I'm back with more Methodology Pills (No. 26 Planning a Speaking Skills Lesson and No. 27 Lesson Planning Quick Steps)

It's been almost two months since my last post on May 18 on Peer feedback in my MA in DTLT Reflective blog. It's been a hard year so far with lots of work and study, but very rewarding altogether! Since my last blog post above I've been very busy with MA work being completed and submitted before the summer break, examining like crazy all over the place and also preparing for our summer intensive CELTA and YL Extension to CELTA courses. We're now almost half way through the second full time CELTA and so I can say it's been tough.

Anyways, as usual one of the greatest things about being a teacher trainer is that you are the first learner in the room and so while trying to help trainees get their heads round the theory and practice of lesson planning, I came up with the following two Methodology Pills:

No. 26 Planning a Speaking Skills lesson and No. 27 Lesson Planning Quick Steps. These include  steps we were going through in assisted lesson planning sessions so I thought it made sense to recap and put them nicely together in two separate screen casts for trainees and anyone interested in watching or listening to them at leisure!

Here's Pill No. 26 on Speaking Lessons...

And Pill No. 27, a short video (7.49') looking at the 5 quick steps you can focus on or follow when planning a receptive skills or language-based lesson while adopting a Guided Discovery or Text-based approach. Needless to say, this is just another way of approaching lessons and particulary suited for Guided Discovery or Text-based lessons because of the text at the core of the lesson and the approach we focus on during the course here at our centre. Of course, we also expose trainees to the other approaches e.g. TTT (Test-Teach-Test), TBL (Tsk-based Learning), PPP (Presentation Practice Production), etc. but focus on Guided Discovery when it comes to language work. OK, here it is then - enjoy!

MA in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching - My progress report

It's been over 2 months since I last posted anything here so I think it is long due! We just finished the first semester of my second MA in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching with the University of Nottingham and we're about to start the second one! So far, so good I'd say!  I'm really happy as the course has been challenging and also very interesting and above all practical. I'm hyper by nature so if it wasn't I would probably be bored out of my wits, but the tutors have been great, supportive and have also pushed me a little so I'm 100% satisfied about my decision to do this MA.

Now, as part of my studies we had to keep a reflective bloog which was initially private. I have now made it public so that if you feel like reading my reflections on the literature related to the world of technology and its assessment, integration, and implementation in language teaching then all you need to do is click here for my Reflective Blog.

 

Also, one of the aspects of the course so far that I have enjoyed the most is the creativity and flexibility - IMHO - as regards the work required. For instance, part of the assessment included writing an essay and part of the criteria against which we wanted to be assessed against. We were also encouraged to think outside the box and we were also allowed to choose how to present the essay beyond the traditional writing by incorporating media in as many forms as appropriate. I found this extremely motivating and so I presented in its traditional writen form, but also embedded it into a wiki while using Tellagami to introduce it, PodOmatic to present the Abstract and the main body of the assignment in the wiki to include video and links to different sources such as Dropbox, etc.  I wish I had had more times as I had other ideas which I think would have been great to include but doing it while working full time and wearing all the different hats I do proved limiting in many senses.  I can't wait to get onto the dissertation stage, which I have already started working on to save time!

Anyways, I hope you enjoy and find my reflections useful if you're considering to implement technology into your teaching in a more informed way.