Meet, Met, Met - Challenge, Challenging, Challenged

I´m happy that you managed to arrive at the meeting last Friday!

We warmed ourselves up in a TPR style (so do not forget to stand up, clap your hands, crumple the paper and sing a song and stand up, clap your hands….  next lesson).

We also broke the ice and learnt 22 incredible things about Marcela, 8 interesting things about Mikuláš and many new facts about other people in the room. I hope we got to know each other better and we even met new neighbours and a student of Czech for foreigners :) By the way, what about you and icebreakers? How successful were you at the beginning of this school year? What were the hits of the year? Let us know. I personally skipped the toilet paper part this year but asked my students to note down their lucky number instead. Then they had to tell us as many sentences about themselves as their lucky number indicated. The record was 31. I also asked my advanced students to write a headline that best describes them. The headline could be a quote, a familiar expression, the name of their favourite film or a title of a song, etc. I will survive :)

Then we learned more about other teachers in the room :) Look at the two poems below:

Smiling, talking, writing
Never strict,always supportive
Walks, can explain,will help
The most patient,the friendliest
Not aggressive,very positive
I like motivated students! I don't like silence
I am a good teacher because I love my job!

Jiřina

Cutting, Drawing, Googling,

Never late Always Doubting

Tries Can explain Will learn

The most important is creativity … The same thing is the hardest.

Not energetic enough, very tired

I like students talking. I don´t like late night printing

I am a good teacher because I have patience.

Marta

Thanks to Jiřina and Marta for sharing their poems with us.  

We realized how good we are at doing things in the classroom by sticking Post-it notes with our names on the board to indicate agreement or disagreement with various teaching ´Can do´ statements. What about you? Are you good at planning lessons? Using course books? Giving feedback to your students? Teaching 7 a.m. classes?

Agree  ←----------------------------→ Disagree

By the way, when was the last time you used a Post-it note in the classroom. Would you like to share the activity with the rest of the group? Here is my personal list and I would like you to try out one activity next week. 

www.flickr.com

• Students read a text in the course book and write down three questions based on the text on a sticky note. Then I distribute the notes and they answer the questions they receive.
• Students read a text in the course book and note down three words they would like to remember. Then we use them to recycle the key language.
• Students read a text in the course book and they write down two words they would like the rest of the group to explain to them in English.
• I write a sentence starter on the board, e.g. Yesterday I …. Students get Post-it notes and they finish the sentence in as many different ways as they can.
• I ask my students to také two notes. They draw a smiley on one of them and a frownie on the other. Then they react to the statements, to the sentences (correct/incorrect), reading comprehension questions (true-false).
• I note down mistakes I hear during their fluency work. Then I distribute the cards randomly for peer correction.

We also discussed things we do and/or would like to do in order to become better teachers or rather to get better at teaching.

Which of these sound/s best to you? Experimenting, observing classes and being observed, studying something new, teaching something new, using the net effectively or reflecting?

Look at the list of possibilities below. Your task is to choose one or two things you would like to do/try out this semester. Simply, put your virtual Post-it note next to the option which you personally like. Share a good web link with us, recommend a blog or a webinar to your colleagues, tell us one activity you learnt at a workshop outside Glossa, let us know about a good soft skill book you´ve read, invite us to observe your class J … This is what TTC is about!

• Independent learning (workshops, web sites, blogs, twitter PLN groups, you tube teaching programmes, webinars)
• Workshops, conferences
• Reflective practice and self-assessment 
• Using recordings (audio, video, photo) for reflective practice
• Recording your thoughts about your teaching (diary, phone, ipad, blog)
• Peer observations and feedback (double observation)
• Trying out new things, activities, techniques, adds, adapting your favourites
• New technologies
• Following a blog, joining in discussion
• Setting up your own blog

TTC is here to help you learn more about your teaching-self. Here are some more tasks. Spare ten minutes and try to note down answers to each. I would be happy if you decided to share some of the inspiring answers with the rest of the group.

1. Think about feedback from students you received this year: What surprised you? What were you proud of? What would you like to change?
2. Forget about the official satisfaction survey. How can you get valuable feedback from your students during the school year? Can you note down three ways?
3. Dear diary, I would like to tell you about the worst class I´ve ever taught …the worst lesson I´ve ever taught …  
4. Send a postcard to your Glossa TTC colleagues. You have just attended the best workshop in your life. What was it about? Why was it so special? What have you learnt?
5. The best activity of the year – share it with us. What is your Top Activity right now?
6. I wish I had known that when I started teaching ….  What have you learnt in the course of your teaching? Is it that it is ok to move away from the text book? Is it that it is a must to prepare your lesson but it is even more important to move away from the plan? Etc. Let us know!
7. What makes you feel demotivated? Be sincere to yourself. Say it out loud. What do you dislike about being a teacher? Write it d-o-w-n.
8. Me and technology. Try out one new technology and test and review it for us. I will do my best to recommend as many tips as possible to you in the course of the TTC project. What about the following tools connected with visuals in the classroom?

• Five Card Flickr
• Wordle/Image Chef/Tagxedo
• Comic creator
• Bubblr
• Mobile phones
• Fotobabble
• Piclit
• Snapguide

9. From teacher to teacher – What else could help you to become the best (and most satisfied) teachers … ?
10. What can teachers learn from managers? Have you ever thought about this topic? Which skills apart from teaching and methodology and langauge do you need to succeed?

Looking forward to your ideas and reflections.

Finally, at the meeting we talked about pictures and learnt more activities which can be used in the classroom.

We took great pictures at Glossa and worked on the tasks we could assign to our students.

Here are two examples:

Look at Marta´s photo and listen to the newspaper headline. 

Look at Katarina´s poem instructions for the students and guess. What/who was in the photo she took during the workshop?

Compose a poem based on the photo using these rhyming words: teacher, preacher, feature, creature, bleacher, speak, meek, seek, weak, week. 

 Here are two more activities based on pictures:  

Look at Five card flickr, select five pictures you like and write a story based on the pictures.

Tricky pictures: Students work in pairs. Their task is not to show the pictures they received to each other, describe it and find some similarities and differences. The trick is you give both students the same picture. 

Enjoy your Halloween lessons and see you on Thursday again. We´ll discuss ways to recycle vocabulary.

Katka