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Today is the day. Every group presented their micro PDC meetings. My group was the last one. Being last group was a bit stressful. Concentrating on the presentations was difficult for me because I was thinking about our presentation and my part in the presentation. I read reflection forms of the observer group. There were positive comments. We will see the detailed feedback from Agi and Nazlı tomorrow.

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Today, we talked about important points for a PDC meeting. Plannning is very important. A facilitator has to know what and when to do. While planning, we need to take into account some issues like materials, outcomes, participants, etc. I think that the most important part of planning is outcomes. Outcomes are the answers what and when to do. They are the skeleton of the meeting. When we have clear and specific outcomes, writing a plan and presenting it will be easier because outcomes are the maps to show us the correct and easy way. Also, clear outcomes are important for participants. They make clear what knowledge participants will have or what actions they will do by the end of the meeting.

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Don't use assessment and testing interchangeably,  they are different. 

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Don't use assessment and testing interchangeably,  they are different. 

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Today, we talked about differences between assessment and testing. In our course books we use in schools, there is always a page for assessment at the end of every unit. I have noticed that many teacher including me don't use this page, but it is important to give student time to think about their progress, self evaluation or reflection. When I come back, I'll use these assessment pages more. Students need to think about what they have learned to step further and improve. Students' assessments are also an opportunity for me to develop myself. Firstly, I have to teach them why they need assessment. Many students think assessment is a test and it has correct and wrong answers. That's why they don't answers questions honestly. When they learn that assessment is just for improving the learning process and it is not to examine the moment, they will answer honestly, I believe.

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The topics of today's sessions were grammar and vocabulary. We talked about explicit and implicit grammar teaching. I think implicit one is better. I mostly use this method in my classes. Many teachers think this method is more difficult to understand, but I don't think so. After I present the structure and asking concept checking questions, many students can discover grammar points and meaning. Discovering rules makes learning process more prominent and memorable. This also encourages self-learning. Today, we also talked about vocabulary teaching. For vocabulary, I use many different methods. (Miming, showing pictures,  giving definition of new words, etc.) Addition to these, my students keep a vocabulary notebook. I never want them to write only Turkish and English translations of new words. When they add a new word to their notebook, I want them to write at least three words related the new word and make a sentence with the new word. If possible, I want them to draw small picture about the new words. After students fill a page with words they don't know, I want them to try to write a meaningful paragraph. This can sometimes be challenging, but it makes the word more memorable.

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Sometimes, I think that giving instructions for an activity is challenging. Because I think that I can't give clear instructions or make myself clear, I give up doing that activity. But with a good modelling and clear instructions, I can manage the class or meetings successfully. Sometimes, I must have the encourage to take the first step. Today, we had an activity in our booklet. In the activity,  there were some problems about writing. Each group chose a problem and tried to find a solution. Most groups chose forth problem. ( it was about taking the interest of students. No group chose third problem. It was about that making correction for writings takes too much time.) Actually this activity was good to identify more and less common problems. This activity has showed that many teacher have problems about taking interest of students. I think teachers need to focus on creating more motivating and interesting classses. Again I have noticed that any activity in the course books can be adapted. In addition to these, with group work, this adaptation process can done in a very fast way. Mostly, I prepare materials or activities on my own, but I can get help from other colleagues. It will be both less time wasting and tiring. Also, doing something together will be more motivating.

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We started the session with a reading activity. Because I started to reading activity without reading all the instructions, I did a lot of unnecessary things. Reading instructions and understanding them and then starting the activity is very important. It actually shows me that if students don't understand what they will do clearly, they can do irrelevant thing to the activity. To do something together, to perform a group work, we don't have to be in same environment. We can create a common product by using websites like Janboard even though we are in different places. PDC participants will be teachers that have a school and family life and the meetings will have limited times. Using Jamboard will be useful to share ideas after meetings. Before sessions here, I thought that being a facilitator would be very challenging, but when I learnt the duties of a facilitator, I felt less stressed. I will not judge anyone or anything. I will not say true or false. I will just manage the participants and let them work together and share their experience. One of the interesting things I have noticed today was about "choosing someone" in classes or meetings. I mostly point someone with my index finger. This could be considered an aggressive behavior for students or PDC participants. Pointing someone with hand is more polite.

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We started the session with a warm up activity. We always start the sessions with a warmup activity. It is very effective because it motivates us to be a part of the session.(Parasites-tellers-guesser activity). Instructions is very important. To prevent a chaos in the classes, instructions must be clear and understandable. (In the first part of the session, we couldn't understand the instructions. Everyone distracted and started to talking about what we would do. ) We talked about commen speaking problems. An idea was good for crowded classes: to group the students and try to control them. If we have 40 students in a class, we can create 10 groups. Instead of controlling all 40 students, controlling 10 groups will be easier. While preparing paper slides, I have noticed that preparation doesn't take much time. For preparation of different activities, many teachers (including me) sometimes say we have no time, but paper slides activity can be prepared in a very short time. I'II use it more when I come back. Facilitators don't say true or false for activities. They don't make corrections. They just create a discussion environment. At the end of today's sessions, we prepared a video about Voki application. Noone in my group didn't know about it. We learnt about it together. I have noticed that collaboration is motivating. I need to use group work activities more in my classes.

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Writing "instruction" is easy but writing an instruction for a listening activity is difficult.

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Writing "instruction" is easy but writing an instruction for a listening activity is difficult.

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Today we started with a brainstorming about listening. We talked about different pre, while and post activities and aim of these stages in listening. We tried to create new pre, while and post tasks. I have noticed that writing new tasks is really difficult. We discussed about listening problems and solutions for these problems. I have seen that many other teachers have same problems like taking the interest of students. We learnt about differentiation. A teacher can change the form of an activity. I can turn an individual matching activity into a brainstorming activity. I can adapt and develop activities according to students' level or interest to motivate them more. As a group, we tried it. The original activities were individual activities. They were just read-and-match and listen-and-tick activities. We planned to add visuals for matching activity. We added a role play activity for post listening stage. (We got many good comments and feedbacks about it. This was very motivating.) In this project, we prepared activities for both strong and weak students to make them all participate in the class. Facilitators always check their instructions even though the activity is very simple. Students have to know what they will do. For me, the most challenging thing today was writing a clear instruction. Although our activity was very simple warmup activity, it was difficult to write understandable instructions. After a very easy listening activity, we checked our answers with our elbow partners. It was a good idea to check students' answers. I use a different version of this idea. I choose a random student. This student stands in front of the board and says his/her answers. If there is a different answers, the chosen student asks for explanation for different answers. (This activity makes the class less tiring for me and I don't do things that students can do.) There was a poster next to the smartboard. On the poster, there were topics and an arrow on the centre of it. The arrow was showing the topics with which we were dealing.  I'll use this in my classses. With this, students who can't follow the classes can see where we are or what we are doing. For example, I can use it to show which question we are answering or which page we are reading. (I will try it when I come back. I am not sure whether it will work or not in my classes but the idea is really good, I think.) And also, in sessions, we have the opportunity to see many interesting activities. I have started to make a list of activities we have seen. I'll try them all. (I have a lot of things to do when I come back.)

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Today, we started with icebreaker and warmup activities. These activities gave us an opportunity to get to know one another. We talked about reflective thinking. It let me understand that teaching process is seeing the big picture and thinking about what we did and what we will do. We worked in groups and discussed about  PDCs, benefit of PDCs, stakesholders in PDCs and being a facilitator. We discussed how we can use different activities in our teaching and in PDC meetings. My personal star and the activity with crumbled paper balls were my favourite. They were motivating activities to encourage learners to participate in the classes.