How To Teach English On Zoom (groups and 1:1)

Welcome to my studio. This is a little different than usual, a little different video than usual because I'm going live and I'm introducing you to my workstation. This is where I work and record and teach. So first of all, I want to say hello and to make sure that. To make sure to just send you my health wishes. And I hope you, you are doing well. I hope you're safe and you are taking care of yourself and the people around you. These are crazy times and we need to be very conscious about whatever is going on and to be responsible for each other. So wash your hands and practice social distancing. The reason why I'm making this video is because I know I have a lot of English teachers who are following me here, and I also have a community of English teachers and a program, and a lot of them are forced to start teaching online. And maybe you are too, and you don't know exactly how to do it. So I wanted to open this discussion and to just introduce you to how I teach online and how I've been teaching using Zoom, which is a great, great software and it's mostly free. I'll talk about that. So I'm going to walk you through how to use it. I also have a recording that I'm going to share with you of me teaching my team, but I asked them to participate so I can show you guys how I teach. I created this video for the teachers in my program, but I decided that I'm going to share it here because a lot of you probably really need it, whether you teach English or you teach something else. And you need to start working online. So this is my small contribution. Hello, Hello. Hello, Adriana. Good to have you. So feel free to ask me questions about anything that I'm sharing with you here. And I'm going to be available in the comments after the live. So if you have any more questions, let me know. So, as you can see, I'm right now working with not my computer camera, but my real camera. And I'm just sharing my screen with you. But when you teach online, go very, very basic. All you need is your computer, your webcam. You don't need to buy a fancy webcam to start teaching. I know that you might be afraid that it's not going to be the same. Your students are worried that it's not going to be the same. Maybe they don't. They don't want to start learning with turn going into online sessions. So what I would say is that you as their teacher, you it's okay. For you to suggest it and to encourage them not to to lose their routine. It's really important to keep the routine and to keep sanity. Even when times are crazy and especially now that people are locked in their homes and they can't go out the community, the connection is really, really important. And if in your community, online teaching or online sessions are not that common, it's time to get acquainted with it because it's a very, very useful tool. You can use Skype, you can use WhatsApp video. I use Zoom. I'm going to show you how to use Zoom. The free account is fantastic. You can, when you teach one on one, you can use it pretty much with no interruptions. If you teach groups of three and more, then you can use it for free for 40 minutes and then you know, you have to either start the meeting again or stop the meeting. Then you can pay $15 a month, but you really don't need to do it just to get started. So the free account is fantastic and it's enough for what you need right now. Hello, everyone. Let me know if you are a teacher. I'll record this video and may I watch it soon? Yes, Layla, it's going to be. It's going to stay on my channel, so if you can't watch it now, it's going to stay on my channel, so don't worry about it. So if I mess up, forgive me. I'm not used to going live on, on YouTube and sharing my screen, but I think I can get it right. So this is this the Zoom. I hope you can see it. Yeah. When you download Zoom, this is the home page. This is how you manage all your meetings and everything. So this is home. You can just create a new meeting. You can join a meeting. So if you click here, it will ask you for an ID number. But if you're the teacher creating the meeting, you don't need to use this one. I rarely use this one. Share screen right now, I never use it. At this point you don't need it. And also schedule. I don't really use it. So if I, when I use this, I just go to new meeting. Okay. And then I click on it. Now this is kind of like the. It's not the most efficient way when working with students because it means that you'll have to start the meeting and then you'll have to send them the link. A better way, I'll come back to the meeting and show you what to do. A better way is to go to meetings and then just click on my personal meeting id. Okay. And then you can copy invitation and then it copies it to the. Copies it to the clipboard, and then you just paste it in an email you send your students. And this is the ID that they always use when they have a lesson with you. You can also schedule a specific meeting, right? Hadar and YouTube. And then I can set the hour, the time, and then I schedule it. It automatically takes me to my calendar, but I don't want to go into it right now. But then you see it's here in my meetings. And then I go and click Start. That's the best way to do it because that's how people would get the link in advance. And you want to be professional. So send them the link in advance. Don't just start the meeting and then send them the link like I used to do when I just started out. Because then they don't get the email and they're like, where are you? That's not a good start. Okay, so once I have scheduled the meeting and it's time, then I go to the meeting and click Start. It's going to ask you a question. Join with Computer Audio. Always click yes. Always click Join with Computer Audio. Because this is where you tell the software that whatever microphone you're using, this is what it needs to use for the meeting. And what I want to show you here is this. Okay, so this is what you like, the first thing you do when you just join. And I recommend that you join a few minutes before. Go to this and make sure that you see the green color on the microphone, because then it means that it detects your audio. Sometimes it's on mute, so you want to pay attention. Okay. Don't start speaking when you're muted. Always check your microphone first before the video even. Okay. And then you can also click to play the video. Now you can see me from. No, actually it's still connected to my camera here, but I can change. Doesn't matter. Yeah, I'll change it to my computer camera. Right. So now my. My webcam is filming me, but you guys are seeing me here. That's very cool. So you want to check that your video is on and then that your audio is on. What I do before I join, I always go here, make sure that my microphone is connected to the right place and my speakers are all set so I can hear the student. The best would be just to get your earphones and connect them to the computer. That would be the best. And you would get the best audio. But if you can't just make sure it's the system speakers test speaker and microphone. Don't skip that step. Okay. Do you hear a ringtone? Yes. And then you speak 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yes. And then you speak 1, 2, 3. You hear a replay. It doesn't matter how much I use Zoom the Before every meeting, I test my audio and speakers. Because, you know, there's always something, right? There is always, always something. And I would recommend that you are on top of it. And sometimes all you need to do is just disconnect and connect again. So let's say you connect and people can't hear you. Can't hear you or you can't hear them. I would. If I can't hear them, I would just tell them and they fix their audio and there is nothing technically wrong. Then I would just ask them to leave and come back again. Usually it's resolved same way. If, you know, I. If they can't hear me, I might try to just disconnect and connect again. Don't be afraid of disconnecting. If it happens, no big deal. Everyone has the link. Just go to the same link. This is why it's important to create the meeting in advance. So if it's disconnected and it happens sometimes, you know, you just go back using the same link again. If, like, the Internet connection is not that stable in your area, I would recommend restarting your router a few minutes before the session, maybe restarting your computer, closing all windows. Make sure nothing is uploading or downloading in the background because it will. Will affect the quality of the meeting and you don't want that. So let's go back to if you have any questions. Let's see if you have any questions. I was just watching you on Instagram a few minutes ago. Yeah, I'm running a challenge. If you haven't joined the challenge, then you better join the challenge. It's loudandproudchallenge.com and we just started day one. But this is not related. This is just to help you manage Zoom better. If you need to switch to online teaching because of the situation. Diosa says, I'm a Spanish teacher in the USA in public school district. Do you need to start teaching online? Are they closing schools right now? I know they are in New York, so let me know how it's going. Okay. So going back. So I know it's not a regular English lesson. It's really just. It's mainly for people who need to start using Zoom to teach. Now if we go back here, I want to show you. So you checked your audio, you checked your video. If you're in the middle of a meeting, you can always invite someone. Okay. By copy URL. And then they just get the URL of the meeting. You can manage participants. So right here you'll see all of your participants. If it's one person, then you don't really need to use it. But if it's three or more, then you can actually mute them. From here, I'll show you. I'm going to show you a video of me teaching a group of people so you can. You can use it. I'm gonna go back here. Okay. And then you can share your screen. So if I share my screen right now. Let's say, let's. Okay, so I'm going to share with you a slide. Sorry, I'm trying to show you. Okay, this is a slide that I use for English Teachers Academy. So it's about how to teach the th. Right. And when I open the slides, here's what happens. You see the slides on the side? And then I go. And then I show them. Hold on. I think someone just. Joined. I have a feeling someone just joined the Zoom meeting. Okay, stop. Share. Yeah, maybe someone joined the Zoom meeting because they saw the Zoom id. So please don't join the Zoom meeting right now as I'm broadcasting live. Live. Thank you. And okay, so I can share the screen. I'm going to open a different meeting. I can share the screen. As you've seen. I'm going to show you the video. I can share the screen, and I can also use the whiteboard. So there is a feature of whiteboard and you can use it to write on your slide. So you can share your screen and then write on it using the whiteboard. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to quickly share with you a video of how I use Zoom to teach a group of people. So it's going to be a little funny. Okay, so this is Vika, Sergey and Maxim. Vika and Sergey are on my team, and they're incredible. And I asked them to participate in a fake lesson. So you guys can see. See basically how I work with people. Okay, so as you can see, you have. You can use. You can. If, if you teach more than one person, use the gallery view so you have all of them in front of you. I'm gonna play it. I'm gonna show you how we manage a meeting with three people. And right now, for example, what I can do is I can mute Maxine so he can you know, go on and talk, and it's not going to interfere with us. So I can go to manage participants. If I know that he is not participating or I want to, or if there is a lot of background noise, what I would do is I would. This is how I mute people in the middle of the session. If they're not aware of the fact that they're loud and someone else is speaking. Just go here, Manage participants. I can see them, and I can mute them separately. Okay, and now Maxim, Sergey, and Vika. No, Vika is not muted. And then I can unmute them according to what we want. So I'm going to keep Maxim muted for now, and only Vika and Sergey are going to speak. If you are working with a large group of people, like 10 or 15 people or more than that, you can just click mute all, and it's gonna mute everyone. And then usually what I do is if I work with one person, for example, Vika, I'm gonna ask you a question now. I'm gonna unmute you. So, Vika, how was your day? My day was fine. Thank you very much for asking. Oh, you're very welcome. And Vika, what would you like to learn today? And now I'm gonna switch to speaker view because I want to take a closer look at Vika and feel like she's really in front of me. So, Vika, what would you like to learn today? Okay, so, yeah, I use it on and off if I speak. If, like, it's a group of people and I want to look at some one in particular and I work with them one on one, then I would switch to the speaker view, and then I see them, and I still see the rest of the people up above. Well, for me, the most struggling sounds are as in cat, maybe th. But you know better. So let's do the R. Let's do a quick lesson of the R. Okay. I'm gonna move forward to where I think I marked it. As you can see. Also, you can. You have the chat box where people respond or write comments. You can write chats privately. It's really cool. And now I'll show you how I manage again. If you need to teach more than a few people, I always like to give them the feeling that it's a real class. Okay. So usually if I have a group of up to six, seven, eight people, I would have everyone unmute themselves. And then I. Because it's kind of, like, easier to ask them question and have them respond to you right away. And sometimes I would ask them to repeat after me, and I would have all of them repeat after, after meet together, just to give them the feeling that it's a real class and it's really cool. But if it's too noisy, then I would use the feature of mute all and then only unmute the person who is participating. By the way, you can record the sessions, and you have a button there that allows you to record. You can record the sessions. And if you do, I would recommend that you simply. I'm going to hold on. If you do, I would recommend that you record it to the cloud so you don't have to deal with downloading it. It's really easy to just send it to your students right after. Okay, I'll show you where it starts later. So I'm moving here. Yes. And then go to the tricky word. Really? I. I moved forward a bit. Right. So I'm working only with Vika. Now that the R, because of the high E. Now the R, the tongue was not in the same position. Now just a side note. Now a teaching note. So up until now, I was giving Vika feedback, and now I zoomed out and I was talking about how I teach a group online. So listen, I spend some time with Vika, and I have these two great guys waiting and looking at us, and what I want them to do is to practice with us, right? So because I don't want a situation where I'm focused on one person and I want to give her my full attention. But at the same time, I don't want them to get bored because they will go and check their Facebook page at this time. Not these guys, because they're, like, with me, and I know it. But like, usually students. Students will go and do other things, so you want to constantly keep them engaged. So at this point, if I feel that I need to spend a couple more minutes with Vika here, I would pause and say, you guys, let me hear you. Okay. And then I would have everyone together say it. Okay, so let's say red. Vika, answer gay Red. Exactly. And I treat it like a class, even if I don't detect exactly whether it's doing right. I speak, I give them the word, and they repeat. Okay. Okay. So it's really important to keep everyone really engaged. You have to work a little harder when you teach online. So make sure that you. That people are not quiet for too long. It's not like in class where you, you know, they're just sitting there in front of you. It's really important that you engage them because you don't know what they're doing on their computer. And they might be doing other things, answering emails or writing messages to their friends on WhatsApp web. So you want to keep them on their toes all of the time, like I just did here. I spoke to Vika, then I, you know, I asked everyone to repeat. Then I came, I returned to Vika, spoke to her a little bit more. I hope that makes sense. Now, the most important thing is that, you know, you're not afraid of the technology, because all you need to do is do it once or twice. What I would recommend is try it with your friends if you're afraid. And you need to start teaching online via Zoom, because there's a lockdown and everyone's in their houses, and you still need to work and make money. And the only way to do that is do it by teaching online, then practice it with your friends, then do it at home or offer a free session for your students just to see how it feels, to build up your confidence, and then you can come back, and then you can do it like a real lesson. Okay. Yeah. Diosa says in the United States, classes are canceled for the next time. So I know from a lot of my teachers that they stopped teaching private in person, so everything goes online. And this is why I wanted to make that this tutorial. I think I'm done. I think I pretty much talked about everything. Try it out, play with it. Don't be afraid. If it gets disconnected, then it gets disconnected. No worries. I was just speaking to one of my students who's also a teacher, and he was concerned about teaching a group of nine people using the free account. Because, you know, when you're just starting out, there is no reason whatsoever to spend $15 on your account only when you start making money teaching groups. So if you're just starting out and you need to teach for more than 40 minutes and you have more than three people, or what I would recommend is to start teaching after 30 minutes to deliberately stop the meeting and then ask everyone to join again using the same link. If you all use the same link, then that's great. And then you can continue till the end of the lesson, till the end of the one hour. Because there is a limit to for up to 40 minutes for people with the free account. If you teach more than three people. Yeah, that's it. Okay, let's see if there are any questions. I really hate this app. My teachers require me to do my quiz with this app. Is the problem the app or the quiz oh, transmission is freezing. I'm sorry if it got. If it's frozen. Why Zoom is better than Skype? It's not necessarily better than Skype. It's easier to record on it. On Skype. You have to buy, I think camcorder. It's called. I forgot the name of it. I have it, actually. But you need to add another feature to be able to record the sessions. And it's super convenient. And then it only downloads it to your computer and Zoom just sends you the link. So you can send your students the link if they want to watch the recordings. It's really easy. And I feel that the interface of Zoom is easier for me when I teach, especially when I teach groups. But if you use Skype and you love it, then stick with it. Okay. Can we record these to make classes to show later? Yes. So, you know, I use Zoom sometimes to create tutorials for my students. So I actually create a meeting, hit record, have no one join me, speak to the camera, share screen if I need. Everything is recorded. And then you have a lesson that you can either give to your students as a gift or as a bonus. Or you can even start like a mini training and even sell it for your students who still want to, you know, stay in to maintain all the work that they've done with you. So you can, you can actually do that. And it's, it's fantastic. Okay, I'm just looking at the comments. Will this video okay? I think Microsoft Team manipulates smoothly. I don't know what that means. Okay. I think I went through all of the questions. So if you have any more questions about Zoom or about teaching online or about teaching English in general, then feel free to post them below. I hope you found this helpful and I hope we all go through this period with zero casualties. And I hope you are not affected by it so much. Sending you lots of love and health wishes and I'll see you. I actually have a video coming up tomorrow, so I think you're going to like it. About the fluency framework. And if you're still here, then join the challenge. I'm running a fluency challenge called loud and proud. Loudandproud challenge.com we it's day one now. You can still catch up. There is like a 23 page workbook. It's fantastic. So. And the community is amazing. We have a community on Facebook, a Facebook group. So join us if you're here. If you're an English learner and not an English teacher and you're still here, then join the challenge. There's a lot of good stuff waiting for you there. Okay. So take care and I'll see you soon. Bye.