British Council IATEFL Blog
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Showing posts tagged Brighton
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Looking through a window
I haven’t blogged much either. I also haven’t been in Brighton since 1987 - which really puts things into perspective. It will be nice to do some ‘live reminiscencing’.
I am very happy to be able to attend this conference- I am overwhelmed by feelings similar to the ones my teenage students show towards the football tournament happening in the schoolyard. The picture is of the moment when I gave up and let these guys quit doing the assignment to watch the tournament through the window because they couldn’t focus at all.
Blog post by:
Marina Simovic, Montenegro -
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Eilidh’ thoughts on IATEFL
It’s a grey Thursday afternoon in Brighton… and yet many people are sitting on the pebbly beach that is immediately across from the Brighton centre, where the conference is taking place. The sea looks cold though, no paddling today!
I’m going through the online programme over coffee - trying to pick my sessions for Saturday. Tomorrow is easy - the Pre-conference day as you have to choose your topic in advance. I’m going with the Young Learners special interest group.
IATEFL is such a big conference that it can be difficult to choose which sessions to go to - you can pick out ‘big names’, or colleagues, or people from a country you are interested in… one really good approach, I’ve found, is to pick a theme and stick with it… maybe learning technologies, maybe English for Special purposes…
If there are any specific sessions you would like me (or someone from our group) to attend and report back on - let me know! Here’s the link to the conference programme http://www.iatefl.org/brighton-2011/45th-annual-conference-and-exhibition-2011 - there are handy day by day timetables at the back, which is a good place to start! This will help you work out when you need to be logging on to iatefl online as well :-)
Not long to go now!
Eilidh -
Does my ass look big in this?
This was the title of our Teacher Development Special Interest Group session today on giving and receiving feedback. I did wonder in the morning how we could possibly spend a whole day talking about giving feedback but indeed it was possible! I thought the day long session was going to be how to give feedback to teachers but actually there was a big focus on how to ask for feedback. How we should all ask for feedback from others and how to do it.
It got me thinking about the number of times I’ve asked a colleague after a workshop I’ve given ‘How was it?’ Well there obvious answer is ’ that was great!’, when really I should be asking more specific questions, for example ‘how were my instructions during my lesson?’, or ’ is there anything I could have done to improve the workshop?’
In this way, you are not only in control of the feedback and therefore more open to it but also you are allowing someone to give constructive criticism rather than just giving your ego a massage.
Also, it made me think about how I can encourage teachers I am training or mentoring to ask for feedback rather than me just giving it to them. This puts them in control. Has anyone done this with teachers in training sessions? I’d love to hear about any experiences you had.
Day 1 over and so much to think about. Looking forward to day 2.
Blog post by: Nicola Crowley
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Suzanne’s first impressions
I have finally arrived in Brighton. It was good to see that the sun made an appearance and it is actually warmer than Istanbul.
Today there were pre-conference sessions. These were held by the special interest groups (SIGS). I attended the teacher development SIG and the most amazing part of this was finding myself sitting next to teachers and trainers from Mongolia, Pakistan, Switzerland and China. I nipped out during the lunch break to buy some shampoo and started chatting to someone in the shop who noticed my IATEFL badge.
Of course as coincidence would have it she turned out to be from Turkey. It’s a small world!
Blog post by:
Suzanne Mordue -
Beautiful Brighton
On Monday I really have to go participate in Leo Selivan’s “All about Alliteration” workshop. Why? Well, first of all because I’m sure it will be absolutely awesome, but most of all because phrases such as fabulous fun filled Fridays, pretty pictures, sweet sunny Sundays, fantastic fun and – you guessed it – Beautiful Brighton keep popping into my mind these days. Here’s a photo that I think will give you a clue as to why:
Another reason for participating is that I’ve gotten to know Leo and think his workshop will definitely be worth a visit! Check out Leo’s personal blog here and know that he is also part of our British Council’s IATEFL Blog Team!
A Sweet Sunny Sunday to all…
Blog post by:
Karin Tirasin -
Eva’s IATEFL Chronicles - Day 1
And the real event started on Saturday. It is already Sunday today but I’ll be able to post this in the morning. I had a fantastic day at the conference, not because I met some of my twitter friends for the first time and hugged and kissed each other as if we had known each other for ages, it was because a very full day with great talks and ideas.
Karin and I decided to attend different workshops and write about different things so I chose to go to Michael Berman’s session, called ‘English through the writing on your forehead’. The main focus was on storytelling and how to use stories in classroom. Since I attended British Council’s Winter Warmer in March and had the opportunity to listen to amazing Jan Blake at Istek conference, I’m more interested in telling stories in EFL classrooms. He used two stories from Armenian folklore and mythology and here are the activities I jotted down from the session.
Fish and chips game: tell students you are going to tell or read a story and whenever they hear the word fish in the story, they have to shout chips; otherwise, they won’t learn the ending of the story. While telling a story to the engaged and motivated students stop suddenly and ask them to fill in the gap with the correct word. While telling stories, if you mention something interesting stop and ask questions or give information.
- Fish and chips game: tell students you are going to tell or read a story and whenever they hear the word fish in the story, they have to shout chips; otherwise, they won’t learn the ending of the story.
- While telling a story to the engaged and motivated students stop suddenly and ask them to fill in the gap with the correct word.
- While telling stories, if you mention something interesting stop and ask questions or give information.
- Michael Brennan pointed out ‘We like making choices and our students are not exceptions’ so he suggested that we give our students a chance to make choices while answering the questions. Give your students a set of questions and tell them to answer the three of the ones that they want.
- Prepare a set of question starters and ask your students to ask questions on the story and then exchange papers with their friends.
- Use guided fantasy/visualisation. Students may not want to share what they have experienced so instead you can ask them to write their account.
And then we finished with a wonderful activity. He asked us to write a note for him and then we exchanged papers then we tried to guess our friends personality through their handwriting.
The other session I attended was Michael Swan’s talk on ‘Where reading and grammar meet.’ He pointed out that language learners whose mother tongues are not similar to English can have lots of troubles while reading complex (embedded) texts. Those problematic areas are: - Past participles often look like past tense - Reduced relative clauses - Omitting relative pronouns
Suggestions:
- Give students handouts and ask them to underline the embedded bits.
- Prepare handouts. Ask students match the halves. Try to come out with funny sentences.
- Ask students to add ‘that’ to make the sentences easier to read.
- Ask students to make complete sentences including the groups of words. e.g.: the food they ate today was not tasty… a thing children …
- Rewrite the words in italics to make the meaning clearer.
- Use an internet search engine to find sentences
- Ask students to write exercises for their friends
- The next session was reading again. It was ‘Text to context: where reading takes us’ by Robert Hill.
And I ended the day at the blogosphere symposium listening to Karenne Sylvester, Tara Benwell and Berni Wall. These three ladies are amazing people ready to enthuse the people who are following them.
Karenne talked about what we blog, why we blog and what the benefits are. Tara told us about the wonderful thing she has been doing on MyEnglishClub. The activities she does with her students on MyEC are not different than the things we do in class. I must say her writing challenges are great challenges for everybody who are blogging. Once in a while I wrote about them too. Berni focused on the importance of twitter for starting our own learning network and she even showed us how to form it with a quick warmer. She explained what edchat, eltchat and virtual roundtable conference are and how they work.
I know many people were amazed at what they had found at the symposium. As Karenne stated blogging is not just keeping online diaries for teachers. It is more. I repeated that many times I have a 7/24 staffroom full of teachers who are ready to interact, collaborate, help and comfort me because of blogging. You don’t just share ideas, you also see what your weaknesses and strengths are when you are doing. You get feedback, you get suggestions and you get invitations for collaborations.
We finished the day at MacMillan’s OnestopEnglish birthday party, listening to Elvis and chatting to friends.
Blog post by: Eva Buyuksimkesyan
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The Dance of Communication
(Nicola just before her presentation on how to use YouTube videos in teaching)
I had another great and inspiring day and now I am totally and utterly exhausted. I’ve been to a plenary, a few talks and workshops, a debate, a meeting, a British Council event and a storytelling session. The day for me was built on Sue Palmer’s plenary on ‘Toxic Childhood’ in which she talked about ’ the dance of communication’, the very first communication a baby has with its mother when the mother instinctively rocks her baby.
Our life-long dance of communication is why we’re all here, why we’re at an IATEFL conference, why we’re English teachers…. and I reflected on that throughout the day. Then I got to Fran Sokel’s talk in which she emphasised the need for collaboration in class and creativity and critical thinking, and how we can’t just teach language but give our students the skills to think, create and communicate.
Next, I attended Ben Goldstein’s who discussed ways to communicate our identity, to make ourselves ‘known’ even in our L2. And then we got to digital communication with a wonderful debate led by Nicky Hockly and Alan Waters.
The funniest thing about this is that as soon as the debate was over there was a mad dash for the ladies where the participants continued the dance and debated while we queued up for the loo!!
Blog post by:
Nicola Crowley -
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Eva’s last blog post in her IATEFL Chronicles
This is my last post from the conference. It was great to be here. I enjoyed the every bit of the conference. I’m tired and sleepless but I know it is worth it.
After blogging and twitter, many things changed in my life. I sleep less, I watch television less but I still can manage. Apart from the disadvantages of being online, I must admit there are thousands of advantages. One of them is you get informed about what’s going on around you and then have chance to attend it, the other is when you attend these events you are surrounded by your PLN even in a totally foreign environment. As far as I know IATEFL 2011 is hosting more than 2000 delegates and it is quite normal that we can even find time to chit chat as we keep losing friend. However, the best thing about is we keep finding the others. So a great tip for you. Before you go to your next conference, make sure you have built your PLN.
(Sunny Brighton, photo by Eva Buyuksimkesyan)Right now here comes the summary:
In the morning I attended Bethany Cagnol’s session called, ‘Ruling the Unruly’. Although my reality and Bethany’s reality are completely different, I came up with ideas for classroom management. And plus, I had the privilidge of listening to her. If you happen to be at a conference where she speaks, don’t miss her. She was fabulous.
The next one was Jeremy Harmer’s talk. Last year at IATEFL, he asked some teachers to explain the best lesson they’d taught and the talk was around those people and their best taught lessons. We discussed why the lessons went well and even we had great lesson ideas from those teachers.
Jeremy Harmer pointed out that when teachers talk about a successful lesson they smile and they always say what the students have done.
The next one was a great kinesthetic spelling session by Johanna Sterling. The games she used during the session were very useful.
All about Alliterations was the title of Leo Selivan’s session and it was very good and in the end we even had ideas how and when to use alliterations in our classroms. Above all, to end the session with a song was great. It was one of my favourites She by Elvis Costello.
Almost around six we were ready and eager to listen to Maris Constantinides. She was right. Trainers train teachers and they have to teach how to integrate technology into teaching before the new teachers arrive to their own classrooms and this actually should be done befoe they have graduated to become teachers, I guess.
My plan for tomorrow:
Ann Foreman ‘Helping your students to develop their personal learning environment:’
Sirin Soyoz, Suzanne Mordue, ‘Using E-tivities to create online communities’
Blog post by:
Eva Buyuksimkesyan
