International Schools Blog

The current news about the global reach of the pandemic is devastating and it’s challenging at times to be optimistic about the next weeks and months. Yet the well-known saying ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ means that for every difficulty or setback, there is the potential for a beneficial outcome. By searching for something positive, we can begin to feel more hopeful.

Many schools have closed their doors until at least September – and that means a lot of learning is taking place online. It’s no walk in the park; both teachers and students are facing a range of challenges with technology and pedagogy. This is especially true for modern language teachers, who not only have to navigate technology, but also make themselves understood.

The term translanguaging has burst upon the applied linguistics and educational sector in the last years.

We are teaching online. Exams have gone by the wayside and we have a great opportunity to do more project work with students. There is a natural fit between project learning and online learning; to make online learning work, we need to trust our students to manage the learning process more independently. Project work is a great means by which students can develop their skills as independent learners.

As COVID-19 continues to dominate the educational landscape, it’s important to ensure your students are set up for learning at home. In this article, IB Diploma teachers Michele Lackovic and Ashley Busse share tips for IB learners around the world to help minimise stress and maximise success.

Learning from home is here to stay, at least for the moment. While school closures came on suddenly, as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, it seems increasingly likely that most students won’t be headed to classes in-person until after the summer break.

With schools across the world closed in the wake of COVID-19, many parents are now supporting their children’s at-home learning. Here, Eleanor Dix, maths and parental engagement specialist at Pearson, outlines five simple maths games that are not only fun, but will improve numeracy skills too.

Across the world, schools have closed and will re-open at different times, as each country assesses the ongoing risks of the pandemic. ISC’s Will Bedford shares some interesting insights from international schools in China and South East Asia who were some of the first to be closed about how they adapted to school closures, rolled out distance learning programmes and established online pastoral care.

David Grant, full-time writer and consultant, and former Head of English, shares his tips for teaching online at a distance during the coronavirus crisis.

The benefits of being bi/multilingual are getting a lot of press these days, and parents are increasingly interested in ensuring that their children master more than their home language. In many cases, this means that parents are eager to have their children learn English earlier. This often prompts a choice for an English-only school, with the expectation that this will lead to the best results. How schools approach the task of educating children who do not speak the language varies, with regulations ranging from ‘English-only’ to multilingual classrooms.