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Reflection Day 1 (Warm up/Reflective Thinking)

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Reflection Day 1 (Warm up/Reflective Thinking)

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Today was the first day of our Professional Development Communities meeting (PDCs). Since we as trainers come from different cities and haven't known each other before, our facilitators started with a really effective warm up task named "My Personal Star" which I find quite useful to adopt in my classes by costumizing it with fewer yes/no questions instead of just asking some questions to students and getting the answers as I used to do. Also, we have been very active during our first class by sharing our feelings, thoughts, experiences on different topics which led us to interact with different colleagues and partners. I enjoyed and learned a lot during exchanging ideas on the topics and finding possible solutions to our problems.
Besides the tasks we have done today, I recalled the importance of reflective thinking and active listening techniques as a trainer for my personal development and teaching skills. I really appreciate my facilitators Christina and Burcu for this🙏🏻. It has been ages since I haven't written a reflection, even a journal.This will help me a lot for my future career as a facilitator in my PDC sessions and as a teacher in my classes.
Moreover, we have completed a task as a groupwork in Web 2.0 tool called Actionbound which I have never heard before. It made us physically active on our first day inside and outside the class. We even went to the restaurant floor to complete a task. What I liked most about this activity was its aim for a new group of students for orientation indirectly. Exploring what is nearby will help students to feel more adopted and secure.

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Today we have done a different activity as a warm up named "Find Someone Who..." which I enjoyed a lot and let me know more about my colleagues. After that, we had a role play about whether to use authentic materials or coursebook in our classes for listening activity. This role play helped me to understand that both have positive and negative sides. In order to minimize negative ones and boost positive ones, I have learned new techniques such as adaptation and differentiation which I find quite useful and feasible for planning listening activities according to my students' level of English, social and cultural backgrounds, interests and needs. According to these new techniques, I  feel self confident about what am I going to keep, reject, adopt or supplement in coursebook, authentic materials or any other source of listening tasks. I am looking forward to use the combination of all the sources by costumizing new techniques in my classes and I hope this will affect my students'  motivation and attitudes positively.
Also, we shared our common problems and tried to find possible solutions to the listening activities in our classes. While sharing our ideas and experiences, I felt that I am not the only one who has troubles in engaging students in listening activities or time management problems. Today's PDC task clearly showed me that in order to find appropriate solution, I need to analyze the problems deeply and diagnose them whether they are because of my planning, nature of the text or my management in the class. I admitted to myself that I have done some of these from time to time. Since I have discussed all these issues with my colleagues and facilitators and agreed on the best ways to prevent them, I feel secure about how to cope with problems I face in my state school.
Moreover we have done a pre, during and post listening activity by analysing each steps in details. In this activity, I clearly understand that getting students' attention by eye contact, intonation,body language (hope I can do as Christina😍); setting the context by eliciting information from students or using music or picture engage them into the activity effectively and volunteerly. What I find most helpful technique was not only giving clear, simple and short instructions as I did in my classes, but also checking understanding by short/simple answered questions or sentence finishing as Christina usually does with us. I think if it works on us, why doesn't it work on my students. We even had a role play as a student, a teacher and an observer in today's PDC section which clearly showed me the effectiveness of the ICQs( Instruction Checking Questions). I think I am getting used to writing as well as role playing thanks to PDC. I am very glad to be here...

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As a state school teacher what I find most difficult is making my students speak in English during my speaking sessions. As far as I observe, they feel insecure about their pronunciations, being judged by their friends and being ridiculed. Their English levels are also another challenge I face in my school. No matter how much I support them in the target language or target vocabulary, they are still reluctant to speak in front of the class or in pairs.  Before I attended PDC, I used to do just small talks in order to engage them into speaking sessions. Even though, I had difficulty in getting my students into the task. In today's PDC, I have seen that this is not the only problem for making students speak, but there are many problems as my colleagues shared which means that we should focus on what kind of  problems are they, and then find  solutions to them. I think I can make them speak volunteerly by the new techniques and methods I have learned today like giving them preparation time, setting words or phrases, providing an outline for speaking and repeating the task. Because it really worked on me and my partners as far as I see, so I want to share what I have gained here with colleagues in my region.
I want to use "gallery walk" method in my PDC sessions as well, because it really helped me and my group members to analyze the problems deeply and to find possible solutions. With a group work activity, they will be both physically and mentally engaged and realize each of us may have the same or different problems/solutions as I did. One important thing about this method is; they will be aware of that there is not only one possible solution to a problem. Thus, they will know differentiation themselves.The other important point is that, they will not feel alone which really helps to be supported by their colleagues.
Since we live in technology era, we should absolutely implement technology into our lessons as well as our lives. Digitalisation is the brand new technique that should be clearly understood and carefully implemented both into our classes as teachers and PDC sessions as facilitators. The more we use digitised materials, the more we have highly motivated, confident and engaged students into tasks especially for speaking.  There are many beneficial  web 2. tools to be adopted into our classes like Flip or canva. These applicants give a chance to do speaking tasks outside class and to save time in crowded classes. While we are monitoring students' speaking activity, we may not have enough time to check all of the students in only one lesson. That's why It is also useful for evaluating and giving feedback. Morever, the best thing I liked about these application  is that even shy people can speak and record their voices on their own at their homes without sharing their photos. Also they can make everything talk instead of themselves an emoji,avatar, a picture etc. These are all great improvements and I am looking forward to sharing it with my colleagues in my region in PDC. As long as we set the rules and show how the applications work at the beginning, we will be able to reduce negative sides of technology usage. I had a great time by using some of these applications in my PDC session, hope my colleagues will enjoy it also...

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There is a saying "Everything changes. Change is the only thing that doesn't change." Teaching methods and techniques in ELT has changed and improved  compared to my university education. I had a great opportunity to realize and analyze these changes in PDC. I am really impressed by the term
" snack writing" as a new writing approach which I find quite applicable and practical to use both in my classes and in PDC sessions. I hope my colleagues  in my region will find it so as me.
I mostly can't find enough time in my classes to do a whole writing practice due to many reasons such as limited time, students' low level of English, their background knowledge etc. Another problem I face during my writing sessions is the length of the genres. I can't control my students whole writing processes of an essay in the lesson. Even I can't show how to write a whole essay only in one lesson. For this point of view, snack writing will be a time saving activity in my writing lessons. I think this new approach will take the interests of my colleagues and students because we may have mostly the same problems in writing. Also, it is really enjoyable and creative to write a few snack responses, thoughts, experiences, feelings etc. in a very short time during lessons or PDC sessions. This will boost students' motivation about writing and build up their confidence as well. Moreover, they will get the immediate chance to practice on organization, grammar, vocabulary in group works, in pairs or individually during lessons. There are many options to differentiate the writing task and integrate other skills as well.
According to me, the best thing about PDC is to learn how to digitalise activities or tasks on a variety of applications or web tools. There are many many advantages  of using technology into our lessons such as saving time, making tasks funnier and more interesting, exchanging information and ideas, getting feedbacks via lots of ways. Though the advantages, there are some disadvantages either.
In today's PDC, I have also learned how to set up rules as I do in the class. The rules should be clear in terms of "nettiqutte" which represents the importance of how to behave online. I should block bad words, comments in order to prevent some disadvantages. Also, I can set moderates for time saving even in a digital tool.
Before I came here, I feel insecure and insufficient about adopting web2.0 tools into my lessons of all four skills. I think there are many teachers who think and feel like me. Therefore, I am looking forward to sharing my experiences in PDC with them to catch the era by using digitalised techniques in a secure way.

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Reading is one of my favourite free time activities from my childhood. I feel very lucky to be introduced with reading via staged reading books supported with many pictures that helped me to imagine the content. As a teacher, I give a high importance on reading skill both in L1 and L2. In today's PDC session, I realized the importance of reading skill one more time with an activity we did individually which showed me the critical point of understanding mostly lies under the instructions. I failed to follow the instruction  myself correctly. Therefore, ICQs (Instruction Checking Questions) is the best thing I liked about today's session. I have learned the qualifications of ICQs clearly with the help of my PDC facilitators by not only telling, but also applying,demonstrating the steps during our sessions. Since I find it quite useful on myself here, I think my colleagues in my local area will find it useful, too.
One other thing I liked most about reading session in PDC is adaptating methods which I am familiar with. Because of our coursebook inefficiency with all the needs and skills required, it is a very beneficial thing to know how to modify reading texts. Knowing which parts to keep, reject, adopt or supplement will be a solution to our common problems for my colleagues.

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Today was the most overwhelming day in my PDC session. Because it was Sunday, and we had two important tasks on the same day. Thanks to Christina and Burcu I had overcame it at the end and  had super funny and applicable digital tools and methods again to implement both in my classes and PDC sessions.
As far as I know, most of English teachers teach grammar in their lessons only explicitly in my local area. Since we have very crowded classes and "less able students" (Thanks Christina for this expression 🙏🏻) most of my colleagues think that it will be really difficult for class management if we use implicit method. Firstly, I had clarified the similarities and differences between these two methods and became aware of that actually there is not only one way of teaching grammar. I am enlighted about the implicit method takes the best parts of explicit method. Therefore,I can use both methods depending on the target language and modify the controlled practice according to these methodologies. The point is teachers'  role! Because, in my opinion, we are all accustomed to control everything even outside the classes. I have realized that eliciting information is more useful than just writing the grammar point on the board and telling. Because with elicitation, students are more involved in the grammar topics as they are too concrete for them to understand and remember. I want to share my experiences here with my colleagues in my local area to boost their motivation on teaching grammar
by the new techniques and support them with the digital tools to make them enjoy themselves firstly. Because most of us find this sub skill boring to teach as I used to think before I attended the PDC training.

Also there are differences between students' mother tongues and English language. This is another challenge we may discuss in my PDC sessions in my local area. By giving the students a meaningful reason to stick, it will be easier to engage them into the target language. So, they don't have to know the form of the language firstly, but they need to know the reason why are they going to learn a task in grammar sessions. I suppose, this is all we need actually to feel concerned and confident. With the help of PDC meeting teachers will have a chance to realize that they are not the only ones having troubles in teaching grammar. By creating a network among  them, they will probably come up with many possible ways to solve their problems.

Language clarification steps are another key point in teaching grammar. As I experienced in my own training, without checking clarification, there will be chaos in their understanding.....ccqs....

Mfp...

From controlled activities to freer activities.... support with digital tools....

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In today's session, vocabulary teaching and the challenges and the solutions for the problems were discovered.
We reflected on vocabulary activities in terms of their levels of dependence. For vocabulary lessons, we have controlled, guided and freer activities and I think that all of them can be utilized in various ways in line with the needs of the students.
In a PDC Session about teaching vocabulary, I think the most common problem that we will need to deal with will be making teaching and learning vocabulary more fun and interesting. Usually, the students and the teachers find vocabulary too prescriptive and rule and structure based, and do not want to focus on vocabulary however, vocabulary absolutely crucial in learning a language since sentence structures, tenses, time expression and much more can only be acquired through the retention of vocabulary topics. We have to remember that although it is not the only stakeholder in language learning, we need to teach vocabulary for the students to be able to use the language with ease.
So, I think that in a PDC session, these issues would be touched upon.

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On today's session, we dealt with the intensive topic of assessment and PDC session preparations.
As for the question on the issue of assessment, I am inclined to think that self and peer assessment are crucial for progress checking and could be used for local problems with assessment in my context. The students need to know how well they are doing in a specific skill or a language point, and self and peer assessment allow the students to see their achievement or lack thereof through a different lense other than that of the teacher.