The roles of a PLC facilitator are

·         improving motivation and confidance among teachers

·         encouracing teachers to share ideas and experiences 

·         introduce the ideas effectively and help teachers to develop their own professional skills

·         providing an environment to make the teachers feel a sense belonging among English teachers

·         introducing the barriers and problems to the teachers and discussing with possible solutions

·         collaborating with other teachers

·         providing different resources

·         mentoring and observing

·         providing community support

How I feel about the role of a facilitator...

As a facilitator, during a PLC I should be able to review existing context, plan and deliver an Action Plan Workshop, monitor and evaluate resources, use online communication, collect examples of best practices. I have confidance in using online resources and collecting examples of practices. With a well preparation I will be able to deliver a marvelous  Action Plan Workshop.  I am really excited about running a PLC. I am the only English Language Teaher in my school. Making researches about professional practices and sharing ideas, discussing problems or possible barriers with colleagues are really important for me. I would love to run a PLC because there are many teachers like me in the district that I work. So during PLCs I will be able to connect teachers and ensure peer learning. I try to be a reflective teacher and I would be happy to help other teachers’ to become reflective teachers.

Questions I still have about the role of PLCs and facilitators in my teaching context.

At the first day I have learnt many things about running a PLC and the role of the PLC facilitator. However I still have questions about the duration of the PLC programs. For how many years the PLC meetings will be held or does the program has an expiration date? Another issue that I have trouble with is the topic and the date of the PLC. How many days/weeks before the PLC meeting will I know? The preparation time will be very important because of the school’s schedule.

The difficulty when I am facing during a listening session is that the level of the listening texts that are provided with the book are a little difficult for the students. Dividing the listening text into two parts of three parts according to the topic may be suitable. After all the parts completed the students can listen to the whole text for another follow-up activity. I would also like to share my possible activity ideas to improve with other teachers during PLCs. Such as given a half listening text and making senarios about the rest of the text. Listening the same texts in different intonations and emotions.  I would love to discuss the ideas and find the best possible activity to apply in the classroom. 

The difficulty when I am having trouble during a speaking session is that students unwillingess to share their own ideas. Many students are afraid of being made fun of. I’d like to discuss this topic with my colleagues during PLCs. I believe that many teachers in my area have the same problem. I try to overcome this problem with making the students respect each other and providing a comfortable classroom environment. I’d like to find out other ideas and solutions for unwillingness. The second difficulty I have during speaking sessions is while applying  group works, some students are dominant and some students are more silent. By giving missions to each student, I try to prevent this problem.  I’d like to discuss the topic with other teachers to find out other possible solutions. The last difficulty I’m looking forward to discuss with my colleagues is that students use the target language only for tasks, not for the general intereaction. I try to interact with my students as much as possible in English during the breaks and after-school but some students don’t want to speak English outside the class. I try to tell the importance of language learning to my students. I’d love to discuss this topic during my PLC meetings to find a solution.

Choose one point about differentiation and digitalizing that you’d like to apply in the class/PLC.

As a teacher I have had to differentiate the activities many times. Today I have learnt that I can differentiate ‘running dictation’ into a speaking activity. We ran and discussed the sentences. It was very useful and I’d love to use this idea both form y classes (like answering questions, writing stories etc.) and PLC in the same format. 

Recent months showed that it is inevitable to ignore the effect of technology for the education so I totally support digitalization. My favourite digitalization idea from today is Flipgrid. It’s sometimes hard to do speaking activities in the class. By using Flipgrid, the management and evaluating of the speaking activities will be a lot easier. It is good to be able to watch the video more than once. I’d like to use Flipgrid in PLC for example, I can share the topic of the PLC meeting before the meeting and mentees can share their ideas through Flipgrid. Or I can share a problem and the mentees may try to find a solution through this app.

During today’s session, I learnt about the activity ‘Onion Circle’. It is a technique that can be applied in both PLCs and the classroom environment. I’d love to use Onion Circle during PLCs because it enables to discuss the topic in a systematic way. And it also enables the mentees to communicate with more than one person because the outer circle moves around. I’d love to use it in the classroom for improving speaking skills.

Furthermore I learnt the snack writing today. I haven’t come across with snack writing before. I tried learners diary for a short time but I think snack writing has much more possibilities for students to write. During my teaching I’d love to use it. I’d love to introduce snack writing to my colleagues and share ideas about snack writing. For PLCs I can use snack writing as PLC diary or sharing ideas about the topics that we have covered during the PLCs on Padlet, Pixton. Or I can create an instagram page to use as a PLC diary and the mentees can share their snack writings on the page.

Think about the session and consider what you would like to share with other colleagues from your school/district when you organize your first PLC. How would you make it more creative and novel for them? 

During today’s session we have covered writing and reading skills and mentioned about flipped learning. What I most like during the session is Flipped learning. I had the basic knowledge about it before however I didn’t have had to a chance to go in detail. So I am happy to learn more about flipped learning and how to use it. I’d love to share flipped learning with my colleagues. Flipped learning enables teachers to enrich the content and differentiate and digitalize the learning environment. It is also time efficient for teachers. During the session we mostly mention flipped learning for reading skill. However, it can be adapted to vocabulary and grammar teaching and writing, listening and even speaking skill.