Videos for English Teachers:
HOW IT WORKS
Why Use Insights?
Sometimes teaching straight from the textbook isn’t enough for your students. Throughout the lesson, they still might not understand what they’re supposed to do for a particular grammar point, or in what cases to use it, or why it matters. It’s perfectly natural since different students have different learning styles. It helps for teachers to revisit such grammar points from an alternate perspective, giving their students a better chance of understanding the material (and a better chance of remembering it later). But as a teacher, you’re pretty busy, and you may not have time to develop a new method before your next lesson.
Good news: we’ve got you covered! Insights has already developed methods for occasions just like these, and we’re here to share those methods with you. Now you can feel more confident in the material, present those topics in a new way, and watch your students find those ‘aha’ moments.
No! All of Insights to English’s resources exist to supplement your curriculum. If you’ve been teaching out of a book, continue doing that. When you reach a topic that could use a different approach because your current materials simply aren’t connecting for some of your students for whatever reason, that’s when you turn to Insights.
- Many ESL/EFL teachers don’t have a degree in education or linguistics, but choose to teach in order to help others in their community, to provide them with a chance to explore another culture, or both. (You get a big thumbs-up from us either way!) Native English speakers use our language with ease, but sometimes we’re stumped when asked why our language works the way it does. While we’re supportive of formal education, we also want to make sure that teachers or all backgrounds who are currently in the thick of it can get the training they’re looking for.
- Even seasoned teachers could use a new perspective every now and then to shake things up.
What do I do with these videos?
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- Watch them on your own before your next lesson to learn our methods and gain a deeper understanding of how that grammar point works. Take notes if you’d like.
- Think about how you would explain these methods in your own words. What comprehension questions would you ask along the way? How would you tailor it to your students’ needs? The way these methods are presented to students should look different from one classroom to the next since it should depend more on the teacher’s style than our methods.
- Prepare some relevant practice materials, like a worksheet (there are plenty of online resources for common grammar topics if you don’t already have some). You may also want to prepare some other presentation materials (like our printouts or slideshows).
- Present all of these to your class, then have your students put that topic to use with an activity or project.
Insiders can read more guided steps to presenting Insights methods to the classroom on our videos pages.
Why can't I just show the videos to my students?
While most of our videos were made in such a way that students could watch them, that’s not the best way for them to learn. We believe students learn best through teacher interactions, which is why we want to support you, not replace you. Here are some reasons teaching our methods in your own way is better than simply playing our videos for your students.
- The videos make assumptions on what the students already know, whether that’s terminology or a related grammar point. If your students aren’t familiar with those things yet, you’ll need to explain those first.
- Our videos are pretty short to keep them engaging, but that means they move a bit too quickly for many students. When you present these methods as a teacher, you can do so at a pace more appropriate for your students’ skill level.
- Students may have questions along the way. Teachers can address those questions, while our videos cannot.
- Students watching our videos only receive information passively. Active learning is better for comprehension and memory. When you teach, you can not only check their understanding as you go, you can also give them practice materials, activities, and projects so that they can put those grammar topics to use.
More Resources. More Insights.
Our videos are just the beginning! We have many more resources for teachers, some to deepen your own understanding of language, and others to help you practically in the classroom. Most of these are available exclusively for our Insiders.
Insight's methods are
Insights's methods are easier to understand. easier to remember. suited for more learning styles. adaptable.
easier to understand. easier to remember. suited for more learning styles. adaptable.
Teach how to create sentence structures with just 3 or 4 steps, as with Passive Voice, Relative Clauses, Reported Speech, Wishes & Regrets, and more.
Help students avoid common mistakes with rules-of-thumb like the One Blue Word rule, the One Red ‘S’ rule, sequencing for the Past Perfect tense, and more.
Break down complicated lists into simple patterns as with Conditionals, Verb Patterns, the Present Perfect tense, and Subject & Object Questions.