MY REFLECTIVE JOURNAL IN ERZURUM PDC by Özge GÜNGÖR https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5 en-us 2022-09-01 13:16:44 UTC 2022-09-11 09:26:44 UTC hello@padlet.com How did your 1st day go? Did it meet your expectations? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2279287672 2022-09-01 13:30:40 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2279287672 Have your ideas about teaching young learners changed in any way? If so how? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281103914 2022-09-02 19:16:30 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281103914 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281165836 At first, I want to say that it is a great opportunity to take part in this training programme after all these years. I felt like I am at the university again:)
Our training programme began with welcoming us. Then we went to our classes, sat as groups of 3-4. In the first moments all the participants in the class were a little bit excited and anxious. But then with the ice-breaker activity (My Personal Star) we relaxed. We met each other by predicting and asking some questions about the clues on my personal star paper. After that activity we learned "Pictorial Names", with this activity we tried to tell our names by drawing some shapes. We studied as groups or pairs and every time our group/pair changed so we had a chance to meet each member. I think both of the activities are very useful and they can be used or modified.]]> 2022-09-02 20:50:21 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281165836 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281170631 We learned what is "PDC/PLC". We thought about the terms, discussed with our group members and then shared our opinions. We talked about "Facilitator". We tried to predict and make comments. We shared our opinions again and again in almost every activity and with other group members.
I think this is a great way to speak English, to be active, to gain self-confidence, to collaborate and to learn new ideas from our colleagues.]]> 2022-09-02 20:59:12 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281170631 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281172940 "Action bound" was also a great activity, it helps to work as a group and take responsibility. Kahoot was very enjoyable and I often use it. And lastly, listening activities were very useful, we listened our parts and then shared / summarized what was about it with/to other group members.]]> 2022-09-02 21:04:14 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281172940 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281175200 To sum up, I liked all the activities, because they provide active learning. We can use or should use all of them in our lessons. Thinking, sharing, discussing, speaking, exchanging of views... etc. are the most important things in a learning process I think. Thanks for reminding this :)

This training programme is above my expectations. I am very happy to be a member of this community.]]> 2022-09-02 21:08:54 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2281175200 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2282218662 Today, we have had lots of activities. Firstly we thought and talked about “relationship between learning & teaching” with our group members, shared our ideas. Then we had 4 pictures, we decided which one described learning and teaching the best. Each person who has chosen the same picture came together and shared their ideas. Here I recognised something very important, I couldn’t see the picture as a whole, teaching is not just giving the students what they need, it is also making them move and develop by themselves. In this activity I saw this very clearly and I learned new ideas from my colleagues. Then we made a questionnaire about the children’s foreign language learning, compared our answers with our group members. This was also a good activity, because after discussing the sentences we changed some of our minds about language learning of children. We did a ”jigsaw reading”, each of us had one part of the reading in the groups. We read our parts and summarised it to the other groups’ members.  After this activity, I think that I can use jigsaw reading and jigsaw listening activities in my lessons, because they draw attention, increase motivation and collaboration. We as teachers realised ‘how children learn’ again in this session and discussed about it. Physical activities and visuals are very important, we should use them almost all the time. They mostly learn by doing, imitating, observing, touching,… etc. And also we had “listen and do” activities, I loved our warm-up activity too much. Thinking, discussing, sharing ideas and then preparing posters about this topic was very memorable. Changing posters and adding new things to them was great I think. 
Lastly, today I noticed that meaning is very important for children, sometimes I forget this characteristic and teach words to them, they are very creative, they don’t need to learn words or grammatical structures, if they don’t know them they can use another word instead of them. I need to keep in mind.]]> 2022-09-04 22:06:31 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2282218662 1. What needs to be adapted most in your coursebooks to help children improve their oral skills? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2284791085 2022-09-06 14:47:07 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2284791085 2. How can PDCs help you with that issue? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2284793035 2022-09-06 14:48:09 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2284793035 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285275861 In my opinion, listening activities and dialogues need to be adapted in our coursebooks, because for speaking/communicating we firstly hear, listen then we interpret. Thinking about the activities that we have done today, I observed most of us have made some mistakes in our speaking lessons. Because we always forget something crucial, they are children they are not like us☺️ They need to speak or use their oral skills effectively not correctly, it should be kept in mind. In speaking activities, our role is supporting and engaging our students. In today’s training, I like “parasites” warp-up activity, it can draw our students’ attention and be enjoyable for them, but make more noise in the class, so we should assign some rules maybe. In this activity the students also know they have responsibility like being a receiver, a transmitter. 

In primary schools, to improve or teach oral skills we often use dialogues and here we have learned lots of perspectives. As we learned and discussed yesterday, the children focus on meaning,  therefore meaning comes first. Thus, we should let our students predict and elicit the meaning by using our body language, visuals, different voices etc. Before this session, we as teachers hadn’t taken into consideration “language (natural? or child-friendly?), context ( clear?, short?), do we give them a meaningful reason for talking?, does the dialogue make sense to the children?, Are the sentences or turns short and simple? Does it include social language? etc. “All of these aspects are vital and from now on I am going to pay attention them and if a dialogue is not suitable or doesn’t meet these vital characteristics I can change the activity, I learned this by preparing a dialogue activity and modifying a ready-made activity. Using drilling techniques, repetition mostly, acting and using visuals are also very significant to develop oral skills. Lastly we should always remember speaking isn’t presenting, making mistakes is natural.
]]> 2022-09-06 19:52:07 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285275861 Do you think Shared Reading is a suitable procedure to use with L2 children? Why? / Why not? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285285398 2022-09-06 20:00:39 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285285398 ‘Maintaining a balance between children’s enjoyment and acceptable behaviour is often one of the greatest challenges that Primary language teachers face.’ gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285292691 1. Do you agree or not? 
2. What challenges do teachers face? And how do they manage it? ]]> 2022-09-06 20:07:32 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285292691 1. Are there any tips or techniques from the sessions today that you could use to manage your PDCs positively? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285295064 2022-09-06 20:09:50 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285295064 2. Are there any other elements of classroom management in your PDCs that you will have to think about (managing Feedback for example). gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285296435 2022-09-06 20:11:17 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2285296435 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2286901140 In today’s sessions, I became aware of the importance of warm-ups. Sometimes because of the system or time limit, we can forget starting our lesson with an ice-breaker. In this training, we as adults also need them and find them very enjoyable, for example today’s warm-up ‘onion rings’ becomes my favorite☺️ And I will use it frequently. Our topic was ‘Developing Literacy Skills’. We talked about ‘Binglish Text’ ( back to front) and most of us heard this term for the first time. Here we realized something very important, even if we were stressed while reading it, we could read the text fluently and fast. Because we have previous knowledge of sentence structure, phrasal verbs, we can read by guessing, visualization, familiarization etc. But what about the students especially children? They don’t acquire reading skills by themselves, they should be given instruction. Like we learned, discussed and shared, the students need to be supported to make sense of the text. In this respect, we can talk about ‘Shared Reading’, because I find it very useful. For this, we can use stories, children and even adults like them so much. Here we should prepare our students for the story, for example we can use some visuals, we can show them the story’s cover, show them a video or make them listen some sounds, let them guess, act, ask comprehension questions etc. Making crafts about the stories is an excellent idea, because the students can tell the story to the others by using them, they can enjoy and follow the story. The crafts keep  the students’ attention alive, all the students can attend the reading activity, be engaged by this way. The teacher and the students can have chance to read the story together. But looking at all of these I think we should be careful if we have a crowded class, the classroom should be well-arranged and also we should give the students simple and clear instructions, because they need to understand what they should do. After this session I realised that until today I haven’t used any storytelling activities in my classroom, but from now on I am willing to use it time to time. Also I learned reading aloud isn’t a useful way, reading should be silent; but almost all the teachers want the students to read aloud, they can feel discouraged. I will change this and be careful about while doing reading. And lastly sometimes I forget to choose a short text or pay attention to if it is at or just beyond students’ level. I need to be careful and keep in mind these.]]> 2022-09-07 17:50:21 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2286901140 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2287062823 I absolutely agree, while considering my lessons, it is very hard to maintain a balance between children enjoyment and acceptable behaviour. While doing activities, we need to allow them to work independently but by knowing their responsibilities. Here the teacher and the students should negotiate and assign their rules together and know what their responsibilities are. For ex: at the end of the lessons the students should tidy up their own spaces and they can also help their friends or teachers if they want. Children are energetic and can be distracted very easily. So we need to encourage them, keep them busy and give them responsibilities. For example when our students finish the activity early we should have something else for them.  And they need to learn how to wait silently, we should find some ways to teach this. Also we need to change the way we give feedback as children can lose their interest and be bored. In today’s session I realised something very important that I haven’t paid too much attention to assign a role for each student, for ex: resource manager. It is a must for classroom management I think and I will try it. 
To sum up we as teachers know that classroom management is about learning environment and crucial. So we should set up our rules, have our responsibilities and use some routines to maintain a positive and supporting classroom atmosphere.
]]> 2022-09-07 19:44:15 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2287062823 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2287163853 In today’s session I learned some useful tips and techniques that I can use while managing my PDCs. For example “Chinese whisper” and “running for dictations” activities were creative and can be more useful if we pay attention to the sentence length and familiarisation. I liked both of them and I am willing to try them. But I realised something significant while doing “running for dictations” activity, here having a good memory and being fast are the keys. “Onion ring” is the one that I will use mostly because it provides discussing, sharing and learning new things from other participants. It is also useful to set up four corners in the classroom (by naming them foods, colours, cities etc.), make the participants choose one of the corners and go there, discuss and share ideas, then change the corner, discuss and share ideas again and again. It was well-advised and I am going to use it in my PDCs and of course in my lessons. And also I can use “sleeping pandas”, it is also a good group activity and interesting.
As for the second question, 
]]> 2022-09-07 21:41:21 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2287163853 Has your view of assessment changed? How? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2287164601 2022-09-07 21:42:30 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2287164601 1. What do you think will be the greatest benefit of being in a Professional Development Community for the teachers of English in your local context who join your PDC meetings? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2290239816 2022-09-09 20:19:50 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2290239816 How do you feel the PDC sessions you have studied in this face to face training programme will help you deal with possible problems when you are planning and conducting PDCs for teachers in your local context? gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2290241755 2022-09-09 20:22:33 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2290241755 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2290269469 When I have taken into consideration all things I’ve learned in this training programme, the greatest benefit will be changing their head from a teacher/leader to a conductor and apply this to their classes.]]> 2022-09-09 21:07:01 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2290269469 gngrzg https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2290282055 I feel confident, because in this face to face training programme we have learned by doing, thinking over common problems, engaging, sharing our ideas with our colleagues, preparing and adapting lots of activities etc. And also we have done our demo PDC planning and session here with our group members, presented it one by one and got our feedbacks from our trainers and colleagues. It is a great chance for our upcoming PDCs. If I have a problem while planning or conducting my PDCs, I can handle it or discuss and get my colleagues’ opinions.]]> 2022-09-09 21:30:10 UTC https://padlet.com/gngrzg/fmjo5y7jo9ez82p5/wish/2290282055