Teacher workshop in English Language teaching at the American Centre

The Indian School was represented by Ms Vandana Tewari, TGT English, at the English Language Teaching workshop held at The American Centre from 15 to 17 October 2019.

Thirty teachers of English from schools alongwith mentor teachers from the Directorate of Education, the Jamia Millia University and the University of Delhi participated in the three-day training capsule conducted by Dr Lisa Morgan, PhD.

Dr Morgan is an English language specialist with an experience of more than 30 years in the fields of curriculum planning and training teachers of English as a second language. She has shared her expertise with teachers in Brazil, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and India, to name just a few countries.

Day One commenced on a warm and friendly note with participants engaging in warm-up activities aimed at breaking the ice. Thereafter, the session laid emphasis on the importance of giving effective instructions to help save class time, avoid learner confusion, reduce teacher-talk and thereby leave the learners with more task time. The objective of the first day was successfully achieved with several interesting activities like The Blind Visitor, Identity Sticks creatively designed to secure complete listener attention.

On day Two, Dr Morgan spoke on Learner-Centred Teaching which involves effective grouping for a successful interaction. She spoke about the types of groups a teacher can form for effective learning. These could be Fixed v/s Flexible, Similar v/s Mixed Proficiency, Same v/s Different Personality and Random groups.

Several innovative measures for recapitulation and evaluation were demonstrated during the workshop. For example, the Red/Green Cards in which the teacher does a re-cap of the topic covered in the class in the form of true/false statements. The True statements would be represented by green cards and the false ones with red cards.

The teachers can use the Stuffed Toy Toss to evaluate if learning has been effective and to provide an equal opportunity to participate in an oral discussion. Similarly in another activity the teacher can throw a soft toy at any student in the class ( randomly or predeterminedly), and the student who receives it has to answer the question asked by the teacher. This could be played as a peer learning activity where students prepare their own questions and throw a soft toy at one other and expect a reply to their questions.

Exit Slips enable the teacher to evaluate their own teaching. At the end of the lesson, students can write their queries on a slip of paper and drop it in a box, to be addressed by the teacher in the follow-up class. The activity could also be in the form of comments and suggestions to improve the teaching-learning process.

The last and third day of the practicum focused on how to nurture the student voice and choice in the classroom. Dr Morgan asked the teachers to frame activities that encourage learner contribution by allowing students to solve problems, answer and formulate questions, discuss, explain, debate and brainstorm during class.

The inspiring workshop concluded with the distribution of certificates to teachers on their successful completion of the course. The participants were exhilarated to have shared a platform with teachers from diverse backgrounds; rich in experience who helped provide answers to many queries.