It was a productive day for me. I learnt about various methods and activities to help students become more active listeners. These strategies will help my PDC colleagues and students to involve in the learning process.

I realized that adapting the listening texts to the level of the students and doing activities accordingly made the process much easier. As I observed, it was much more effective when the teacher demonstrated the activity first. This made things more streamlined and created a smoother learning experience for students.

The one I like best is personal star because it’s not just for new groups. It practices the basic knowledge of personal questions. So, it can be adapted to all levels.

Our facilitators posted some speaking activity challenges on the walls and through the gallery walk we came up with lots of solutions. I'm definitely going to apply it in my classes. I can hang the questions or pictures about the current topic in various places in the classroom. This technique will allow them to be engaged as they do it in groups.

I liked all the activities in today’s session but the paper slide was my favorite because I teach in a small town and most of the students lack access to the internet and technological devices. I’m sure they’ll love it. Also, I'm excited to share this with my colleagues.

The most important thing I've learnt is that I should make speaking activities more life-like and meaningful for the students and use role-play more to link the classroom to real life.

The run and circle warm up activity is very adaptable.  I can just use matching activities on students’ coursebooks and turn it into a group game. Also, I’ll use jigsaw for boring and long reading texts. Before coming here, I was under the misconception that the most difficult part of every lesson is whether the students can do it or not. But now, I understand that preparing for the activity is the important one. As long as the activities are well-prepared, students will do it.

The last thing I would like to mention is the “activity cycle.” I agree that the teacher's part of the "activity cycle" should be only 20%, but I guess I’m not confident enough to give 80% to the students because I think that way the lesson will get out of control or my students won't be able to do it. This will be the most difficult thing for me when I return to my school, but I will try to change this behavior.

Apart from grammar, we also talked about teaching vocabulary. Setting the context is always the most important part of teaching as we do in every session no matter what skill we’re working on.  Today’s vocabulary lesson was done by less talking and I really liked that. Because I need to reduce the teacher talking time and increase eliciting. I’m aware that digital materials are a lifesaver. But in my reflective writings, I mostly take the activities that I can do without using digital materials because of my teaching environment. That’s why using pictures in slides and miming an action are best ways for me to present a new vocabulary in my classes.  For pronunciation, modelling and clapping are useful especially teaching intonation. As an activity, drawing a circle to show which syllable is stressed is very practical and fun because it is difficult for students to apply the intonation rules. Finally, I’ll prepare CCQs both grammar and vocabulary teaching. I’ll also share it in my PDCs. Because I think we don’t pay much attention to this process.

I believe that formative assessments can be used to solve this problem as long as the assessments emphasize the practical value of English. For each year, students may prepare portfolios to keep track of their progress.