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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?

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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?

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After the sessions in the programme, our mentors stressed that these sessions were practically PDCs more or less. It has a cycle just like a proper PDC and it also has the same code as PDC: think, pair and share. After the several sessions we had, we started to understand the basic logic behind it and think accordingly. All the clue expressions that our mentor said always come to my mind: keep it simple, it is a nugget, less is more, keep it narrow, think and share, etc. Also, using clear instructions and instruction check questions, and having an anchor spot to address the community are key points.

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What do you consider the greatest benefit of being in a PDC for teachers of English in your local context?

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What do you consider the greatest benefit of being in a PDC for teachers of English in your local context?

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I think the greatest benefit of being in a PDC with local teachers is getting benefits as a result of cooperation through sharing ideas, working together to solve common problems, addressing common interests, and having a collaborative, emphatic, and friendly atmosphere. Before coming here, the first thing that comes to my mind is having an emphatic environment with local teachers who face the same problems as I do, and I will do my best to create that atmosphere in my local PDCs and I will plan the next sessions to address local interests.

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Has your view of assessment changed? How?

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Has your view of assessment changed? How?

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Today my view of assessment has widened. We are all familiar with “AOL” because it is the traditional one and it is also product-oriented, and evaluative. Today I got some new information regarding AFL which is progressive, constructive, and informative. It seeks improvement and change. We gave some authentic examples we can use. I would like to be more cautious this semester while giving feedback.

Apart from this, I learned some new techniques for self-assessment that might be efficient such as 3, 2, 1; multiple choice cards, etc. I will give these techniques a try and see how it goes.

The last topic I would like to mention is delayed correction. When a student makes a mistake, I was trying to make her/him think again by raising my eyebrows, sending signals with my eyes, and asking a question regarding it without drawing attention to the mistake. I never use immediate overt correction but after today’s session, I would like to use the power of drilling. I will collect the mistakes and give them to a whole class drilling by building a sentence with errors they made (if possible.)

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Are there any tips or techniques from the sessions today that you could use to manage your PDCs positively?

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Are there any tips or techniques from the sessions today that you could use to manage your PDCs positively?

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As a trainer, in order to manage the PDC sessions effectively, the first thing we need is a plan step by step. I think it is important for a trainer to feel safe and know what to do. I panic easily when I don't have a ready plan.

While carrying out the stages of a PDC, we should always try to keep the topic narrow. After warm-up and review, we will have 40 to 50 mins. As you said, less is more.

While managing the session setting the boundaries, using perimeters, giving clear instructions, and encouraging the participants to think, pair and share are crucial elements to help the facilitator. We can use instruction-check questions to check if everyone understands what we have said. We never should use questions like “ Did you understand?” or “Is everything clear?” to ensure everything is understood clearly.

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Do you think shared reading is a suitable procedure to use with L2 children? Why?

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Do you think shared reading is a suitable procedure to use with L2 children? Why?

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I think it is one of the most amazing procedures to use with L2 children. I’ve never witnessed a storytelling session before and I didn’t know its power.

I have never done storytelling in my classrooms. I didn’t think that it is suitable but acting out ve presenting the story as our mentor did might be a game changer here. Creating a friendly and close atmosphere, producing a context from wide to narrow, presenting the text in an interesting way, using different high/low intonations, creating curiosity, and getting children to guess are great ways to draw children’s attention.

Also, post storytelling activities are useful to practice letters and words, increase awareness of letters and sounds, and recognize words visually and by sight.

I believe this two-step procedure can be very effective and I will be using it in my classes this year.

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What do you think about phonics? Which opinion do you agree with most?

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What do you think about phonics? Which opinion do you agree with most?

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English spelling is not regular and might be confusing for children but I don’t think that it is unnecessary. Ignoring phonics in the first years and trying to catch up later may create more problems. It is more difficult to change what is learned incorrectly. To read English well and have good communication skills, phonics should be taught to students from the beginning. It can be done by games, imitations, drills, etc.
For this reason, I think it is useful. It creates a foundation used to help children learn and provides an ability to use unknown words in the future.

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What needs to be adapted most in your coursebooks to help children improve their oral skills? How can PDCs help you with that issue?

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What needs to be adapted most in your coursebooks to help children improve their oral skills? How can PDCs help you with that issue?

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The most important problem regarding oral materials in our course books is the lack of context and a logical reason. There are tons of made-up, not natural, and non-child-friendly dialogues and most of them need to be updated. There was a picture in our trainer pack which contains a hard copy of a computer game. Generation alpha kids don’t even know that physical copies of games exist.

In order to draw students’ attention and motivate them, materials in coursebooks should be updated by adding familiar contexts and meaningful reasons. It should also be improved by adding basic social language expressions.

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What changes would you make if you’re working with T’s from your PDC on using dialogues more effectively in the primary classroom?

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What changes would you make if you’re working with T’s from your PDC on using dialogues more effectively in the primary classroom?

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Before making changes we need to evaluate dialogues according to the following criteria:

-        Is it natural and child-friendly?

-        Is there a familiar context and meaningful reason?

-        Is it short and simple?

-        Is it contain social language?

To motivate children, we can make them an active part of making-process of dialogues, offering them choices, maybe asking them to make some guesses (i.e. what happened if ...?)
Also, in order to achieve permanent learning, lots of drilling carried out with the whole class, groups and peers should be added to the lesson plan.

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Is it possible to match the stages of this session	with the stages	of the PDC cycle?

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Is it possible to match the stages of this session	with the stages	of the PDC cycle?

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I think the answer here is ”yes”. The two sessions we had before lunch had a warm-up. We played an onion rings game. Then, we created a lesson plan nearly from scratch consisting of 2 stages. We drew some pictures and wrote down the steps on a poster, hang it on the wall, and presented it to our classmates. I think that can be the “engage + share” part of the PDC. There could have been an evaluation afterward, but we didn't have enough time. So, it matches the stages of the PDC cycle.

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Last and also my first year of teaching, I was a teacher who knows well what to do theoretically. I did know characteristics of young learners, but at the same time I was having a hard time while putting theoretical inputs into practice in a school with 40+ students in each class and located in a low-level neighborhood. Thus, this is a great opportunity for me and I am looking forward to create a colloborative environment in my local district and try to find solutions to our common problems.

Before the meetings in my local district, I had an opportunity to think, discuss and share regarding the common problems we face, general mistakes done in our schools, how to increase exposure of L2 and motivation of students, determining if oral materials are suitable or not.

Last year I was using L1 in my classrooms time to time but next year I will pay more attention to the exposure of L2. Also, while teaching main chunks, I will try to use drillings much more. I believe that it will help permanent learning.

Lastly, I’ve gained new perspectives regarding suitability of oral materials. Today we examined oral materials critically and it will help me while designing new materials.

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On my first day, I was very excited and a little bit anxious because for the first time I am attending a in-service project as a new teacher. In early sessions of the day, we broke some ices, we did some fun activities and I felt as if I am a student again and it was good.

The class environment and sessions were as I expected. We learned about English Together project and PDCs. Beforehand, I had very limited information regarding but now I feel more informed. Also, I liked the applications we have used. I want to use them in my own classes but there may be some problems using them in +40-student classes with ages between 8-10. I would like to adapt them to my local context.