https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8 English Together training journal en-us 2022-10-18 09:04:05 UTC 2022-10-24 18:59:29 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/270d.png ayca1111 https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2344775947 Today we worked on PDCs in general and covered the topics like what they are, how to a plan a PDC session and how a facilitator is different from a trainer or lecturer.
Today I observed how Swany and Burcu facilitated our sessions and some are inspired me, I'm planning to use them in my sessions. One of them is that they costantly changed groups, we moved a lot and worked with a lot of partners, this helped our feeling of being a part of a group and work together as a group. They created groups randomly, after each activity they collected some kind of output, both of which made us be attentive and stay connected.
We used an Actionbound and Kahoot tools, neither of them is relevant for my local context. I work at a state primary school and our Ss don't bring mobile devices to classroom. I think of an activity like tressure hunt with written tasks on paper but it's impossible with 40 Ss in a crowded school. We did a great listening activity, I hope, in the following days of this training, we can see some sample activities that could be used with my young learners, in our real classrooms of 40, with no mobile devices. All these activities are fun and I learned many things about PDCs but I can't adopt none of these to my classroom. 
Ice breaker was adaptable though, in groups of four we drew a star shape and wrote some information about ourselves and others tried to find out the questions, I can use that with my forth grade Ss with the questions they know. It can be a nice revision of the asking and giving personal information.
To conclude, today I learned a lot about PDCs and planning and conducting meetings as a facilitator and I had great 
clues about facilitating an adult meeting. Though I couldn't get any clues how I could change things in my real classroom at school. I'm looking forward to it.]]> 2022-10-18 09:14:59 UTC https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2344775947 ayca1111 https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2346683707 Today we focused on how children learn.
Morning Session
In the morning session we mainly focused on the relationship between learning and teaching. We covered many activities. 
I loved onion rings because I could share ideas with the half of my classmates, this motivated me and kept me attentive, I also had fun. I can't use it in my classroom this way, but maybe I can create groups of four and make three of the Ss stable, one of them mobile, I can give the mobile one a piece of information, i.e. description of an animal, s/he walks around the groups, describe the animal, the others try to guess. But this also has some disadvantages, that is, stable Ss would want to be mobile too or in some classrooms it's really hard to move around the classroom comfortably, too crowded. 
I liked draw your name game, too. I can't use it this way but maybe I can make Ss to prepare it with an animal's name, in this way,it is more likely they could find something to draw.
Telephone lines can be adaptable if can use the garden for any Q&A pair work activity.
Jigsaw reading is impossible in my classes because we don't have any space to shift the desks or chairs, I don't have a space for myself walking around the desks in some classrooms:)
Afternoon Session
In the afternoon session we focused on listening skill. Almost all of the listen and do activities can be used in my lessons, I'm very happy about this because now I have something to give to the teachers that will attend my PDC meeting, something they could use in their lessons.
About the role of the facilitator in our sessions; I can say they are present for us, supporting and guiding us in the activities, they keep us active all the time. I wrote many things about this yesterday, they are the same today.
Being well prepared as a facilitator (and also as a teacher at school) is very important, yet some problems can occur at any point, we should have a plan B. Being flexible is also important, plans can be changed depending on the context, concerning participant/student reactions/mood.


]]> 2022-10-19 09:16:52 UTC https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2346683707 ayca1111 https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2349526709 Today was the speaking day.
Morning Session
What have we got in common race was so nice for me, thanks to it I could learn each classmates' names today. I suppose I can adopt it to my classes as a controlled activity with less people and specific questions.
I gained some important awarness about teaching speaking skills. I will be more selective about my activities and lesson plans for including social language in dialogues, setting the meaningful context (together with Ss sometimes) and I will try to include more group work when possible.
We hang each product on the wall, this is a good idea that I can use in my PDC meetings because we can see how much we learned and recall our nice feelings during the activities when we see them everyday.
In the morning session we discussed about why children find speaking difficult, mentimeter opening, then group discussions and creating a mini poster on our chosen three problems and possible solutions, lastly presenting those, I can use this in my PDC meeting. It took about one hour, I know that so it will be easier for mr to plan my meeting that day.
Afternoon sessions
We can match this session's stages with stages of a PDC 
cycle: 
Warm-up: hidden words activity
Review: Group discussion about how to use dialogues effectively in the classroom.
Engage and Share: We identified the possible stages of a lesson with a dialogue and demonstrated what a lesson plan would look like in groups.
Reflect and Evaluate: We worked in groups and adopted our coursebook pages and did gallery walk.
Closing remarks: We revised the activities we covered today, and were informed about what we were going to focus on while writing our reflections.
 ]]> 2022-10-20 18:03:31 UTC https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2349526709 ayca1111 https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2350304412 Today was the reading day.
In the morning session, we did a Binglish task, in this task  the facilitator created the context by showing a sample in backward written test first, then asked us to think of school years and think on experience. She followed these steps: 
choosing observers and readers
giving handouts
making us find a corner for our pair
giving instructions
after we finished with the activity we had a discussion on the reading strategies, how the reader felt and what helped her. We discussed these in our small groups first, then altogether with the facilitator's questions.
After the break we focused on comon typical problems that children have in reading. I got the awareness that I shouldn't ignore reading skill in my lessons to prepare our kids although our corsebooks are not appropriate for this, I think I will pay more attention to this to prepare them to secondary school. And about my PDCs I will always include the learning objective of the activities we did.
Afternoon Session
Session started with Swany's shared story reading. I found this really interesting and inspiring. 
Shared reading is perfectly suitible for L2 children because it's child friendly, enjoyable, meaningful and the Ss can use their background knowledge and they can practice listening and speaking skills too.
I will try this in my classes, if it goes well - I can't be sure, we're really crowded but I suppose I can open the pdf version of the book on the smart board for Ss to see clearly, I can decrease the number of questions, and make them simpler- I'm planning to copy this session in my PDC meeting (reading topic) includig the following steps. For preparing a game part, I would prezervatif my participants to use Web 2 tools such as Wordwall so that they can share their games with each other and have many after-reading activities to use ready in their classroom for this shared reading.]]> 2022-10-21 07:24:10 UTC https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2350304412 ayca1111 https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2351584078 Today we had only a morning session. We focused on spelling and classroom management.
Maintaining a balance between children's behaviour and acceptable behavior is a big challange at primary level, I agree with this.
Teachers face some problems. Children get bored easily because their attention span is low considering one lesson hour. When they can't give their attention anymore, they start to talk to each other or they feel tired of trying to focus, in those times I either play a game with kids or sing songs, generally I ask them what they would want to do at that moment. Sometimes children have problems with each other and can't wait the breaktime to hande that, if it's big, I firstly handle tjis, then continue.]]> 2022-10-22 11:35:42 UTC https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2351584078 ayca1111 https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2352430590 Morning Session 
Today we focused on classroom management in the morning. We talked about classroom noise, settlers and stirrers and identifying how to use them to manage our classroom. I could actually copy this session in my PDC meeting on Classroom Management. A short talk about noise in the classroom and the difference between settlers and stirrers, maybe giving on eor two examples. Then choose a game (Stop the Bus was a nice idea because it didn't take much time and was very fun with a considirable noise but I could choose sth adaptable for our Ss' level) as an example of Stirrer and play together, then give them a game and want them to find 5 people having another type of an activity and talk to each other and then a little share in the big group, maybe open a space if there are anything they want to add and finish the session with closing remarks. 2nd part of the morning session was also great, studying on getting and holding attention was really inspiring for me. I won't write the details, otherwise I can't finish today's diary.
Actually I'm thinking about this, I will most probably have a problem in my first PDC sessions that my participants will start to complain about these are not applicable to their classrooms, they will say, "Ok Ayça darling, although we had some fun here and we saw that we must feel ashamed of our exams because they don't meet any of the criteria you told us, we mainly use AoL rather than AfL which means we don't support our Ss but tell me dear how to use more AfL (naming portfolios, diaries!) in the given circumstances, we have 350-600 Ss per Eng. teacher at one school and prepare tests like Cambridge University does!" I think formal assessment is the worst topic to focus on at a first PDC meeting. We had some great, adaptable, usable sessions in speaking, listening even in the writing day and also on classroom management, but formal assessment session was really utopic and depressing and so a very bad idea to start with because I believe if I believe in something, I can make others believe in it but if I don't believe in something, it's impossible for me to make anybody believe in that.
In the afternoon session we focused on Assessment. We started with a matching activity in which we matched pictures with 4 assessment styles. Then we engaged in a group work, we used the book p.59 to group some assessment statements into categories, then we had a chat about those in the big group. We refreshed our knowledge about assessment types. Then we compared AoL and AfL, we used an activity prepared via "learninggapps". Then we worked on three sample AoL tests in the book in our small group and discussed in the big group. Then talked what tools could we use instead of formal assessment. Lastly we talked about characteristics of a child friendly test, then we examined a Movers test and saw how child friendly it is comparing the ones we apply in real classes, and we tried to adopt the latter according to the criteria on page 62 and 63. we will decide which of those can we use in our PDC meeting together with my small group friends soon.]]> 2022-10-23 16:51:03 UTC https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2352430590 ayca1111 https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2353911222 Morning Session 
I can't say my view of assessment has changed but I can say I learned the names of assessment types clearly today and some new techniques some of which I really want to try when I turn back to my school. I will try wiggling the fingers to correct mistakes and joining fingers to practise contractions. Also I haven't tried asking children in pairs to think of the correct answer, I'm planning to use this, too.
Afternoon Session
A teacher who is a member of a PDC group can learn some new techniques and activities to use in his/her class.
With my new friends from PDC training network, I can share ideas on my PDC plans and meetings, find solutions to possible problems together.
We have two nice failitators to model how to facilitate a PDC meeting, we can copy or adopt the techniques they used during these ten days.]]> 2022-10-24 16:10:44 UTC https://padlet.com/ayca1111/3hmdyqnvnzmbqvs8/wish/2353911222