Ruth Horsfall

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Ruth Horsfall is the Young Learner Courses Manager for the British Council in Spain. She has been working as a teacher, centre manager and academic manager in Spain for over 20 years and specialises in teaching and learning English with Early Years and Primary students. She is currently responsible for the English programmes in all British Council teaching centres in Spain reaching over 10,000 students from 2 to 17.  Ruth is a strong believer in promoting creativity in the classroom and has been involved in a number of innovations in English language teaching, most recently integrating coding into English lessons. Her passions include storytelling and promoting life-skills through teaching.  She works closely with language teachers, both in her organisation and in schools in Spain, and since completing her MA in Education and Applied Linguistics in 2010, has been particularly interested in the areas of language and literacy as well as motivation and engagement in the classroom.

Plenary Session Title and Abstract:

Meet the Micro: bit: Coding and Making in the English Language Classroom

Thinking, planning, designing, discussing, presenting, questioning and problem solving. These are just some of the core skills that micro: bit lessons can help develop in order to enhance the learning experience for students in our ELT classrooms. Through using these handheld programmable microcontrollers to learn basic coding principles and to make interactive models and games, we can inject lessons with innovation, creativity and imagination as well as increasing motivation, engagement and teamworking. Ruth and her team at the British Council in Spain have pioneered the integration of micro: bit lessons into the ELT curriculum and in her talk she will be discussing the value and outcomes of the project and showing how progress in learning English can be given a boost both in terms of confidence and language skills alongside the development of 21st Century skills.

 

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