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our team

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In today's session, we discussed issues related to active listening, the distinction between coursebook materials and authentic materials and how effective instructions can facilitate learning experiences.

It was a productive day for me. I learnt about various methods and activities to help students become more active listeners. These strategies will help my PDC colleagues and students to involve in the learning process.

I realized that adapting the listening texts to the level of the students and doing activities accordingly made the process much easier. As I observed, it was much more effective when the teacher demonstrated the activity first. This made things more streamlined and created a smoother learning experience for students.

The one I like best is personal star because it’s not just for new groups. It practices the basic knowledge of personal questions. So, it can be adapted to all levels.

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Today, we talked about the common challenges of speaking skills and some suggestions for solutions. As a warm up, one of our friends did a fact or fiction activity and it was really fun.

Our facilitators posted some speaking activity challenges on the walls and through the gallery walk we came up with lots of solutions. I'm definitely going to apply it in my classes. I can hang the questions or pictures about the current topic in various places in the classroom. This technique will allow them to be engaged as they do it in groups.

I liked all the activities in today’s session but the paper slide was my favorite because I teach in a small town and most of the students lack access to the internet and technological devices. I’m sure they’ll love it. Also, I'm excited to share this with my colleagues.

The most important thing I've learnt is that I should make speaking activities more life-like and meaningful for the students and use role-play more to link the classroom to real life.

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Today’s session was about improving reading strategies and for each strategy (gist, skimming, scanning, detailed) I’ve learned lots of useful tasks from my colleagues. We talked about monitoring the students during the activity and how to make them feel comfortable. Our facilitator said that it was a good way to stand close to the students which I also use in my classes. The other thing was about planning our PDC meetings. To talk about common questions about the meetings, we did an onion ring. That way, I’ve got the chance to talk about many of my colleagues and share our ideas. As a group, we used some of the activities and applied them to a reading lesson plan.

The run and circle warm up activity is very adaptable.  I can just use matching activities on students’ coursebooks and turn it into a group game. Also, I’ll use jigsaw for boring and long reading texts. Before coming here, I was under the misconception that the most difficult part of every lesson is whether the students can do it or not. But now, I understand that preparing for the activity is the important one. As long as the activities are well-prepared, students will do it.

The last thing I would like to mention is the “activity cycle.” I agree that the teacher's part of the "activity cycle" should be only 20%, but I guess I’m not confident enough to give 80% to the students because I think that way the lesson will get out of control or my students won't be able to do it. This will be the most difficult thing for me when I return to my school, but I will try to change this behavior.

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I think, one of the most common problems in my area is that students don’t show the same importance and interest in English as they do in other core subjects. Students don’t see English as being as relevant to their lives and careers as other core subjects. It makes it difficult for them to see the value in developing their language skills.  As a suggested solution to this reason, I’ve integrated English into other subject areas. My students are studying in the health department so I used to write important notes or quiz questions for health classes in English and hang them on the walls. They had to translate and understand the sentences in order to do those tasks.

I believe that formative assessments can be used to solve this problem as long as the assessments emphasize the practical value of English. For each year, students may prepare portfolios to keep track of their progress.

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When presenting a new grammar in a class, I sometimes do it in explicitly because it is difficult to teach them in an inductive way.  However, writing a text using a specific grammar structure that I’ve learned in today's session can be a solution to my problem. I can write short texts for each grammatical structure and prepare controlled and guided questions about that structure. So the students can see the structure in sentences. Also, with this way I can integrate reading skills in the process.

Apart from grammar, we also talked about teaching vocabulary. Setting the context is always the most important part of teaching as we do in every session no matter what skill we’re working on.  Today’s vocabulary lesson was done by less talking and I really liked that. Because I need to reduce the teacher talking time and increase eliciting. I’m aware that digital materials are a lifesaver. But in my reflective writings, I mostly take the activities that I can do without using digital materials because of my teaching environment. That’s why using pictures in slides and miming an action are best ways for me to present a new vocabulary in my classes.  For pronunciation, modelling and clapping are useful especially teaching intonation. As an activity, drawing a circle to show which syllable is stressed is very practical and fun because it is difficult for students to apply the intonation rules. Finally, I’ll prepare CCQs both grammar and vocabulary teaching. I’ll also share it in my PDCs. Because I think we don’t pay much attention to this process.