Онлайн форум: «Meaningful and involving communication in the classroom: myth or opportunities?»

hello everyone

thank you for joining the forum today

i'm victoria vanessa

uh project manager of the british

council in ukraine

so let's get cracking this is our second

forum for english teachers

and i hope that today we have a lot of

us there are

more than 2 000 teachers who registered

unfortunately i don't know how many i

hear with you now but i hope

a lot and the teachers are all from all

over ukraine and there are some teachers

from other countries as well which is

fantastic

i hope that today um we can answer the

question of

um of the forum was uh

involving and communicative environment

for students

is not a miss but opportunities

and our experts from across the globe

can help answer these questions

i would like to introduce our guests and

i would like to welcome aksana

kavalianka

i'm so happy that uh aksana kavalienka

who is a lead specialist

of the department of preschool school

and inclusive education

of the ministry of education and science

of ukraine has joined us today to

welcome you

i would like to say that aksana leads on

more than foreign languages learning and

teaching

for about 20 years or even more i think

and she also represents ukraine on the

education

committee of the council of europe

aksana thank you very much for joining

us and

welcome

nice presentation in my presentation

i prepared my speech before because uh

i knew that i i've got only three

minutes

that's why i tried to prepare my best

i would like to introduce maybe some new

facts in the connection with the system

of education and

ukraine in 2018

the ministry of education started the

most important educational reform

new ukrainian school you know about it i

think so

according to this reform our schools

will not

only give knowledge but also teach

students how to apply it their knowledge

in practice

uh this year we are starting new stage

of our report

for basic secondary school uh

it's our new step in a connection with

this reform it's our new step in

professional development of to our

teachers

it's a new step uh in the preparation of

our

materials for students and teachers

and this means changing from

traditional approach of knowledge

reproduction to competency

based approach uh children

are the core of learning teaching

process according to the new

requirements

teachers should create possibilities

to enable school children to collaborate

and communicate in the classroom use

their creativity

then critically and be responsible for

their

own learning results responsibility

it's a big step for us but

responsibility not only for students

but for teachers as well

therefore the new ukrainian school

reform puts forward new requirements for

teachers

to organize work in the classroom and to

create

an environment to develop language

skills

communicative skills and 21st century

competencies it's very important

to stress 21st century competences

we have very successful and fruitful

cooperation

between our ministry and international

organizations such as british council

goddard institute ambassador de france

and

others in the sphere of professional

development of teachers

uh their help is very valuable for us in

this direction

and we are planning new projects with

them

in a connection with our new steps

and the

implementation of our reform i hope that

participation in such meetings will be

useful for our teachers as well

and it will help us to proceed this

reform more successful

thanks again british council for

organizing this form

i think it's very very important for

ukraine for ukrainian teachers for

ukrainian students

as well thank you

thank you alexander for this information

and thank you for

uh what the work the ministry um is

doing for

to improve education and how english of

teacher

english teachers are going to be

involved into this process thank you

very much thank you very much for being

with us

yeah thank you

and uh i'm happy to welcome simon

atherton

uh director future english program of

wider europe why the europe comprises 15

countries

including ukraine i reckon that

the majority of you know what online

teacher community platform

is we call it occ platform and even if

you don't know you probably have heard

about it

and the majority of you are engaged in

activities

on the platform and i would like to say

that i would call

simon our otc father uh because

it's his idea of creating online space

for teachers and nowadays during

overtime

i think this is just um something we

really needed we needed the space and

for communicating for sharing

finding new ideas and developing

simon you're welcome great

thank you vika welcome everyone to this

uh to this online forum

um i helped moderate uh the earlier

forum in january

and and i have to say i was uh i enjoyed

it hugely and i was so impressed with

the

the engagement and interest um and

motivation of all the teachers who took

part and i'm sure

that this event will be even more

spectacular um than the last one

um this uh this forum is these four

four are i suppose are the latest in our

formidable partnership with the ministry

of education um supporting the reform

program and developing the quality of

teaching and learning

um in schools across ukraine um

this uh um i i just for a quick recap

i mean we we started working sporting

the

new ukrainian school reforms a few years

ago

and managed to train 18 000 primary

school teachers and

that that work has just been evaluated

independently evaluated and we're very

pleased that

the the evaluation has shown that 75 to

90 percent

of uh primary teachers who took part in

that program

um are now teaching more communicatively

in their classroom particularly in the

areas of songs and games and

and using flash cards and so on so i

think that's been really successful

um we are currently or we have been

hosting

2 000 basic school teachers um

from ukraine on the online teacher

community platform

um helping their professional

development looking at um

at uh aspects of their practice um

and uh that has been remarkably

successful and we're looking forward

to working with other um basic school

teachers in the coming

well the rest of this academic year and

the in into the next

academic year um if i can give a quick

plug

to the online teacher community platform

um

we we currently have over 5000 teachers

actively engaged on the platform across

across the region

um and if you haven't yet gone there um

please do make sure that you uh that you

uh pay us a visit

register and have a look you can you can

set up your own e-portfolio you can

engage with other teachers in ukraine

on the in the national ukraine domain

but you can also engage with teachers

internationally through our special

interest groups and we've got

we've got a number of really exciting

special interest groups 21st century

skills

that um that oxana was referring to

special educational needs

ict and education but we're also

uh just about to launch a new sig which

is about the climate crisis and this

coincides with all the work the british

council is doing

globally around um supporting teachers

um uh with ideas and materials for their

classrooms to raise awareness

of the climate crisis so i think there's

there's there's courses there

there's uh you can you can interact with

other teachers

uh asynchronously through our discussion

forums

but also synchronously through uh live

webinars

uh we have fortnightly webinars we've

got calendars of all sorts of other

events that you can join

um there's um elt concepts of the week

there's

publications uh that we help you to to

go and i think i think it's it's a great

platform so

if you haven't gone there please please

do pay us a visit and we

we're more than happy to welcome you uh

to our

online teacher community um i think

that's

that's probably all i've got time for

i'd just like to say

thank you very much to uh to vika and

the team the british council team for

organizing this

i think these are fantastic events and

i'm really really pleased

um to be here at the beginning of this

one and i'll follow it over the next

couple

of hours so wishing you all a very

positive forum

with lots of ideas and lots of energy

which i know you'll bring to it

thank you very much

thank you simon thank you for telling us

about the platform

and opportunities we can have there and

in general thank you for creating

opportunities for teachers

thank you for being with us today a

pleasure good luck

and um there is one more person who i

would like to introduce this is olga

pavlianka

she is the eighth president of itafl

ukraine

idaful stands for international

association of teachers of

english as a foreign language i would

like to say that olga is

an english teacher at the igor sikorsky

polytechnic institute

and she is also a teacher trainer in a

number of british council projects

and one more information which i would

like to share with you about her

is that she is a former jazz band player

and a great fan of jazz so ola

who is yours thank you thank you vic

vika

dear colleagues and friends it's a great

honor to be here today and to speak to

you

and i'd like to thank the british

council for having i tefl ukraine here

british council and i tefl ukraine have

been partners for more than 25 years

and this corporation has been created

benefit for

thousands of english teachers

internationally and across ukraine

idea for ukraine is a branch of itafal

global

and its mission is to link develop and

support english language teaching

professionals worldwide

at itafal ukraine we aim to strengthen

the english language teacher community

by building strong regional communities

recognizing the achievements of

outstanding professionals and

celebrating their success stories

we also actively promote british council

initiatives within the new ukrainian

school reform projects and teaching

excellence in higher education

in 2019 i tefl ukraine won horned

educational trust scholarship

to develop regional communities of

practice and opened three hubs in

nepro chernivzi and ume this helped the

practitioners from secondary

post-secondary institutions

english and subject teachers get

together to collaborate with

their students and the community on a

variety of projects

with more than uh 40 institutional

members and over 3 000

individual uh 300 individual members

in our non-profit organization itafa

ukraine

assists a wide range of institutions we

assist the wide range of networks

professional networks and individuals to

become involved in professional

information

and networking activities as a key asset

itef of ukraine has a strong and active

membership

by joining aitful ukraine you become a

part of the largest most dynamically

developing professional community of

uh international and ukrainian experts

and practitioners

and you can also get a discount for our

events

so join our uh facebook page and

visit our site to get to know more about

becoming a member of our professional

organization over the years

aitful ukraine has expanded the network

of partners and broadened the range of

events

we run winter and summer professional

development schools annual conferences

unfortunately last year we had to

postpone our face-to-face event our 25th

conference due to the pandemic

and i'm happy to announce that this year

it will be held online

so all registered participants will get

the chance to meet famous international

speakers

and elt practitioners from ukraine i

would like to invite you all to our

annual conference in april

this is going to be a two-day event on

16th and 17th of april

all participants will get certificates

of attendance please visit our facebook

page uh

i chaffel ukraine and decide for further

details

this uh the additional registration is

opening this week

itef ukraine is meant to nurture a sense

of belonging to the community of

like-minded

and committed professionals and we are

all here today

to make it happen together thank you

very much

thank you holy uh thank you for telling

us about careful ukrainian what you do

and i would like to add that during this

online conference which is going to

happen

this year there will be uh scott sunbury

a keynote speaker please don't miss this

opportunity enjoying

join example become a member and

participate actively in the activities

of this organization

thank you william thank you once again

um

and before we start uh let me briefly

walk you through the program

um we have today with us four experts

some elt

experts who will share the experience of

communicative language learning and

teaching

each of them will have about 10 minutes

for their presentations

on their topics and 5 minutes for

questions

exactly on this topic after all experts

have presented them

their presentations there will be a

30-minute

q a session if you have a question or

questions

please leave them um in the comments box

and all moderators will pass them on to

the experts

the conference is being recorded so if

you miss

some parts of it for different reasons

you can find the link to recording on

the british council facebook page

where you are now and you can also find

the link to

presentations and if you would like to

have a closer look at

it and we could i would like to ask you

to fill in the satisfaction survey

the link to which you can find them or

at the same page

so thank you thank you very much so

these are the house rules

and now i would like to introduce maria

planner

uh who will be moderating forum

discussions today

maria joined the british council in 2010

as a senior teacher young learners she's

currently working on english online

our international online course with

students

from over 80 countries a very successful

course i must say

maria is not only english-speaking

professional she speaks spanish and

german as well

and her keen interest in teaching and

learning online

is not the only one maria travels a lot

she climbs the mountains and

she rides her motorbike when she has

free time

and she's currently trying to learn to

play the piano

and draw online maria good luck with

your new skills

and he's your partner thank you thank

you victoria for your flattering

introduction

um hello and welcome everybody i see

that we have people from all parts of

ukraine

almost 500 participants at the moment

let me tell you a quick story before we

start

it's just that olga mentions scott

thornbury so i'll quickly tell you

his story going around the tefl world

so a teacher starts a class and asks

everybody

how was your day teenage students the

way they are

they give very typical answers okay

normal

but then one student goes well it's not

a very good day

my hamster died in the morning so the

teacher stops and says

very good died you you finally use but

simple correctly

i think you will all agree that this is

not a very good model of not a very good

model of meaningful interaction here

but we've all done things like that in

our teaching career sometimes because we

are so focused on

teaching english as a subject and that's

what we are expected to do in many cases

so that's why our students probably are

not very motivated to engage in

meaningful interactions with us

but in fact there are ways to make the

courses we teach and activities

more communicative and more meaningful

to our learners

more real life and probably ultimately

more motivating

and i think we will great we'll get some

great ideas from our three

experts today and the first one is

claros

claire is a very experienced teacher

trainer hello claire

hi really good to have you here

so claire has been in teacher education

for 16 years

in the middle east and in north africa

and globally as well yes

that's right and she's also a lead

educator on british council online

courses

claire i must confess that your advice

on futurelearn

teaching young learners virtually was a

breath of fresh air for me when we just

went into the lockdown in the early days

of the pandemic

oh i'm so glad you did the course that's

brilliant

yes so i remembered okay and claire is

also interested in teaching and learning

online as many of us are these days as

well as inclusion of refugee learners

so claire is going to tell us more about

how to develop

integrated skills in the classroom over

to you claire

okay great thank you so much maria and i

love that story as well that you told

about the hamster i think it's just good

to have reminders

of things like that isn't it okay

hopefully you can see my screen now so

um so off we go it's great to be with

you

today warm welcome to all of you

wherever you are

um in the country and outside the

country as well

i believe i'm talking today about

integrating skills in language teaching

and by this

i mean listening speaking reading and

writing and i hope to put a case to you

that it's a good idea not to only treat

these

separately but try to integrate them

into your lessons

as i talk i'll be asking some questions

so please do take part

put comments in the chat so and we could

all listen to each other

so first i have a question for you have

a look at these four things

on the screen and which of these have

you done

recently if you've done number one type

number one

if you've done all of them you can type

all or the numbers

of the things that you've done in the

last few days

and i'm betting that most of you have

done most of these things

as have i now my next question for you

is this what language skill

does each one involve is it just

one skill well number one called a

friend

okay so you were speaking but i'm sure

also

listening maybe if they gave you some

information or something you wanted to

remember

you wrote something down so writing

what about when you watch the news again

you were listening

maybe you were reading something on the

screen there was a headline or some data

and maybe there was something that made

you really angry or happy or excited and

you spoke to someone

at the same time so

what i hope i'm demonstrating here is

that

we use language skills in an integrated

way

in real life we don't only

read we don't only speak but we mix them

all together

so when we're teaching let's teach in an

integrated way

as well learning strategies are

transferable between

skills we can use the skills that we

need to read

to develop our listening as well and in

other ways

if we integrate skills we give our

learners more opportunities

to practice language and as we heard at

the beginning

making our learners at the core of

learning

and if we want our learners to be active

that does require doing

and speaking and writing to and of

course if we're getting our learners

involved in these lessons

it means they'll be more personalized

my final point here it's actually really

hard

and a bit unnatural not to integrate

language skills now you might want to

focus in particular in reading in one

lesson

and that's great but what i'm saying is

let's have some other skills

in there as well all right

let's have a look at some materials from

course books you might recognize this

one

what's the skills focus on this page

take a look well it says say

and point there's a few words but i

think you'll agree

it's mostly a speaking activity here

now as you go up the levels in course

books you don't usually see a full page

of speaking

it usually looks more like this doesn't

it so lots of text maybe some pictures

but speaking somehow becomes

smaller it's more difficult to see

writing too you don't often see a lot of

writing

it's there but it becomes smaller it

doesn't take up as much space

on the page but these skills are

important

and we need to notice that they're there

and also

add to them

so let's look at some ways that you can

integrate speaking into your lessons

here are some pictures from the course

book that i just showed from the reading

activity

my question for you

how could you get your learners talking

by using

these pictures what activity

could you ask your learners to do

well of course i've got some ideas maybe

brainstorming vocabulary

they could guess the story they could

tell their own story

after reading maybe they could retell

the story

or maybe even write it too

another great way to integrate speaking

pair checks of course

where on these two pages do you think

you could put some pair work and have

learners

working together well maybe here

before they read looking at the pictures

as we said guessing the answers to

questions

maybe after they've read so they're

checking that they

understood the text and maybe here we've

got a pronunciation activity

after giving the model why not get them

working together

to practice the new sounds by themselves

think pair share is a great strategy and

you can use that in lots and lots of

different lessons

all right let's look now at how we can

help our learners

respond to texts here i mean listening

and reading so here are

listening and reading texts that um

i was interested in that i saw in the

last

week you can see uh it was well it was a

bit longer ago this is for women's day

and there's an article here my niece

sent me a video

and a podcast that i enjoy

another question what do you do

when you read or you watch something

interesting if somebody shared a video

if you read an interesting book or

article

what do you do maybe you do the same as

me

you share it you talk about it maybe you

write about it you forward that message

you tell someone what you liked

well i think we should be doing this

with our learners as well is encourage

them to respond to texts whether it's

listening or reading or videos

but getting them talking or writing in

response

here are some ideas things we can do

with speaking

maybe they can act out the story make

predictions see if they were right

ask your learners what they think what

they would do

if they were in this story or this

article

asked them what they liked or didn't

like about it maybe what they agreed

with

what they learned so you can use kwl

what they know before what they want to

know and then afterwards

what they learnt and also

get them to talk about their own

experiences

and lots of ideas for writing too again

talking about their experiences maybe

writing questions for a partner

maybe reviewing what they've written in

a sentence just like we do when we

forward something to a friend

get them thinking creatively what

happened next or before

or maybe imagine 10 years into the

future write

a dialogue and they can act it out then

too and of course

there are some texts that they can reply

to quite naturally like emails

or posts or articles where they could

write a response

these are all ways to personalize

teaching and integrate different skills

into what might look like

just a listening or a reading lesson

now i'm going to finish with two ways

two different ways to approach texts

maybe you've tried them before if you

have let us know

how it worked for you here's the first

one jigsaw

so you could do this with listening or

reading here's how it goes

first of all divide your students into

a's and b's

then you give different texts or videos

or audios to each

group then after they've read or watched

or listened to their text

pair up your students a and b to share

the information or solve a puzzle or

complete a task

so what skills does this

practice well if they're reading or

listening we've got those

of course but because you're making this

communicative

we've got speaking as well and listening

to each other

and if you get them to make notes maybe

writing too

and here's the second idea running

dictation

can you see the kids in the photo

they're having a great time because this

is a really fun

activity here's how it goes first

prepare some short texts

put them around the classroom put your

students into groups

they choose a runner and writer for each

group

yes the runner runs goes to the text

reads it

tries to remember goes back to their

group to tell them

the group listen and the writer writes

down

what the runner has said this is

repeated so the runners go back and

forth looking at the text trying to

remember and telling their group

until they've dictated all the text

and the final stage the groups check

what they've written

against the original again what skills

does this practice

well there's reading speaking

listening and writing and if you move

the roles around sometimes

everybody gets to practice them all

all right so bringing this together i'm

going to suggest

when you look at your course book and

you're planning your lesson next time

stop and think think

critically what's the lesson focus here

what skills are already there

and what do i need to add in a grammar

or vocabulary lesson

is their speaking practice find it in

the book is their writing how can i help

my learners

to use this language in a meaningful way

in reading or listening as we said are

there speaking opportunities

how can you help your learners to

respond to the text

in writing maybe you can integrate other

skills too

maybe you can get learners talking and

even in speaking

can you extend and make the most of it

get your learners really listening to

each other

maybe there's an opportunity for some

writing too

so my time is up and i hope i've got you

thinking

about how you can integrate skills into

your lessons

okay claire thank you very much

that was a great start

claire thank you very much for such a

great start and such an enthusiastic

presentation

um i think we had a lot of response in

the chat a lot of people are raving

about jigsaw activities

that's great there's also a special

thanks from

hannah from ismail who says that she

really loves

um integra the integrated skills

approach and she really loved the

presentation

um i think it was great that you gave us

some practical ideas and hands-on ideas

but i really loved that you made this

point that

um we have to think first what response

is natural whenever we plan an activity

yeah so

we should always think what we should we

would do first

before asking our learners to do the

same i think that was an amazing point

as well

um claire i think we've got time for one

question and a lot of our participants

are keen to know the answer

basically it's how to keep the balance

between

reading listening speaking and writing

especially what's the right balance

between receptive and productive skills

you know

are there any guidelines on that what's

the best thing to do

i think um just going back to what i

said at the beginning when we look at a

book it looks like there's lots of

reading and listening in there

and i think we need to not feel that

that is the way it should be

so my advice is usually more speaking

and i've taught teens and adults in many

countries who've been through the school

system and i would say

without exception most of them came to

class saying

i need to develop my speaking so

i don't know about the numbers or

percentages but i would say

always look for more opportunities to

get your learners

talking thank you thank you very much

claire

we'll come back to you later with more

questions on integrated skills

thank you maria and our next speaker is

tatiana dakshner from ukraine

uh tatiana is also a teacher and a

teacher trainer

there she is hello to tiana

um she has a phd in philology

um she's a nia tefl ukraine secretary

and she's also collaborated with the

british council for quite a long time

um almost 10 years right yeah

yeah so just the same as me actually so

tatiana has collaborated with the

british council as a course participant

and as a trainer

and she is our core skills expert

just to give you some numbers she has

successfully delivered about

30 british council courses um in the

teacher trainer professional development

framework

tatiana that's quite an achievement yeah

thank you very much

yes tatiana is also a very positive and

energetic person which i'm sure you will

see in a moment

and tatiana is going to tell us about

the core skills and how we can

incorporate

those in our classes

yeah thank you very much maria for the

presentation

and yes so let me share the screen

and

yeah here we are so i am delighted to be

here today and to present

uh the core skills to you so the um

purposes of the presentation uh are two

three questions what how and why with

the emphasis on how

to incorporate core skills into everyday

classroom

while listening i will ask you to answer

two questions

first how could you adapt the ideas to

your contexts

and how can they influence teaching and

learning in the classroom

there are many names for skills

necessary for life in british council

classifications

uh classification there are six of them

and let's start with the what uh

question

uh i would like to uh here on the screen

you can

see the key features of uh and

strategies how to develop critical

thinking and problem solving

from my own experience uh and as a

world practice pranks it's better to

state with bloom's taxonomy

because it helps teachers write a way to

structure the lesson meaningfully

based on activities on outcomes and

objectives

i'm firmly uh convinced that uh by

um creating the culture in the classroom

of

questioning the teacher plus uh plants

seeds of all six

uh core skills uh because answering the

good questions encourage

uh students to um employ their high

order thinking skills

in everyday classroom it means don't

stop at factual questions who what and

when

uh but rather move to why what if and

would you in so how do i practice

uh and develop critical thinking skills

so in my practice it would look like

this a teacher presents a question

then students take a stance and then

form groups depending on the stance

what students need next is to base their

stance on

um evidence for that they collect

information

and analyze and evaluate it if needed

they reconsider their

perspectives so the next um

is time to learn to consider different

perspectives

um to develop active listening and to

assess the strength of evidence

and questioning cultures thrives if

students take initiative and ask

this um and present the the question

themselves in the classroom

not only do communicative strategies

give opportunity for students to

communicate and to construct their

knowledge but they also uh

create uh opportunities to

foster autonomy and to include all

learners into active process of learning

um three before new strategy and think

pair share are easily

can be easily integrated into everyday

classroom

undoubtedly communication is uh tightly

bound to collaboration and you might

already use

assignment method jigsaw project

what's uh crucial to mention here that

this method

work only if teacher incorporates

all key features of course skills into

both

teaching and learning universal design

for learning might sound

new and what it stands for is how the

teacher

learns to involve all students into

learning

how to present context in different ways

and how to differentiate

to present different ways in which

learners will learn as you can see on

the screen there is

a wide variety of ways how to

encourage creativity so um

just systematically encourage students

into asking questions

reflective critically on on

everyday basis on their learning and

explore

uh different ideas be open to different

perspectives

citizenship is a four piece

concept which means participating in

classroom life in community life knowing

their eyes and be accountable

for the actions what i would like to

highlight is

um importance of identifying yourself

and answering the question who am i

uh digital literacy is a highly relevant

skill today

and um what i would like to

highlight here is what is not it's not

merely using the digital tool

uh but rather dealing with information

critically

staying safe online and uh protecting

your data

so how to engage children into digital

literacy

so using digital tools for creating

information for learning

then share this information with others

and to integrate digital um skills

into uh children research skills

while developing leadership we need to

focus on being ready

resourceful resilient responsible

and for example

role um assignment uh apart from being

communicative and collaborative uh

strategy can also encourage reflective

thinking

the bono heads in addition to uh

different perspectives that can develop

resourcefulness and problem solving

balloon debating along with being debate

strategy

can also encourage resilience and many

games there are

really lots of games to develop

emotional intelligent resourcefulness

and resilience what's important to

mention here that leadership

it's not only for those who have or

demonstrate already

leadership skills and second of all it's

um

not for leading others in the first

place but

taking the responsibility and leading

your own learning

well so how to integrate course skills

into

a classroom it's to uh to integrate it

again

together with language skills and

context

uh to crown it all i would like to say

why

it's um it's important and useful

because core skills

give practical tools how to um

to create meaningful learning

environment

in which learners can fulfill their

potential

make informed decisions and to

contribute to the world

so i want to invite you to be to

practice girls course skills and to be

reflective

so answer the two questions that you see

on the screen

and find a partner so think pasha in

action

find a partner and discuss the ideas

with him or her so the ideas developed

on the basis of course skills courses

which are a part of connected classroom

project

project and thank you very much

thank you very much tatiana

thank you very much to tiana it was a

really thought-provoking session i must

say

um a lot of our participants um confess

that they really like bloom's taxonomy

as well

i think i think the great thing about

developing core skills is that we don't

really need any additional materials to

do this yeah we can just work with the

activities and materials we already have

it's just a way of

thinking differently i suppose yes yeah

and what i like about

uh course skills is that students become

resource

so that if teachers acknowledge that

students can bring

um they are already there and just let

them

take the responsibility bring the ideas

to classroom

then and uh take the strategy organize

the work

in class and then um all the core skills

will thrive

okay we've um on the registration forms

we had a lot of questions about

how to develop critical thinking skills

and collaboration and i think we'll come

back to those

later but now we've got one question

here

at what level is it worth starting to

develop

high order thinking skills i imagine the

question is about the level of english

in this case

what level do students need to have to

be able to

work on core skills well the sooner the

better

okay great answer yeah from my wrong

experience i start

i teach different age just to practice

and to savor

to to taste when to start and i can't

tell from my experience that primary

learners are

perfectly fit into higher order thinking

skills in terms of language because we

cannot expect that secondary school to

have

uh higher order thinking that students

if we don't start a primary

in terms of language uh they might not

answer with full sentence or a full

paragraph

but they can't say uh answer the

question why

with one word or um word combination so

this is

what's important here to make a focus on

the core skill

and critical thinking in this case thank

you very much tatiana

yes we've got a comment um

from larissa pavlux saying thank you

very much a very useful session

and from daria thanks a lot everything

starts with a great question in your

presentation

thanks a lot thank you very much we'll

see you later

see you okay and we're moving on to the

next session

uh which is about the flipped classroom

approach in developing learners

communicative language skills

um so i'd like to welcome marco galleno

from uruguay

hello maho

okay i'll introduce you a little bit

so mahu's been teaching english for 18

years

and she is currently an educational

technologist

and she's also a moderator of the online

teacher community platform so i imagine

some of our participants have met you

before

yes they have great um

yeah mahou is very interested in the

application of

technology in the classroom with a

meaningful purpose

and i think bajo your interest took you

very far because

you got mma in digital technology and

communication from the university of

manchester for that

yeah okay later study okay can i share

some of your hobbies

yes please okay so major also loves

jewelry making

and drinking mate which is a uruguayan

drink ah great

okay my jewelry and my mother

i see you've got your calabasa ready yes

great so over to you mahou okay so thank

you very much

for that wonderful introduction so i

hope that you're all doing well

and you can should be able to see my

screen now

great so um the idea of today was to

look at flipped classrooms

and of course the idea always is to

develop the learner's communicative

language skills

so um back in 2013 i remember there was

an

article in english teaching professional

magazine it was by

jim scrivener and adrian underhill which

i'm sure that you all

know wonderful and authors

and these two questions have stuck with

me since then

have the tasks and techniques i use in

class become rituals and ends in

themselves

do i need to shift preoccupation from

running a successful task

to optimizing learning and that brings

me back to maria's comment

on you know the use of the past simple

of

my hamster died so this type of thing is

that sometimes we are focusing so much

on the successful task that we forget

the teaching

behind and of course the whole idea is

that our students learn

so in general regardless of the approach

that we choose whether it be inductive

whether it be the more deductive

approach whether it be guided discovery

you know all of the different approaches

that we have learned

there's always these three steps there's

an introduction to theory

there's an understanding of the theory

and then it's putting the theory into

practice

these three steps are usually whether it

be guided whether it be just more the

student discover and the teacher being

more

on the in the background it doesn't

matter specifically the role here

but this is something that we usually

have we will find always in the

classroom

so you know these are the three steps

and all our textbooks

i'm sure that you have the same course

books that we have here in uruguay

very similar and you will notice that

there's always an introduction

whether it be vocabulary a listening a

video

you know and then the understanding and

then of course that

important aspect of putting this into

practice now

what happens a lot of the times is that

we sometimes focus too much maybe on the

understanding of the theory

and there's not enough of putting the

practice and this is what flipped

classrooms is all about

the idea is that you focus on your

learning

focus on your learners by involving them

in

the process this i liked this acronym

that i found a few years back

and here we've got you know at the

moment of planning

it's tempting to aim our class at the

middle of the group

so we're focusing on you know um we're

focusing on the students that generally

follow us

not the fast ones not the slow ones but

the ones in the middle

susan parcell in one of her texts she

suggests not to do this

and this is because it's frustrating for

all for everybody

one will get bored the others will get

lost and in the middle

hopefully they will be able to keep up

so flipped classrooms allows a way to

become more of a in an integration of

the different

levels so what do we ask our students to

do

it's being asking them to be in charge

of their learning

you know it's for them to take decisions

and make

choices and a big thing that

we as teachers struggle most is to

enable us to trust them

i'm sure that you will have the same

issues that i do

that i like to be in control this is why

i'm a teacher you know

we do like to be in control the thing is

that we can't always be in control there

are things that we need to

solve so there are things that we need

to be able to let go

and flipped classrooms is a great idea

for that

so what do we have to do as teachers

there needs to be a shift

of attitude learners are capable of

more than we typically ask of them and

this is about us

being able to trust them it's also about

you know

trust asking them to er

take more charge of their own learning

you know we need to change a focus of

teacher energy

so we need to go from more of the

preoccupation with the mechanics of the

activity

you know we think about okay first i

need to do this students will need to

fill in the in the blanks then we have

to do some reading and then we have to

go back

so there's a sense of always thinking

about what's coming next

what flipped classrooms allows us to do

is to allow us to move from that

preoccupation

and basically look towards the material

and making the learning visible itself

and i think this is the best part

of flipped classrooms it helps us with

you know making that learning visible

and of course it requires us a little

change in technique

with well-tuned interventions

interventions and higher skill sets of

classroom management

now classroom management you know it's

very

interesting um there are many different

theories

there are many different authors and a

lot of the classroom management has to

do is with

the our personalities i have a certain

way of managing my classrooms

that works for me maybe you have

something different that if i tried

your approach to classroom management it

wouldn't work

but if we are going to adapt these

flipped classrooms into our

into our classroom it's going to be a

bit more useful

if we just tune these and adapt them to

our teaching practice so basically

the this is the idea of the flipped

classroom is to create a video

or find a video of content students

watch that recording

at home not at school

so students watch this recording and

students complete a comprehension task

to make sure that they understood that

now a lot of um i'm not sure about your

books your

your current books that you're using at

the moment but uh

in this case with students um when

students are working

um you know uh we've got this recording

and maybe they don't understand very

much

they can play it again and again and

again and again

until they understand the concept and

this is one of the greatest benefits

a lot of our course books may have a

videos that you might want

to include others maybe you don't want

to include them yet

and um you know maybe you want to create

your own videos

i know i've created my videos i teach

well

i used to teach until last year i taught

adults

and you know adults are specific about

the vocabulary so if

maybe it was present simple in their

textbooks but i find uh

a video on simple present you know it's

kind of messy and

they they feel uncomfortable with that

so i've created my own videos to make

sure that

it's the same terminology as their

course books

so you know i've created my videos and

the videos

should not be long they need to be seven

minutes five to seven minutes maximum

for older students and maybe three to

five for younger students

so it's just watches that and then they

do a comprehension task

require that means that they understood

that task

now this task that we are doing

um the sorry the comprehension task that

you might find is in your workbooks in

your

maybe your course books have this famous

maybe they have a platform where they

can do some quick work

the idea here is that they have a simple

tasks

and it's basically to check that they

understood

and if you think about it in flipped

classrooms i used it a lot

when it comes to grammar and vocabulary

because

um and not constantly of course i varied

it

and one of the things that it's used for

here is that it allows me to

um do a quick check to make sure that

all students are following

and then in the classroom i expand

if you look at your course books a lot

of the times the first two or three

exercises that come

right after the introduction of the text

of the

of the vocabulary or of the grammar

point

those will always be the simple

exercises

and then maybe the last two or three

exercises you know moving on

are more difficult and what happens is

that those more difficult exercises can

be done in class

with the teacher with the help of the

teacher

and this is one of the great benefits

and then as claire mentioned you can

make it

take advantage of that and then use that

into

more into and create that into a

speaking activity

so because communication we need to make

the most of the communicative part in

our classrooms

i don't know if um you know here in

uruguay as of last night we've gone back

online

we were doing so well and now we're back

online at schools

and so our video conferencing time is

reduced

we do not have the same amount of hours

that we do face to face

so what we do is that face to face they

we take advantage

and we do that communicative part

because that is

when we are in class we need to make the

most of that interaction

whether it be speaking or writing i

don't know about writing how you feel

about it in class

i know it takes a lot of time but

imagine if we could help them with those

you know in writing and have the teacher

there

then they continue at home but they

could do the the beginning part

in class with you

some pros and cons the positive aspect

is that students control the speed and

when they stop when they pause if they

want to watch it again or not and i

think this is what something that's

motivating for them because

it it promotes student-centered learning

and collaboration

they can look at the lesson and content

and it can be more efficient

in time wise in class you save time

because instead of explaining

three four times that text that the

aspect

you know you're explaining it more

we can also you know you explained it

once and they can watch it again and

again

and if you think about it tatiana

mentioned uh earlier the universal uh

the udl

you use universal design learning this

is also an aspect that helps with this

because

you've created this video the student

decides how many times they watch it

the fast student will understand it

quickly the slow student maybe needs to

watch it two or three times and that's

fine each one

is it will be able to learn at their own

pace

and then in the classroom have all of

this together

so some of the create negative aspects

that it could create this

a digital divide those who have access

to online and those who don't

but i think today the world has changed

so much that this is maybe not such an

issue as it used to be in the past of

course not all kids have

access to online but if you have in your

context you have this i think it's a

great way to

make the most of it relies on

preparation and trust

you have to trust your students to watch

it and that's

kind of you know kind of nervous i'm

tough love

they need they know that they need to

watch it the first time they didn't

watch it

i will continue the lesson and they will

be lost the second time

they know that they will not have to

watch it they know they will have to

watch it

so it is a significant wor amount of

work for us

but afterwards it's there 10 years ago i

did this i did

i tried flipped classrooms 10 years ago

and i still have those videos today

so those videos that i created 10 years

ago are still being used today

it's not a natural test pre for of

learning so

it's not testing you're just trying

things out

and of course it does cause an issue of

time in front of screen instead of being

outside doing something else but again

in this context wouldn't that be

different

so um thank you so much for

the opportunity to share with you i

shared very quickly i was aware of time

i'm going to stop sharing now

thank you very much maho that was a very

inspiring talk i personally feel like

rushing and flipping all my teenage

classes right now

and okay we've got some really nice

comments um

irena irina bunderchuk says it's a great

idea

as for the video i use it too and it's

really useful

exactly um olga danielenko says it's a

great idea for teachers who don't

believe that their learners are capable

of

more than we typically ask of them i

like that

they are they're capable of more we just

need to push them

to believe that they can do that and

this will affect their motivation as

well

which i think is always an issue oh okay

uh we've got quite a few questions mahou

so are you ready to take a few questions

please uh okay everybody's promising to

flip

more in the meantime is video the only

source of

input in a flipped classroom it's a

question from sasha chalenko

that's a good question um honestly i

think in the term of

uh like the definition of flipped

classrooms maybe it is but

i remember when i was young that a

teacher would tell me

you have to read this information first

find this information

understand it do on a comprehension or

summary and then come to class prepared

i honestly think that flipped classrooms

is just that it's what

maybe when we were younger or even our

parents were younger were asked to do

so video is not the only way that they

can get that information

if you have a good text that is simple

great

go for it okay and

you also mentioned that it's mostly um

about grammar and vocabulary yes the

things that you can flip are mostly

systems

do you think that it's possible to also

flip some skills work like reading and

listening

so that we could make more room for

speaking and writing as claire mentioned

earlier

i think that's a good question um

reading i'm sure that we can

but my question is how is that different

from just sending them to do reading a

task on their own

if we're doing the reading skills for

example of teaching them specifically

okay this is scamming

sorry this is skimming this is scanning

that type of thing i think that would be

useful

and then give them some exercises for

them to do um

and of course in class take advantage of

that because this

we still need to develop all the other

skills but we can make

the most of those um

of the speaking of the interaction and

of course

clear any doubts that these the kids

still may have

and then of course everybody's

interested in how you could

raise learners motivation so basically

encourage them to watch those videos or

do those tasks

before their class and personally i had

that problem that a lot of teenagers

would just skip it or watch it too

quickly

um do you have any perhaps techniques or

tips that you could give us

to make sure that students you know

actually watch those videos

i i think first of all it depends a lot

on the

on the bond that you have with your

students first of all they know that i'm

i'm easy going but i'm strict there are

things that they have to do the homework

so for example if they don't actually

watch the videos

we have to see why they didn't watch it

was it because maybe they had too much

work or something then we need to be a

little bit understanding

the first time of doing flipped

classrooms

i would watch the video in class with

them so then

they know what to expect because

sometimes

we send them watch this video and do

these exercises and they don't really

understand

they don't fully comprehend so maybe

watch the video with them in class

do the questions you know the simple

comprehension questions

and if you have time you know do that

expansion

part that that naturally comes after all

of these uh

points language points and take

advantage of that in the classroom

or the next lesson um and then get them

to focus maybe well

don't you think this is something you

could do alone you know start asking

those type of questions

okay yes well let's try it this time

next for this

homework this time watch the video and

do these exercises

and simple and that way they can start

learning

how to do this process because i i think

it's also about training

so it's basically about learner training

as well so you're showing them how to do

it you're reducing that challenge of how

to go about the task reducing the

challenge and reducing the excuse

cause then because then next time is

maybe two or three didn't watch it

again tough love the student that

watched it fast

was it because maybe they didn't need it

and they understood it okay

then great then i would then i would

actually

when they're starting to work and

they're starting to produce that

expansion

and you see the mistakes is do you

remember the video

you know this particular aspect was

shown in the video

ah you don't remember but then maybe go

watch it again

you know give them that opportunity so

that way they see the importance of it

because if we then maybe two or three

don't watch it and we still show it in

class

next time i'm not going to watch it

what's the point we're going to show it

in class so

a bit of tough love understanding and

finding the the way with each student i

think is the key

absolutely maho thank you very much for

your answers

um i think there are many more questions

about flipped learning and there is a

lot of positive response so we'll

certainly

come back to some of your questions

later great

okay but now it's time for our final

presentation

and today we have two special guests who

are neither teacher trainers nor

teachers

yet they can give us a very important

perspective

into meaningful learning

we've got with us today jan kostiniak

who is a network engineer and a t

currently living in slovakia hi young

hey hey everybody good afternoon

yes yeah and i imagine you use english a

lot in your everyday life

because you say you have american work

mates

brazilian and norwegian neighbors and

israeli friends

and lots of slovak people around

yeah that's right first of all let me

introduce myself

my name is ian costeniak uh current

originally i'm from cherniv say ukraine

uh currently i'm living um in slovakia

i'm working at the position of uh senior

network engineer

uh at the at t branch located here

so uh yeah first of all

i would like to express gratitude

to all english teachers that are

sacrificing themselves

in order to deliver as much materials

and knowledge

to their students as it's possible uh

especially i appreciate my head teacher

she's participating in the meeting as

well mrs melodic

hi greetings uh so uh

to begin with i believe i was among

the first group of lucky children in my

school back in 2000

uh as long as well as the

access to the new wave student books

we got the access to the multimedia

devices

uh we had i believe the very first

desktop pc

in our class and we got the great

opportunity

uh to play uh the english learning games

on the pc

another good point was to use the

television

in our class and it was very common to

dedicate one lesson or even the pair of

lessons

for watching the movie in english

without any translation

sometimes even without subtitles

third one option that i loved so much

uh as i was studying at the gymnasium

with

in-depth learning of english we were

there there are there were lots of uh

english special courses such as

english hotel study hotel business

economical business english english and

american and british literature

and so on and so on and that clearly

shows to the student that there are

multiple areas or multiple

industries uh when the where the english

knowledge can be utilized

although i consider uh that all these

approaches

were extremely effective

here i i need to admire that i could

spend

less time less responsibility uh

sorry more time more responsibility and

more willpower

to learn english uh and in my opinion

the main

issue was i didn't realize

that knowing english has any

practical impact so

uh only after our school started to

participate in the flex program i

believe you

you're aware of that uh however i was

not the

the one who traveled to us but that was

my very first experience

that i realized that oh hey english is

not only the lessons i can

i can use it outside the school i can

use it for

communication with local people uh

abroad

uh i can even survive with english

outside my my native country so uh

to sum up everything that i told uh

basically there are two common

recommendations that i have for uh

english teachers the first one is

in my opinion uh once student has

enough of grammar vocabulary verbal

skills

to maintain the life conversation uh i

would recommend

to dedicate at least a half of time even

80 percent of time for the listening

part

based on my experience as i'm working in

big it company

i have the business meetings with

customers on daily basis

among them are americans british people

japanese people indians

uh even finns and it has

its own everybody has its own accent

so you should have your ear trained not

only for reference english

but for different flavors of english uh

and it's very crucial when you're

participating the meeting and your

colleagues and other participants uh

some of them are driving the car

some of them are riding in the

underground and it's extremely crucial

to understand what they are talking

about or what they are asking for

and uh if a person is not able to

recognize

uh what was told uh to him or her uh

unfortunately or all further uh skills

are useless oh thank you very much jan

um yeah look uh i mean that was quite a

presentation it just goes to show that

your english is really good and you've

really mastered it well

so basically what you are suggesting to

us as teachers that we should have more

live conversation real life conversation

different accents different background

noises and more speaking in the

classroom

that's what helped you the most right

yeah i would say nowadays we are living

in multimedia

uh era so i would recommend uh

to our teachers uh to our school

schools somehow contact the

non-commercial different organizations

and schedule the live breach uh with the

group of native speakers maybe

they can be the same group of students

located somewhere in uk

or america so that we can

like we can let children to communicate

between each other

in order to see uh that they can

use this english like in a very

practical way

yes that's great so basically any

international experience with any

learners from other countries would be

invaluable for learning

yeah and a lot of teachers agree with

you and say that your ideas are just

great and very useful and a lot of

people are writing them down already

so thank you so much for your tips

yeah lots of people olga danielenko says

thank you for sharing your experience

it's an amazing example of motivation

for our learners nowadays

perhaps they will invite you one day

okay and we've got another guest john

hello john great um

jon so you are an architect and you are

currently living and working in london

right

yes uh john can you can you say hello to

us we can't hear you very well i'm

afraid

no still nothing but perhaps while it's

getting sorted i'm going to ask you yes

no questions so you can give us some

information

so you are living and working in london

right

okay do you remember your english

learning

experience at school

it looks like a yes

okay um would you say would you give the

same recommendations

as yan to our teachers

no sorry still can't hear you so perhaps

you could give us a nod

or say no

no okay um

yeah unfortunately we can't hear you but

perhaps if we could fix the sound then

we'll come back to you later and ask you

a few questions

yes great thank you john sorry about

that

okay and now this is the end of our

presentations and we'll be moving into

our q

a session so i hope you've got your

questions for our experts ready

are coming back now

can we have claire major and tatiana

okay welcome back claire just me

you're very fast there goes tatiana

okay and let's see if maho's here

so as i mentioned yeah everybody's here

right so we can start we've had quite a

few questions

in the registration form and i think

we'll be getting more questions from the

chat

you know all of you can answer questions

but please put up your hands

so that i know who is answering first

and then you can also make

comments after other people have spoken

yes so uh we have a lot of questions

about

general and integrated skills so let's

start with those

um what are the best

tasks to boost interaction and

communication

in general i know that you've already

mentioned

a lot of practical ideas but perhaps you

could share

your favorites now so the best tasks to

really boost interaction

in teenage classes

i'll answer okay go ahead okay

maybe one of the options um one of the

things that i like is

making the most of the textbook i think

this is what claire really tried to

um impart on us and one of the things

that i noticed

what one of my favorite tasks that i

used to do always is

any task will do for speaking so even

if it's the boring filling in the blanks

using the present simple correctly

so they would use that do that the

grammar part

perfect and then i would ask them to

um i mean it says okay make those

sentences true

for you so they would have to rewrite or

think

depending on the level if i gave them

time to write or not

the higher the level the time the less i

mean i'm saying okay go talk to your

partners and make these true for you

and then they would have to listen to

each other let's

gossip which is something that we all

love so now

new partners i would move one around and

they have a new partner

share with that partner what you just

heard so a simple

five-minute activity can that you would

do and

i think we do it without thinking

sometimes in class can actually be done

and can be extended in that sense the

higher the level the more extension then

we can get partners to ask questions and

things

the lower the level the more controlled

we need to do it but

still they can still they still have

that possibility of making it true for

them

and then sharing that uh gossiping

so there you've got loads of you know

grammar vocabulary

and interaction that which is the most

important thing

thank you thank you maho i think it's

really really important

for teenagers to be able to personalize

things as well and that's why it's so

successful

okay uh here comes the next

question uh it's a question from alina

stangret i hope i got the name

right um how to develop

critical thinking skills so how can we

actually do it

um okay this is a big question i'm not

sure if it's about particular activities

but perhaps perhaps to tiana you would

know better how to answer that question

yeah okay so let me start you know and

then the colleagues will share

so as as i've mentioned in my

presentation so

to to understand how to develop you need

to answer

uh to answer the question what is

critical thinking

and in the first place critical thinking

uh those questions that the teacher

asks in the class so first of all

develop um

your um questioning as a teacher so not

factual but just

move on uh what eve would you do this

how would you do this and uh

what i love and what i think is

important is when students start this

asking questions themselves

recently where uh we've taken part in

the project actually we're still taking

part we haven't sent

the results yet and the task was choose

a

person from um from from from the live

from the past to present

and formulate questions so students did

it and then we started

analyzing the questions so like okay uh

then the group works with the

questions of each other and then they

wrote like you know after the first

review

almost all comments were not interesting

not interesting

and then i asked them so what will make

interesting so let's think how to make

and then i just gave them the bloom's

taxonomy uh questioning and they just

got themselves that the question that go

um

deeper or higher in bloom's taxonomy are

more interesting

so then they started formulating the

question themselves so questioning the

answer going back to the question

about critical thinking it's questioning

in the first place and then the features

of critical thinking it's

um base everything on evidence whatever

they say

i ask how do you know this so

just look for the evidence for me and

prove it

if you think that this is interesting

why do you think this is interesting

go and analyze the information and

different perspectives so

everything that goes as colleagues

mentioned uh

think past all group work

uh they uh encourage different

perspectives so the more students speak

the more

students share their perspectives the

more they learn from each other and this

is

uh critical thinking to be able to to

accept this perspective because when you

start you know teenagers especially

teenagers they they love this they

understand that they have

the voice and they want to express their

ideas but what's also

crucial is to be able to hear others um

yeah so this considering and being able

to hear each other is also very

important

uh yeah and then problem solving and i i

do believe in the power of i repeat

myself

and the power of encouraging and

involving students into decision making

in classroom

because if um the task that is

uh presented is not mine but theirs they

will be involved they will be

thinking harder and that's why i very

often negotiate what we do in class

and then the students come to my class

and they say let's play a game

and i say okay you want to play a game

prove me

base it on evidence that is better than

my objective that

breathing thanks and they say and they

you know they are very creative they

come up with such

great ideas and very often they create i

admit they even create better

games and tasks that i did

and that's what what really yeah is very

rewarding

so this these are my strategies and what

i do thank you thank you that's a bunch

of different ideas so we as teachers

should get into the habit of

asking more questions and saying less

right

and oh yeah and one more important thing

the reflection reflection reflection and

one more time reflection

here in my presentation you've noticed

that there are the questions so reflect

after the task reflect after the class

reflect after the unit

and both me as a teacher reflect and

i engage students into reflecting on

their learning

and on giving me tips so this is also

very

boosting um critical thinking just the

creating opportunity for reflecting

every day

thank you thank you to tiana um

john is back and his microphone is

working and he's very eager to share

his recommendations with our

participants as well

so let's take a short break for yon hi

again

yes i can hear you and i can see you as

well

okay so uh my name is john

i was born in chennai and since then

i've been to many places

and at this moment i live and work in

london

which is an amazing place actually i

recommend you haven't been

here and i would like to talk about

my experience of learning english

because i started to learn english

first as an adolescent and then after

when i was in that model after i

graduated university

and i'm a bit anxious and i'm

so uh when i was it's very interesting

what you're telling us

there's a lot of great response to what

you're saying so

and because when i was in school as an

adolescent

i had a different approach because i was

quite fortunate

i i was i my parents could afford

to send me to a private private school

but only to

study english for a brief period of time

and

it was a great experience and i can

compare that

to how the process was in school because

it was quite different

back then for instance in

that private school it was

we had beautiful british books that's

from cambridge

and the classes were structured quite

differently people

by the food were motivated and were

interested in the

studying language and we had kind of

movies we had

audio tapes and we and the teachers the

most important the teachers

uh were used to spend much more time

with us because the classes were much

smaller

than the classes in in school because

in school i my teacher was andre victor

rich

nervous you probably know him and he's

an amazing teacher

he is his english is amazing because he

also trained me later

but in school actually most of his time

was devoted to calming people down and

trying

just to express the topics of the lesson

and then just spending the

time on calming down children and which

was

which is quite i would say ineffective

for for us and i remember me back in

school

all the books and the way this the

lessons were structures was very boring

and i

i didn't learn anything back there

unfortunately

but but later when i was preparing for

ielts uh i took it very seriously and i

was very motivated

and i can say that ielts actually

well the way this test is structured i

think you don't need more and you don't

need anything else because ielts

it stresses all your core skills which

is reading play

listening uh talking and

writing and while i was preparing for

ielts it was very

demanding as a person you actually need

to be like

a very clever person to

get a high grade and while preparing i

learned to be much more articulated and

much more precise

and uh actually i noticed that

these traits have become part of me and

kind of started to reflect in my life as

a

as a professional because now i'm after

that

i'll become much more able to express my

thoughts

my ideas much more precisely and

coherently

than it was before so i think kind of

uh trying i mean preparing myself for

the ielts was one of the best things

that i've done in my life

because it kind of shaped me into a

different person

and it helped me a lot and about the

what i would recommend for you just to

be a bit

more formal and a bit more forceful on

the children

because yeah i didn't like and and

another thing that i'd like to point out

is that when i went to that private

school

uh i was also more much more interested

because the

learning was uh presented in a different

way

in those books which i loved they had

like beautiful artworks very colorful

i still remember them the

the way the knowledge was presented is

in short topics on different subjects

about everything about culture about

history

about different people different

countries and it was

really fascinating back then so i was

actually

more interested in content through which

they also gave

vocabulary in grammar while

in school we just had vocabulary and

grammar it was totally not interesting

i see so you were basically very

motivated when he had some kind of real

life

importance he had topics exams and

that's what

gave you that boost well that was

later but when i was in school it's kind

of was the the content

which was like the way the way this

lessons were structured

but was much more interesting for me

back then because it was much more

entertaining

as at first it used to capture my kind

of attention much more

when it worked in schools in school it

wasn't very interesting as i remember

it's not teacher's fault it's the way

its system

was structured by back then okay so

content was key for you

in that case yes uh jan thank you very

much for coming back

and for sorting out the microphone we've

got some comments for you

um your ideas are very helpful and

exciting thank you very much

from alina and oksana kochogan says it

would be very motivational for our

students to be here and actually listen

to what you're saying here

so you're you would be a great example

for other learners

um lubbock grizzuk is asking i'm not

sure if it's a question to you but it

probably is

what books did you use for learning

those colorful exciting books

um do you remember

those very cambridge books that's what i

remember

but i don't remember their names

but they were like really beautiful i

remember that all the images were like

uh

like they look like they were handmade

and they were like really

nice yes okay so i think that would

generally give us as teachers a good

idea of what content should look like

jan thank you very much for your tips

here

thank you thank you and can we have

our three experts back please

okay as we were talking to john i think

we had another question that popped up

in the chat

and the question is about flipped

learning apparently there's a lot of

interest in flipped learning

how can we assess or evaluate what

students do beyond the classroom and how

can we assess this flipped part

i suppose interesting question

um first of all i think the best thing

would be

to um really embrace

what flipped classrooms is they do the

easy

uh you know repetitive work at home and

then the expansion

they would do in class it is in that

expansion that

is that we use to assess how well

the video worked how well those simple

comprehension tasks work

worked that is the best way to go about

it so because in class

it's not just you do something at home

and nothing in class

in class you do that expansion that

extra work that

in course books for example you always

have that you know

basic really simple uh sentences to fill

in or really simple

comprehension questions and then there's

always a more of a

you know more of a use of that language

in that use of language is when you see

if things are worked well or not if they

didn't

maybe it's one or two students you can

do some remedial work as you're working

with them

as a you have all your students working

otherwise if it's in general then maybe

you need to stop

go back to basics okay let's see what

you understood from the video let's see

what you understood and then that way

you can work

it out maybe that video even if it was

from the book maybe that video wasn't

the best

the best uh input for them and that's

okay

no it's all about learning as well for

us so that's probably

the assessment would be in that

expansion that's done in class with the

teacher

okay thank you thank you i think all the

other experts agree with you not in

their head

yeah agree with that that the assessment

the the part of as far as understand the

classroom this flipped part

is not to be assessed it's just the the

assessment takes place

uh the higher order thinking skills take

place in class

okay so it should not be treated as a

more traditional homework which has to

be checked yeah so it's different like

that

well i would probably flip here uh

face-to-face classes as well

and uh tweets uh com task as in the

flipped classroom

okay thank you very much and then we've

got

one more question um which is probably

for

all of you um jan and john they both

mentioned

the importance of real life tasks for

them i guess so very relevant

communication

and one of our participants asked

what ideas can we use to create real

life

situations in the classroom or how can

we create these war real life tasks

do you again do you have any tips for

creating those

more realistic more relevant situations

for learners

i think can i answer this one because i

that's the first question i heard

so i'll i'll take advantage

um i really firstly i really liked

listening to jan and john's experience

and i think as teachers it's very

powerful

isn't it to listen to someone who has

learned english and talking about what

worked for them so i just wanted to

thank

both of you for sharing that um

something jan said was

um talking to other people international

people

um really communicating with people from

different countries

um and there's something that that you

can get involved in which is

mystery skypes um so

here i don't know if anyone's tried this

if you have write it in the comments

um but you can sign up for this and say

that your school is interested and they

can put you in touch with another school

you arrange a time for a skype and you

can ask and answer

um questions to um the people that

appear on your skype wall so it's great

for a connected classroom

um i've also done this with friends of

mine

so i invited a friend of mine from

alaska to my class

and i just said to my learners who are

kids i said there's somebody coming you

have to find out

where she is what's her job so they

prepared some questions

my friend came online in the classroom

and my kids were asking her questions

trying to find out who she was

and they were super excited because they

were talking to a real person

and so things like that are really

really motivating quite easy

to set up if you've got that connection

thank you claire that sounds fun tatiana

would you like to add something

uh yeah i would just like to add um one

thing that's

not bringing the real life to class but

probably bringing class to real life

what occurred to me is digital literacy

here because by creating information and

sharing online and then having

connections with

other classes and towns and maybe even

countries

that's how real life yeah so you know

goes out of the classroom

uh so the class goes into the real world

not the real world comes to the

classroom

yeah sounds great so we great

um there's one more question in the chat

for us

can you share the ideas for developing

the leadership skills or personal

development perhaps all of you have

a tip for our participants how to

develop leadership skills

in the classroom personal development

very interesting question here

i can i can start um i think

first of all we need to enable it um

if we don't give the space for our

students to do this

then they will not be able to um develop

these skills

so maybe at the beginning um with

project work or

even simple tasks that we do in the

classroom give each of them a role

and ex specifically tell them what is

expected of them

it's not something very simple they need

to know what is expected

if you are the leader what are we

expecting you to do

well you're expected to do this and this

okay great if you're going to keep the

your group on time in the special

specifically for project work which may

take two or three weeks

and you are going to have to keep them

in time make sure that you do that so

give them the chance i think that's the

first step towards that

and tell them what is expected of them

specifically don't assume

that they will understand

okay so giving a model i think claire

likes that idea as well

tatiana yeah it's just uh leadership

core skill

yes i definitely would like to add here

and what i

think so that was british council course

and the materials that gave me

personally this

new perspective and your understanding

of leadership is not leading others

as i why i mentioned it in my

presentation and i really want to convey

this message that

so um what i do in my classes what i

focus on it's not only

given the opportunity to lead others or

rather

like taking the responsibility for for

your own learning

meaning okay asking questions so what is

uh at the beginning of the year what

what are your goals

so setting the goals for um for the

whole year

or and then um in the in the form of

formative assessment

having this conversation with the with

students and giving them a chance

themselves to decide what to do and how

to improve

um yeah and and again reflection so

reflecting on

on on their activities so taking lead

let them learn firstly themselves and

they're learning

okay thank you very much and yeah

leading by example and that

and finally i think we can ask we can

ask

jan is still here and why don't we ask