Does the material work for online lessons?
Yes. It has been rewritten specifically for one to one online lessons. I have adapted activities that required pairs or groups of students to fit face to face and made them student to teacher interactions instead. The idea is that you send your student a PDF of the worksheets before your lesson so they can look through it and complete as much as possible so that you can focus on speaking during the lesson time. This means you won’t be wasting their time with them filling things in, listening to pre-recorded audio and writing during the lesson.

What do I get?
• The student worksheets.
• Matching answer sheets so you don’t have to try and find the answers buried in the Teacher’s guide.
• Teacher’s guide (written).
• Teacher’s guide (video) because I find teachers prefer being talked through a lesson.
• Video instructions for the student to make it easier for them to understand what to do before the lesson.

What level is the material?
The book was designed for teachers to adapt it for each class by dropping or expanding certain tasks and by speeding up or slowing tasks to suit the level of the students. However, most lessons are A2 – B1.

Has it been trialled in the real world?
Yes, at several schools and lots of online students. I have implemented Coastline at the schools I have managed and I’ve sent the lessons to my online students via Google Classroom. It has also been used by tutor’s who teach students one to one in their home while hosting them.
Here’s the feedback from one teacher last summer:
“For the new teacher the units work well as an entire lesson, with step-by-step instructions on how to use. For a more experienced teacher the material will be useful as a base from which to expand and diverge as you see fit. The material is best for A2/B1 but can be adapted easily.” – Jack Penzer

How much prep is required before each lesson?
Not much. Either watch the video guide or read the notes, maybe have a look through the answer sheet because it’s the same as the student worksheet, and prepare a warmer if you don’t like the one suggested, that’s about it. It’s up to you how much you want adapt it or expand on it but if you did nothing but follow the step by step instructions you would have a solid lesson that covers most of the skills.

The book was designed to help new teachers who didn’t have a wealth of experience to supplement the material. Then it was developed to convince experienced teachers that it was worth using because I have found it is very difficult to teach an old dog (an experienced teacher) new tricks (new material). They seem very reluctant to use new material, especially if it involves a lot of prep and reading through the Teacher’s guide. That’s where the video guide idea came from, because I found they took to it much better when I talked them through the lesson.