AND THAT WAS MY LAST DAY AT PILGRIMS, UNIVERSITY OF KENT

 A experience never to be forgotten that always brings smiles when thinking of it.

The official picture. From left to right: Daniela, Marieta, Manuela, Martina, Elena, Katka,  Fanny (that's me :)), Sonja,  Jitka,  our trainer Marina Marinova, and Stefania.
Thanks to each and all for everything I learnt and the moments we shared.

Digest of first days on the BTT course - Part 3

Wednesday, July 29th


Teacher training procedures: demonstration, loop input, try-in-safety, marketplace, problem solving, lecture, carousel, case study

Matching types of procedures with the description of an example use

Variations on the lecture

From left to right: Sona (Armenia), Armanda (Romania), Wei (China) and myself

An activity on ways of eliciting feedback

Plenary talk with Martin Parrott

Martin Parrott's talk "Learner preferences and affective learning" delt with the factors towards effective learning. According to his research, although affective factors are important, cognitive ones are key. In a questionnarie he gave to his students, cognitive factors got higher scores than affective ones:

Of the five factors students rated as LEAST important, four are affective! (10, 11, 14, 15)

Of the top eight factors, five are cognitive (2, 3, 6, 9, 12). Nr 8 could be both affective and cognitive.

In the questionnaire, the last item was "What else helps you to learn?". Most of Parrott's students wrote: "A teacher who is...", and these three characteristics appeared over and over again :-)

"What else helps you to learn?"

Later that day I learnt the basic rules of the game of croquet. I found out I was quite good at it, actually!

Digest of first days on the BTT course - Part 2

After a very busy first week, here's a new, long-awaited entry to which I've given the enticing title...

First days on Bell's Becoming a Teacher Trainer (BTT) course at Homerton College, Cambridge (part 2) (Yeah, you got it. I'm going through a temporary creative block)

A picture is worth a thousand words, so the adage goes. So I'll insert some nice pics that will give you an idea of what we're doing here so that you don't have to read an account of many thousand words.




Monday July 27th

Nothing like a nice quiet breakfast to get you ready for a first day, right? Well, we've been having plentiful meals in the friendliest college in Cambridge. No wonder everyone here's in a good mood :-)

This is the Great Hall, where we have breakfast and dinner

It's SO COOL to have your meals in such a place!

After breakfast, the welcome session in the Science Auditorium outlined different aspects of the programme and provided safety instructions as well as guidance over several issues.

In the Science Auditorium

A slide listing the 24 nationalities of the teachers taking courses at Bell these two weeks

At the end of this introductory talk, each tutor led their students to their corresponding classrooms. Our tutor is Lindsay Warwick, a teacher trainer and materials writer PLUS a delightful person!

It's lucky I got to be in a very international group, particularly when you see that others don't get to mix with such a wide range of nationalities as I do in my course. Compare these two lists to understand why I'm saying this:

My group

CLIL group

Ours was a very productive first day. We started the session showing each other different ice-breakers we use in our classes and suggested possible adaptations to them. We then moved on to discuss different stages of group development (Tuckman 1965; Heron 1999). We also had time to reflect on the teacher's role and what makes a competent teacher, and ended the session discussing the distinctive traits of both experienced and expert teachers.

An ice-breaker with cookies!

Our tutor Lindsay Warwick

Tuesday, July 28th

We started the session ascertaining the factors (aka interventions) that most count toward impact on learning. Wanna know what the top three are? Here:

1. Student expectations
2. Teacher credibility 
3. Providing formative evaluation to teachers

(John Hattie: Visible Learning, 2012)

Then we went through a number of articles about the skills, knowledge and qualities needed to become a teacher trainer/teacher educator. Food for thought...

Our table after group work summary of the articles

Last notes at the end of the session

...Speaking about which, after the morning session I rushed for a quick lunch in the buttery. There was no time to waste! The afternoon and evening were going to be busy too.

White tea, sandwich and fruit

"For better results eat away from your desk in plenty of sunshine" :-)

Disadvantages of course books and how to overcome them

In the afternoon I attended the workshop "Getting the most from your course book", with Mike Furber. We even got to adapt a random page of a well-known course book in order to make it more attractive, relevant and culture-specific. Time well spent :-)

As for the cultural talk, I found it really hard to choose one, because I wanted to attend several of them. In the last minute I decided to attend a talk on a topic I wasn't really interested in, just because I thought it would open my mind to new things. However, to be honest I found it poor and ended up disappointed.

Finally, after an early dinner lots of us went for a guided tour.

There we go!

Teachers waiting to cross the road to meet tour guide

Sandy, our guide

That's all for now!
I'll show you pics of this beautiful city on my next post ;-)

Digest of first days on the BTT course - Part 1

First days on Bell's Becoming a Teacher Trainer (BTT) course at Homerton College, Cambridge (part 1)

July 26th, arrival Sunday

I'm in the West House, room 337

I got to the college in the afternoon, unpacked and got ready for the event Bell had prepared for us course attendants.

Me holding room key and invitation

In the evening, Bell gave a welcome buffet dinner to help us break the ice, make acquaintance and relax. Jim Scrivener, Academic Director, gave us a light-hearted welcome in the lovely English manner.

Jim Scrivener welcoming us

Here have come teachers - of English mostly, but also of other subjects - from all over Europe as well as from Argentina, Australia, Egypt and the US. They have different interests: polish/enrich their English, try new methodologies, keep up-to-date with the use of technology in the classroom and, of course, learn how to teach teachers. 

Those of us whose projects have been approved for European Union funding are particularly interested in establishing a network of cooperation for dissemination, job shadowing activities, virtual swap-shops and the like. I'll let you know more about them in future posts!

First week!

 

This is Homerton College. It's like being at Harry Potter's College of Wizardry!

When I learnt that my tutor was going to be Pete Sharma I couldn't believe it, as he is one of the very first people to write about Blended Learning in ELT.

If you would like to know more about him, check these links:
http://www.eltteacher2writer.co.uk/pete-sharma
http://www.psa.eu.com/about/pete-sharma

As for social networking, it's been amazing! Everything here is really intense and you get to enjoy great moments!

Some nice photos of my first week in Canterbury

Going sightseeing (and shopping, I must say) with my dear flatmates Niki, Lily and Juanmi.

Welcome to Canterbury Cathedral: 

a must-see

We went to a service in Canterbury magnificent Cathedral and we enjoyed the Choral Evensong by a boys' choir. An unforgettable experience!                                

Another very popular tourist attraction that visitors love is the River Tour. I did go on the river tour and it was definitely more than worthwhile.

Admiring the view from our little boat!

This is our captain, who was very knowledgeable and, overall, great fun! 

 More pics and info coming soon ...

My second week has just started and ... still so much work to do :)

TEACHING ADVANCED STUDENTS: COURSE CONTENTS

1ST WEEK	9.00 – 10.30	11.00 – 12.30	14.00 – 15.30
Tue, 07.07.2015	Dealing with longer texts 1.	Dealing with a short story 2	Types of feedbacks 1
Wed, 08.07.2015	Live Listening	Listening a recorded text (You Tube)	TBL in different settings
Thu, 09.07.2015	Speaking activities 1	Speaking activities 2	Pronunciation
Fr, 10.07.2015	Teaching lexis 1	Teaching grammar 1	Grammar games

2nd WEEK	9.00 – 10.30	11.00 – 12.30	14.00 – 15.30
Mo, 13.07.2015	Introducing “new” grammar to advanced students 2	Dictations: what are they good for?	Process and product writing
Tue, 14.07.2015	Classroom management: Setting up group activities	Classroom management: dealing with difficulties	Revisiting: the importance of revision activities.
Wed, 15.07.2015	More on feedbacks. Tests and assessment	More writing activities: Poems	Internet resources
Thu, 16.07.2015	More on pen-and-paper activities	Work with course books	CLIL/  Catch-ups
Fr, 17.07.2015	Designing your own games	Songs and music in the classroom	End-of-course activities