After years of watching the IATEFL conference on-line, I was so excited to be able to attend in person this year ! Sad as it may sound to some of my colleagues!
I finally met up with so many of my PLN (Personal Learning Network) and was able to share, reflect and learn with them. Plus. it was an opportunity to thank so many of my 'virtual staffroom' colleagues for their support during my DELTA and move to the UK.
I thought it would be fitting to now share some ideas and links I noted down whilst I was at the conference, especially for my Greek friends who I know find it difficult to go to the UK for such conferences due to expense, lack of support from their institutions and time to attend. I attended so many different talks, presentations, plenaries and so on but here are the ones which were not recorded and I found useful !
Some of the sessions were recorded on http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/
Socially, I do admit that I was a total 'groupie' and followed a few big names around on the dance floor and took a lot of photos !!!
So, moving onto the talks, presentations and workshops....
Adrian Underhill and Jim Scrivener presented two work shops under the umbrella of 'Demand High '.
Adrain Underhill 'Demand High and Lost Learning' classroom
Mainly
discussing recent teaching methods and if they push our ss to their learning
limits and how do we or they know if they are at that limit.
Underhill and Scrivener have devised a demand – high meme ( an idea or style that moves from one culture to another )
This
idea is along the lines of:
- Are our learners
capable of more, much more?
- Have the tasks and
techniques we use in class become rituals and ends in themselves?
- How can we stop
“covering material” and start focusing on the potential for deep learning?
- What small tweaks
and adjustments can we make to shift the whole focus of our teaching towards
getting that engine of learning going?
Underhill
says we sometimes focus on the material rather than focusing on the potential
for deep learning – really?? His main points were:
- Take the opportunity to use any
activity to challenge each student individually to their learning ‘edge’.
- Allow the task to do the teaching.
- Think about learning ‘moves’ – not what the ss have to do but what do they do with
it??!!
- If we don’t ‘see’ the learning then
we don’t see how it gets lost.
- Do not extinguish the answer – ask
the ss for answer and rather than say yes, well done so and so – ask other ss
if they agree or not/ what are your thoughts on that. The question stays
‘alive’ and offers multiple challenges around the class.
- IT IS A PING PONG EFFECT! T pings and then ss pong pong pong pong – the T
challenges the answer or the pronunciation or the grammar or stress etc but not
all about T –ss but more ping pong pong pong – you’d get if you were there!
- Challenge multiple intelligences
- sound the words/visualise the words/write
them down/how many words are there/count and memorise/change the word
order/blank out words/recall the sentence/inner word bench for
pronunciation/say it faster or slower/connected speech features/how many times
does as specific sound occur.
- Make learning visible – Gattegno’s
science of education – learning moves and limitless powers of
self-learning.E.g. Buy a pair of shoes –
aware of feet /comfortable/size/suitable/price etc
Check it out here - http://www.calebgattegno.org/ Some
practical ideas for the classroom and they did make me reflect a little on my
classroom practices:
- Spending the last five minutes of
your lesson going over what the students learnt that day and what they still
don’t understand. Then using these notes
to plan your next lesson.
- Handing out cards with T for true on
one side and F for false on the other so the teacher can quickly see the class
consensus in T/F activities and focus on problem areas only.
- Not ‘rubberstamping’ answers with
empty ego-stroking, e.g. “That’s right, very good Sally”. Instead taking the opportunity to ask the
other students: “Is Sally right?”; “What did you write?” and if necessary, “Why
do you think your answer is different?”
- Giving students a check-list to use
when assessing their peers in pair work to make them more effective ‘teachers’
and therefore learners.
- When teaching pronunciation, getting
students to repeat words faster, louder etc. thus revitalising dry old drilling
and improving memory retention at the same time.
Demand High to bring a grammar lesson alive classroom - Jim Scrivener
The workshop was part of the demand high series with
Underhill. Based on Krashen’s I + 1 principle.
Teaching grammar, sometimes means we ignore the inner
voices telling us we have to communicate the whole time and can actually use
‘traditional’ exercises and drills, as ss seem to want them, need them and
learn from them.
This workshop was focused on how to engage the ss and
challenge them – aim for ‘upgrade’ with some useful ideas of how to adapt the CB
and personalise it.
“One for the exercise, two for the learning, three in
English – go, cat, go” Scrivener.
Check out the recording if you want to know more!
The EAP classroom
I attended a few sessions for Academic language which covered student support, academic writing, use of dictionaries, corpus, developing and sharing practices and generally how we can enhance the ss experience and guide them.
Here are a few useful links and pieces of advice that I picked up:
From James Beddington (University of Winchester) on student support and how we should re-consider the support we give to our International students and the necessity to for support after pre-sessional courses through drop-in sessions, face to face chats, web sources and the use of Moodle/FB/Twitter etc. For an interesting read, check out:
Diana Lea (OUP) mentioned Corpus linguistics which was a big feature at the conference in all areas. This process of collecting 'useful' vocabulary was mentioned in most EAP workshops.
Dictionaries often mark words as ‘academic’ but rarely show how to use them in context but this talk mentioned:
- Using
appropriate language
- Collocations
and synonyms
- Planning
and structuring an assignment
- Presenting
an argument
- Using
sources effectively
Academic language is
specialist/diverse/abstract/precise/nuanced/dense and has variables across a
range of areas so this dictionary is supposed to be based on a huge corpus –
the Academic English Oxford Corpus which we cannot check out unless we buy the dictionary!
This corpus is supposed to be denser and less abstract and
have lots of examples of language in context.
All the examples are corpus based – humanities/life science
etc…
The dictionary also has a writing tutor – what else could we
ask for!!! It has a CD rom with different genres – essay/dissertation etc.
At the end of the day this was a convincing talk as it was
based on research and a mega corpus plus added some good examples for extracts
and concordance. E.g. the word ‘introduce’ – introduce a bias or an error….
Jennifer MacDonald discussed 'getting discipline specific in the general EAP classroom. Discussions led to the use of genre/conventions and specialist vocabulary....the use of 'noticing' activites and ss could do a 'scavenger hunt' on their first day - skim their handbooks for information ! Some excellent links to the amazing resources available at Warwick University.
The Pronunciation Classroom 'Pronouncing Rhythm and Stress' Mark Hancock
As Hancock is one of
my favourite sources for pronunciation activities I had to attend his workshop.
Focusing on rhythm
and sentence stress to create meaning at the suprasegmental level, his workshop
covered a simple pedagogical model of these areas plus excellent activities,
worksheets, drills, stress gym, and more to help scaffold ss through chants etc
until they reach the targeted pronunciation feature. Check out his site for the activities and download the PPT slides...
The IELTS classroom Lewis Richards ' IELTS Task 1 - How to Make it Interesting '
This brilliant workshop focused on the most boring task of all - describing a pie chart or graph and analysing the information....
He made this task more interesting by relating to the ss
interests. It became more of a noticing task, had room for creativity and
cognitively-challenging and was practical!
A few ideas:
- The subject matter can be dry, there is no motivation or
engagement for the ss. It is mechanical and repetitive and ss cannot relate to
the topic. E.g. How much pork/beef/chicken/lamb was consumed in the UK in year
who cares…
- Firstly. Get ss to rank the topic 1-5… boring to interesting…Get ss to make their own graph – what do they eat?Change the topic! Use statistics relevant to the class and
get then to describe them – same language but interesting to ss.Use materials from: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/index.htmlThis link also has videos which can be used in class to
help ss ‘notice’ the language used for presentations and interpretation of
graphs etc. The speech is fast but you can click on the transcripts – authentic
stuff!Create mental images/inner voice thoughts/senses/connection
with real life/personal interpretations.Use this data to discuss why numbers dropped/increased etc. –
challenge ss to a true/false quiz.
- Use model answers creatively and use a bad one!
- Devise noticing tasks and add genre/discourse tasks.
- Add cognitive tasks – how many people were in the survey/the
purpose of it?
- Circle linking devices- the purpose of them and add grammar-
draw graphs to help notice the grammar points
- Noticing (Bolitho with Thornbury 2003) http://www.finchpark.com/courses/grad-dissert/articles/psychology/noticing.pdf
- I’ll read my graph to you – you draw it!
- T reads the model answer and ss draw it!
- Make your own listening materials – listen and write down
passives/linking devices
Lewis Richards also has an informative FB page for ss…://www.facebook.com/pages/Ielts-Advantage-Writing-Skills/
The classroom with SS with Learning Differences
A classroom close to my heart. I intend to research the area of learning differences and International students.There was only one workshop related to this area throughout the 5 days...sad but true..
The dyslexia for Learners and Teachers workshop was an excellent introduction to the topic and highlighted how it feels to be dyslexic and study in l2. The research is mainly being conducted at Lancaster University and the following link is well worth a look:
www.dystefl.eu It is a task based approach to reflecting on dyslexia and our SS.
The Digital Classroom Marisa Constantindes 'From Curation to Creation
As my DELTA tutor in Athens, Marisa is responsible for me even writing a blog ! She always encouraged us to create a PLN and be active on-line and use different digital assets in our classrooms. This was a great presentation on how to organise all these ideas and assets ! How to......
The Observed Classroom Cecila Lemos 'Making Observations a Teacher's Best Friend'
Cecilia was motivated by Penny Ur’s IATEFL
presentation in 2013- see blog notes here:
Some good points also here:
The main problems were regarding Summative
observations - fear/pressure/the threat of evaluation and the use of formative
observations as a tool for professional development. Cecilia's main points were:
- Summative Observations by DOS/Managers need to discuss the observation
beforehand and establish goals of the teacher.
- More than one observation should be carried out – make the first one a video and discuss class dynamics.
- A great technique taken from the DELTA and one I totally agree with is
self- reflection. T sits and writes down notes ASAP after the lesson and then
discusses with DOS.
- Buffet table approach to observations – write down points that the T wants to be observed on.
- Do not cover everything – just 3 or 4 points.
- Formative observations are to develop – could be peer but teachers are
not always honest with each other as colleagues.
- Peer observations should be to develop the observer not the observed!
- Create a ladder of feedback : Clarify – elaborate/explain
Value – strong/good points/innovative
Concerns – worried about..
Suggest and thank ! – could do..thank for enhancing teaching!
- Define criteria and statements check list – mark it together.
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