https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm This padlet is prepared for submitting reflections everyday during the training ☺️ en-us 2022-06-20 16:14:10 UTC 2022-06-27 20:44:47 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f929.png iremomur88 https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2226935456 This is the first reflection we've written. For this reason, I would like to start this article by saying that I am very happy to be here. It is my 5th year in my profession and my 4th year in National Education, but I have been working in a male vocational high school in Kars for 4 years. I realized how much I had regressed in language skills (especially speaking skills) without realizing it. For this reason, I am more aware of how important it is for us to be here. Thank you very much to our valuable trainers.

The authentic material and course book discussion we had at the beginning of the day gave me a new vision. I always thought the authentic material was more important, but I discovered that the course book is just as important as the authentic material. For this reason, I think that both should be used in accordance with the interests and special abilities and needs of our students, taking into account the context. Although authentic material presents from real life and culture, course books are an accessible resource for each student, and students are likely to repeat vocabulary as the spiral program progresses. Moreover, being aware of the problems related to listening skills and remembering the activities of the stages of listening skills made us feel refreshed.

Most of my students are rural children and their academic achievement is very low. But I can see how good they are when we give them a chance. My students can be very distracted and do not always find the goal and motivation for language learning. For this reason, although the listening skill is an active skill, my students are not always active in the listening activities even if we use songs, movies etc. I already knew it was important to be well prepared for the lessons in order to make them effective, but I learned today that differentiation plays a huge role in this context. It is a unique experience for me to learn how to make our students active in their listening skills by doing, living and having fun.]]> 2022-06-21 15:30:12 UTC https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2226935456 iremomur88 https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2227973829 Today we have gained very important information because our biggest problem as English teachers in Turkey is about teaching speaking skills and making students speak. When we turn the mirror to ourselves, I would like to say that we teachers have deficiencies in this regard. When I review the experiences I had during my student years and with my students in both Eskişehir and Kars, I see that we all have confidence problems in speaking skills. One of the biggest reasons for this is that teachers do not do activities involving speaking skills in the classroom, and another is that when English is spoken in very limited times in the classroom and the speaker makes a mistake, the students and teachers in the class laugh at the speaker or overreact and make the speaker feel bad. This situation has been going on in our schools for years. That's why it's not difficult to share the "Feedback for Speaking" topic with colleagues, but it is difficult (but not impossible) to change speaking skills feedback techniques in schools, and teachers need to be dedicated in this regard.

The biggest problem I face with my students is the lack of motivation and purpose towards language learning. Unfortunately, this is reflected in their language skills as well. That's why we're having a class discussion about the importance of learning English in the first lessons. As for Speaking and Listening skills, as I mentioned above, the biggest problem is lack of self-confidence.

Here are the top recommendations I received as partners for the Speaking and Listening section:
- Preparation is the key.
- Active students' schematas and they should have an idea about the context.
- Students should feel confident in listening and speaking.
- Differantiation is very crucial because every student needs to use the language and each student has speacial needs.
- Modeling, clearer understanding and think time is important for speaking.]]> 2022-06-22 15:28:10 UTC https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2227973829 iremomur88 https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2229197375 For today's reflection, I chose the text from the 9th grade book that I uploaded as an image above. The context of the reading text is based on a conversation with a stranger at the airport. The book contains only one discussion question for pre-reading and two listening activities for while-reading. (They will listen and fill in the gaps about the dialogue.) A role-play activity is given for post-reading. When I make an evaluation about these activities and read the text, I want to make a differentiation for the mixed ability students in the class.

Lead - In: In this part, first, I would have the students listen to an audio recording of the airport environment. In the audio recording, the sound of airplane take-off and landing, announcements and people's conversations can be heard. I would draw their attention to the paragraph by asking students to close their eyes and listen carefully to the sound, try to find out where they are, and why they think so.

Pre-Reading: In the Pre-Reading section, in order to keep the students' interest alive and focus on the text, I would first show the photos of Sophie and Matthew performing the dialogue and hang the photos on the board, then I would show the students the photos of some information given in the relevant text by Sophie and Matthew. (For example, in the text, Matthew goes to London and Sophie goes to Istanbul. The photos of the cities can be demonstrated. At the same time, among the information, we see that Matthew is Greek and Sophie and Matthew are commenting on people of different cultures. Some photos can be given about this information.) Students would give their predictions by working in groups. After the while-reading part, the group that provided the closest guess would get plus points.

While-Reading: In this section, students would use activities to answer true/false and "wh-" questions. Students can work individually first, then pair-debate. This is a reading lesson, so I don't ask them to fill in the questions about the reading passage by listening as it is given in the book. However, students can listen to the correct answers to check the answers after completing the activity.

Post-Reading: I really liked the role-play activity given in this section. I accept the activity as it is.

In this way, visual, auditory, communicative and individual activities are made for students with different abilities.

I think my colleagues would find the sections in the lead-in and pre-reading useful. Because students may find reading lessons boring, or they approach this skill with prejudice because their vocabulary is not sufficient. Since the sections in lead-in and pre-reading are interesting, this problem would be disappear a little bit.]]> 2022-06-23 21:57:20 UTC https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2229197375 iremomur88 https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230378424 When I think of my students, the skills they fear the most are speaking and writing. Since listening and reading have receptive skills, they can do it by force, but writing and speaking scare them very much. For this reason, I want to carry out eTwinning projects at school for two years and ensure that students gain self-confidence in productive skills. I can say that we have come a long way in two years. However, there is one very good thing I learned from this course that will make my students very happy: Snack writing. As I mentioned, my students write with difficulty, snack writing will both draw their attention and not tire them. Because in this type of writing, students can write freely and briefly without fear of mistakes. They can also write by brainstorming and collaborating. While listening to the lecture, I realized my own mistake, I guess I can't keep the monitor and control balance while the children are writing something in the lesson. I will be more careful in this matter.

The biggest factor in writing skill is purpose of writing. Students should know what to write, how to write, and most importantly why, because when students are satisfied with that reason, they write in a more motivated way. In addition, I think it would be beneficial to create a context that will attract students' attention in the lead-in section. Our students are children born into the digital world and spend most of their time in the virtual world. In order to create a real-life context, we must also benefit from digitalisation.

I think that most of my colleagues will be interested in snack writing and extension activities at PLC meetings. This is because some students may finish earlier than others, especially if students work in groups or pairs in writing. In such cases, the implementation of extension activities will be very useful for classroom management. I think that snack writing is not well known by teachers in Turkey, so it will attract their attention.

Finally, I'm really looking forward to implementing the Five finger adjectives activity in my classroom. :))]]> 2022-06-25 17:31:59 UTC https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230378424 iremomur88 https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230378767 Frankly, I was very curious about the grammar lesson in the previous days, because the lesson we focused on the most at the university was the methodology lesson and we took this lesson mainly on grammar teaching. "I wonder what else it could be?" I was thinking, however, I learned a lot more today.

First of all, guided-discovery in language classes and the language focus we learned last (I don't remember the exact name of the method, i nominate it as "Language focus :)" but it includes 5 stages which are setting context target language, presenting target language, language focus, controlled practice and freer practice) I think it will be more efficient. The reason for my opinion is that these methods are student-centered and students discover the language structure of the target language within a context (i mean in a meaningful way and by activating their schemata), which will make learning more permanent. Apart from this, presenting the language with eliciting questions and texts will increase the interest of the students. Firstly, targeting accuracy with controlled practice, then targeting students to use the language more freely with freer practice will again enable students to learn actively and meaningfully.

They will definitely want to discuss and learn more about language focus learning and guided-discovery learning because everything new will look different to teachers and they will definitely want to apply it. English teachers in our country (usually :)) consist of teachers who are open to innovations and give importance to self-development. Also, the focus on meaning - form - pronunciation must also be discussed. The reason for this is that grammar lessons in our country focus more on form, while meaning and pronunciation stay behind.]]> 2022-06-25 17:33:15 UTC https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230378767 iremomur88 https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230379025 I think one of the sections that students and teachers enjoy the most is the vocabulary section. My students also love to learn vocabulary, and since their language levels are low, we take this process by playing games more. I think the most effective tip is personalizing new word. I definitely think this is a great method because students never forget the word when they personalize it. I have a memory about it. My students are mostly Kurdish and their mother tongue is actually Kurdish. We learned the verb "carry" [ˈkɛrɪ] in class, and the children were very surprised when they learned the meaning of the verb, because they said that the Kurdish word "Ker" [ˈkɛr] means donkey. Later, they formed the phrase "Ker carries apples" and they never forgot it.

For students in my own school and district, they don't like to write a lot. Even while lecturing, I have to warn students to take notes. Sometimes they don't read their notes. For this reason, I don't think the vocabulary notebook will work in my area. But their drawing ability is very good. In the simplest and most meaningful way, they can draw snap words on paper in groups and hang them on the classroom walls, as we do with students in my classes, or they can make a snap-words notebook for themselves. I am sharing the example of Snap words as an image above. While these words are written (or drawn), they are drawn together with the meaning and visual of the word. This will ensure permanent learning for students. In addition, the visuals will attract attention and even provide latent learning for other students who come to the class and do not know the meaning of the word.]]> 2022-06-25 17:34:27 UTC https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230379025 iremomur88 https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230643274 In the local context, I think that our English teachers are full of knowledge on how to assess students, but lacking in practice (I mean this area is lacking because teachers are compelled to do so). The reason for these thoughts is that the measurement of each language skill includes different stages and the classrooms are very crowded in some of our schools. We have a certain amount of time to evaluate students, and during exam weeks, students do not want to prepare for Foreign Language lessons, especially the exam of speaking skill, which they are most afraid of, as they focus on the exams of other courses. Also, since the number of students is large, it is very difficult to evaluate each student individually. Using detailed rubrics for each student is also a problem in terms of time. For this reason, teachers do each skill in a single exam using a more general rubric. In my opinion, this situation does not reflect an objective evaluation.

First of all, I think that self-assessment should definitely be implemented. For this reason, students make self-evaluations at the end of our textbooks, but this evaluation is not reflected in them as a grade or teachers usually do not ask students how they feel at the end of the unit. However, students are more motivated when they witness their own development. I often witness this in eTwinning projects. My students, who felt insecure at the beginning of their eTwinning projects, said, "Irem teacher, now I understand when people speak English, I can write without fear. Please let's do a project next year." they say. It makes me very happy that they guide their other friends in the classroom and help their friends in vocabulary lessons.

Regarding peer assessment, the application we used throughout the training is definitely applicable. Students, especially in adolescence and usually, can approach each other very cruelly, they can hurt each other very easily, but only when they give positive and developmental feedback, students will learn to look from different angles. This will improve both their language skills and vision, and increase communication between them. It is very, very important for the teacher to be fair and impartial and to behave towards students in feedback sessions. Because, if other students notice the teacher's approach, feelings and thoughts while evaluating the students they have peer-assessed, they cannot make an objective assessment.


]]> 2022-06-26 13:34:06 UTC https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230643274 iremomur88 https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230796420 In our country, students take English lessons for about 10 years, but when they graduate from high school, although the curriculum includes every subject, context or function, only the basic information remains in their minds, they cannot go beyond basic language skills and have a very difficult time expressing themselves in a foreign language. And of course, these problems do not just exist on their own, there are some underlying reasons for these problems, and I think the PDC meetings will be very useful in this context, English education will progress to a great extent and will help solve this big problem that I mentioned.

First of all, I want to say that we are very lucky as a class. The attitude of the teacher is very, very important in the formation of the classroom atmosphere. We have two educators who want to create a positive classroom climate from the very beginning of education and who always support and motivate us. Apart from that, another point that we are lucky about is that all the trainers in the class are very respectful to each other and almost all of them are free from their egos and do not look down on the younger teachers. I think the whatsapp group we set up as a class will contribute to us in PDC sessions. I am sure we will benefit from our teacher's experience when we have questions.

As in everything else, it is possible for us to experience many problems in PDC sessions, but it is also possible to solve these problems by using the 5 basic steps in PDC. For example, when I evaluate myself, the biggest problem I will encounter is "Is this young teacher going to meet with us?" since I am younger and less experienced than other teachers. They will be reluctant to attend PDC meetings by saying. In this regard, as it should be in every meeting, I think that the warm-up, engage and share and reflect and evaluation part should be planned very well in the first meeting and the activities to be done should attract the attention of teachers. It is also very important that they feel safe so that they can openly share problems and solutions. This problem can also be solved with ice-breakers to be applied in the warm-up section. The attitude of the facilitator to the participants is very important in this regard. Thus, we need to be aware that every part of the PDC is very important.]]> 2022-06-26 21:20:18 UTC https://padlet.com/iremomur88/hbc0p1xt2c41icgm/wish/2230796420