as:
You can also try another creative activity. Ask your students to say good morning to the new day and think of something they are grateful for or someone they are grateful to. For example:
These are just a few simple creative activities. But the most important thing to consider, if you want to introduce creativity in the classroom, is that every student needs to feel in a secure and welcoming environment, free of criticism or judgment of their ideas. If you achieve this in your classroom, you will be well on your way to exploring your students’ creativity and building new connections with them.
“The world is undergoing revolutionary changes, we need a revolution in education too.” -Creative Schools, Ken Robinson
In February 2006, the late Sir Ken Robinson delivered a talk at TED titled: . This was some years ago and time seems to have stood still in education since then.
Creativity is a key 21st century skill. Our young students need to harness it in order to be successful in further education and the workplace, especially now that technology is advancing at such a rapid rate.
So what can we do to encourage creativity and create a safe learning environment? I’ll take you through three activities that I use with my own students to help them flourish.
To nurture and encourage creativity in the classroom, it is important to have clear, well-structured objectives and routines that give students a safe learning environment. Here’s a breakdown of a few you can try in your classroom.
As part of your routine, do something different every Monday and have your students guess what it is. For example, you could change your earrings or only wear one. You could shave your mustache, wear a hat, or do something less obvious.
Students should participate too, so have them do something different every week. Select a student in the class and everyone must guess what has changed that Monday.
This activity is designed to encourage students to pay attention to each student in the class and notice things about them during the week. At the same time, it will encourage them to be creative and think about how to do things differently and mix up their own routines.
Every Friday, my class play a team building challenge activity which helps them set and follow rules, be respectful to one another, and work and play with students from different circles.
Here’s a simple, energetic team building activity you could try:
The final activity is all about celebrating failure. Start by putting students in a circle or a line, and have them each name a color out loud. If someone repeats a color or takes longer than five seconds to answer, they must stand up, dance, and shout “hurray, I failed!” as loudly as possible.
You can select any topic – such as nouns, countries, or, even better, your students’ interests. The intention is to create a safe learning environment for your class, where students feel supported and being wrong is fun and okay. This will enable students to participate in class without fear of judgment or criticism.
Try it out until your students become comfortable with dancing and 'hurraying' in front of everyone in the group.
This activity has yielded fantastic results with groups of people I’ve worked with, regardless of their age group (young, old, junior high). Participants may feel silly or shy, until one participant starts doing it for fun, and then the rest of the group will start feeling comfortable with being wrong. They will realize it’s okay, and the exercise will start to flow with greater ease.
If your group is shyer or your students are more introverted, you can ask the person who makes a mistake to wear a silly hat – until the next person fails.
What keeps people from exercising their creative potential? From negative past experiences to the way we see ourselves, there are many things that can hold us back, no matter how old we are. As teachers, it’s our job to help each individual find out what their creative barriers are, whether internal, external or imagined.
Our classrooms, therefore, need to become places where we nourish emotional safety and welcome mistakes. As such, we should encourage a culture that promotes failing as part of learning.
Here are three activities to help nurture creativity in the primary classroom.
In this activity, students express themselves in words and images, using a life-sized drawing of their bodies. The aim of this is to help them share their feelings and ideas. With a little adaptation, it can work just as well with teens and young learners.
Before the lesson, ensure you have enough cardboard or paper for each student. Each piece will need to be approximately 2m long. If you’re using paper, roll it into tubes, so it’s easier to distribute to each student later.
In class, hand out the paper/cardboard to each student. Tell them to draw a life-size outline of themselves on the paper. Students working online can copy the outline you share onto a large piece of paper. They can do this in their notebooks if they don’t have any paper to hand.
Tell the students that they are free to use their creativity. They should draw, write, and express themselves however they want. If they are stuck for ideas, ask them:
Note that questions should be adapted to your students’ age and level of English.
During the activity, your students can use colors, stickers, magazines – and anything that will help them express what is in their minds and hearts.
Primary-aged students will need more support. Here are some example instructions:
Afterwards, students should explain what they’ve included in their silhouettes to the rest of the class. Encourage students to ask each other respectful questions.
The aim of this activity is to establish a routine where students can share their ideas, thoughts and feelings on a regular basis.
Have students bring an old box into class (of any type). Encourage them to personalize their boxes with decorative paper, markers, crayons, stickers, etc.
Instruct students to write an idea, feeling, thought or question down. The complexity of the task will depend on the grade you teach and their level of English. Topic ideas include:
Have your students write their answers and put them in the box. When everyone has finished, they should take turns to choose a piece of paper at random and read it out loud to the group.
Wrap up this activity by asking the class, “What things do we have in common as a group?”. This way students will see that everyone has similar worries and dreams and hopefully they’ll be more willing to talk about their feelings in future classes.
Keep the box in a safe place and review the notes after a month to see if peoples' thoughts and feelings have changed since they did the activity.
The ideal class environment is one where students feel challenged, but not overwhelmed. The aim of this activity is to have students reflect on the challenges they have faced in their day-to-day learning and think about what they need to do to improve.
On a blank piece of paper, ask students to draw two vertical lines and one horizontal line to form six boxes. They should number each box from 1 to 6. Students should then write a challenge or objective in box number six. It should be something that they would like to improve, for example, studying habits, reading skills, doing homework, getting better at exam results, etc. Then encourage them to think of five things they can do to help them reach their objective and write them in boxes 1-5.
Provide students with your support and constructive feedback. Have them share their objectives with the rest of the class and every couple of weeks check how they are doing.
Remember to praise their ideas and efforts to improve. Students are more motivated when they feel their teachers are invested in their success.
