CONTENTED BEING?

Hi,

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My name is Alan and I am the creator of all of the resources on this site.

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In my 34 years as an educator, I have been a primary school teacher, a secondary school teacher, a teacher trainer, and a content writer for education companies.

During my career, I've taught First Language English, IGCSE English as a Second Language, IB English B, EAL, and ESL test-preparation classes that include IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge FCE, PET, KET and the Young Learners tests.

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I am also an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed novelist, playwright, poet, screenplay writer, and creator of poetry  videos.

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Click  here to visit my author site.

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I am constantly curious about the craft of teaching, and always researching ways to make my classes more engaging, relevant and student-focused.

Here is a sample of my notes made this year as part of my personal CPD endeavors.

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All of the resources on this site, therefore,  use a wide range of established second language acquisition methodologies and a distillation of many years of teaching experience. My lessons and my Mentor Texts are not AI-generated.

It is my hope that these resources will benefit not just your students, but will also provide you with a wide range of teaching strategies and ideas to enhance your good practice.

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My approach to teaching English B is slightly different to others: instead of teaching text types through the topics, I explore the themes through text types.

In other words, I make the production of the text type the main focus of my planning.

I also strongly believe that students should work harder than the teacher during the lesson -  which is why all of my resources make the students do the work, freeing you up to support them.

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UPDATE:

​Now that AI apps and programs are able to write convincing texts, it is imperative that we, as IB English B teachers, encourage students to make the entire writing process from brainstorming, researching, planning, drafting and re-drafting absolutely visible.

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Therefore, I have written a series of workbooks wherein students handwrite the entire writing process using guided prompts, worksheets, task cards, answer templates and planning pages.

Because I thoroughly enjoy the writing process, and because I want to be able to explain that process to my students, I can assure you I have written each mentor text without the aid of any artificial intelligence writing software, websites, apps, or programmes.

​​Oh, the name 'Contented Being' is aspirational: I hope it will describe you after your have purchased and used the resources. :-)

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I am always looking for constructive feedback to improve the quality of my work.

You're welcome to contact me with any questions or suggestions.

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Have a great year!

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Alan