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I felt really excited in the morning, both in a positive and negative way. I felt excited because this is my first time coming to Erzurum, and also this is my first professional development meeting in an another city. I felt much better now. I am still excited but I am excited for what I am going to experience for 9 days in Erzurum. Apart from this, I feel a little bit tired but that's okay, here we are ☺️

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Today, it was a great opportunity for me to remember what I have learnt in my university years about teaching listening.

For the first question, I prefer using the authentic materials most of the time instead of the coursebook materials. This is because the authentic materials are much more helpful for my students to get acquainted with the original language, spoken by the natives. I don't prefer using both the coursebook and authentic materials because the listening texts and tasks in the coursebooks are above my students' level.

For the second question, the answer is definitely "yes". My students have no idea about active listening. They just look me in the eye with some blank faces most of the time. Sometimes, it might be even challenging for me to get an idea about their comprehension, if they understand what I say or not. So, ı must develop my students' active listening skills with the ideas I had from today's session.

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For the pre-reading task, the question "what do you know about them?" might need an answer asking for some world knowledge and most probably, my students in the village will have no ideas about these people. So instead of this question, I could ask for 3 things (maximum) they would like to learn about these people.

For the while reading task, I think the ones on the coursebook (activity 2 and 3) are okay for weaker students, maybe I could make these a bit more challenging for stronger students by editing the activities. For the 2nd activity, only the names can be given and asked for students to realize what is common for those people and they can write them.
For the 3rd activity, I think it is okay for weaker students, but I can ask stronger students to make sentences with the information given. Instead of categorizing the basic information according to the reading text, I would ask students to make sentences including those categories. For post reading activity (activity 4), it is okay for weakers, I would motivate stronger students to keep writing about them as much as they can. These are my ideas to differentiate this reading activity for a mixed ability class.

QUESTION 2:
I think differentiation will be quite useful because I am sure that we all have different student levels in a class. Making the exercise suitable for every level will increase students’ self confidence.  The other common problem is lack of practice in skimming and scanning. Most of the students of mine have difficulty finding the gist of a text or scanning for specific information. To be able to solve this problem students need to be exposed to well planned and well built reading lessons .  At last but not least  monitoring and asking suitable questions to the students will help them to learn effective reading.

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About the grammar session, I can state that I always defend the ideal grammar teaching as implicit teaching and I loved the CCQ ideas to make my students aware of the rules. However, it is really challenging for me to teach grammar implicitly. This is because when I started teaching, in like first 5-6 months, I always tried to teach grammar in an implicit way but it ended up as a disaster. They couldn't discover the rules no matter how hard I tried. And that's why they failed at the central exam too. So, I decided to use explicit way, mostly. My students learnt better when I gave them the forms directly. They couldn't discover the rules, so I had to make them aware of the rules by giving them directly. I  can't say they are much more successful but it can be said that there is a raise in their competency level.
(I can't blame my students because they are just kids, some of them try their best but it is not enough either. At this point, I sometimes blame myself and I often think that their failure is my fault :(

The most effective vocabulary teaching suggestion was teaching with games and visuals because my students love learning through them. I always present new key vocabulary of units with visuals of them, mostly slideshows. Then, I support this slideshow with fun and useful worksheets. After practicing, I open the vocab games on Wordwall or Bamboozle, and it's showtime :) They enjoy the time they spend in the vocab lessons.

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Q1: What do you think is the biggest and most common problem related to assessment in your local area?

In my local area, the most common problem is the lack of conducting the formative assessment. In the PDC meetings and also during chatting with my colleagues in my area, I mostly hear that they don't have much focus on assesment during the process. Their main focus is on summative assessment, I mean the exams. This is so problematic because if we don't assess our students during the process of teaching, then it would be a surprise for us to see the result of our students' exams. Teachers will have no idea about what to expect from students in the exams. I always give importance to formative assesment because I hate negative surprises :) By this way, I will be aware of my students understanding of the topics I cover and the weaker and stronger sides of my students.

Q2: Do you think self/ peer assessment could solve some local problems in your area?

Yes, I think so. Students learn from their peers and sometimes, it is more effective than teachers' input. This is because students have some anxiety to ask questions to the teacher from time to time, in that situation, they ask their peers without any doubt and learn better. So, it could be a great idea if we were able to implement some peer learning and also assessment in our classes.

How do you expect the PDC sessions in the programme would help you deal with possible problems about planning and conducting PDCs in your teaching context?

The PDC sessions were quite helpful for me to see the possible problems that I might face during the planning and conducting steps of my PDC’s, and of course, the solutions as well. About the planning of the PDC, I am much more aware of the importance of timing now. I have learnt how much time I should spend at the stages of the PDC. I learnt how to structure and assess a pdc meeting. In terms of conducting of the PDC’s, I have got some ideas to deal with the problems like teachers’ lack of motivation, having difficulty in the review stage because teachers don’t apply the activities or ideas we discuss in the meeting etc. Today was quite informative and helpful for me to get over my concerns.

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The most common problem in my district in terms of speaking is "fear of making mistakes", "lack of confidence" and most importantly, "lack of competence". My students are not used to speaking English at all because from primary school to this day, they have always been taught to stay silent and write down everything the teacher says. I have been trying to change this understanding for 1 and a half year but I cannot say that I have achieved to make a change. But I didn't throw in the towel yet :)

The ideas and suggestions I got from today's session are really useful and effective. However  I need to adapt these ideas to make it a little bit doable for my students. This is because I have only weaker and less weaker students, so I can use these if I make some changes to ease the process of speaking.