Session 1
Introduction to the course
Requirements - didactics
Continuous assessment:
- active participation in the sessions
- compiling Teacher´s portfolio (preferably an e-portfolio) - continue from last year
- Professional action plan - creating, updating, evaluating
Final assessment:
- colloquy - discussion in pairs about the topics covered (artifacts in the Teacher's portfolios used to provide evidence)
- essay - Professional action plan - how I did this semester (approx. 3600-5400 characters, but quality matters more than length)
- What was my original goal? Why did I set it?
- Did it change throughout the semester? Why and how?
- Was my goal well set? Was it smart (specific, measurable, achievable, relevatn, time-based)? Why?
- What benefits will (did) moving towards the goal bring me and what benefits will (did) it bring my students?
- What steps did I take to move towards the goal?
- How will (did) I recognize the success? What will (did) I see /hear/experience? What will (did) the students do/experience?
- How will I move forward? Do I need to continue working on this goal? How can I take further? What concrete steps can I take and why?
Requirements - teaching practice
Teaching journal
- at least 3 lesson plans with reflections (what went well and why? what would I change and why?). Must include concrete aims.
- One example of feedback given or feedback received
Be prepared to discuss this as part of your colloquy.
Course content:
- 1. My professional development
- 2. Teaching vocabulary
- 3. Teaching grammar
- 4. Teaching pronunciation
- 5. Language learning and cultural awareness (incl. the intercultural communicative competence)
- 6. Modern technologies in the classroom (related to the digital competences as conceived in the Strategy 2030+)
Final exams topics
1. Language learner - individual differences, learner autonomy (P)
2. Second language acquisition
3. Methods and approaches in ELT (P)
4. Listening skills in theory and practice (P)
5. Speaking skills in theory and practice (P)
6. Reading skills in theory and practice (P)
7. Writing skills in theory and practice (P)
8. Teaching and learning vocabulary (P)
9. Teaching and learning pronunciation (P)
10. Teaching and learning grammar (P)
11. Language teacher - roles, professional development
12. Teaching materials (P)
13. Course design and lesson planning (P)
14. Modern approaches to assessment and evaluation (P)
15. Language learning and cultural awareness (P)
16. Mother tongue in ELT (P)
17. Literature in ELT (P)
18. Error correction in acuracy and fluency activities (P)
19. Modern technologies in the language classroom and e-learning (P)
20. Teaching English to hereogeneous classes (P)
21. Teaching learners with SLD (P)
Resources
Jeremy Harmer: How to teach English, Pearson Education Limited 2007
Jeremy Harmer: The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman 1991
Penny Ur: A Course in Language Teaching, CUP 1996
Jim Scrivener: Learning Teaching, Macmillan, 1994
These books are interchangeable, you can study from any of them. Use these editions or newer, if available.
Portfolios
Portfolio helps students (and teachers as well) to:
- make a collection of meaningful work
- reflect on their strengths and needs
- set personal goals
- see their progress over time
- think about ideas presented in their work
- look at a variety of work
- see effort put forth
- have a clear understanding of their versatility as a leaner and a writer
- feel ownership for their work
- feel that their work has personal reference
Portfolios are collections of student work representing a selection of products that represent specific student performance. Portfolios in classrooms today are derived from the visual and performing arts tradition in which they serve to showcase artists' accomplishments and personally favored works. A portfolio may be a folder containing a student's best pieces and the student's evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the pieces. It may also contain one or more works-in-progress that illustrate the creation of a product, such as an essay, evolving through various stages of conception, drafting, and revision.
(In case of student teacher portfolio it can show how to go through the process of writing with your students or, how to work on a project etc.)
WHY TRY IT? Students have been stuffing assignments in notebooks and folders for years, so what's so new and exciting about portfolios? Portfolios capitalize on students' natural tendency to save work and become an effective way to get them to take a second look and think about how they could improve future work.
HOW DOES IT WORK? Although there is no single correct way to develop portfolio programs, in all of them students are expected to COLLECT, SELLECT and REFLECT. What makes a particular piece of writing, an approach to a problem, or a write-up of a good product? In building a portfolio of selected pieces and explaining the basis for their choices, students generate criteria for good work, with teacher and peer input.
Adapted from "Student Portfolios: Classroom Uses" Office of Education Research Consumer Guide, Number 9, 1993. Office of Research, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education.
GUIDING QUESTIONS FOR THE FINAL ESSAY
- essay - Professional action plan - how I did this semester (approx. 3600-5400 characters, but quality matters more than length)
- What was my original goal? Why did I set it?
- Did it change throughout the semester? Why and how?
- Was my goal well set? Was it smart (specific, measurable, achievable, relevatn, time-based)? Why?
- What benefits will (did) moving towards the goal bring me and what benefits will (did) it bring my students?
- What steps did I take to move towards the goal?
- How will (did) I recognize the success? What will (did) I see /hear/experience? What will (did) the students do/experience?
- How will I move forward? Do I need to continue working on this goal? How can I take further? What concrete steps can I take and why?
Further questions to help you with your essay:
What goal did you identify for yourself at the start of the semester? Why?My professional development
What we worked on
- What would/wouldn't I like to hear students say about me (without them knowing I'm listening)?
- Me as a teacher - collage
- What I grow out of
- what I have
- What I aspire to
- My professional goal and action plan for this semester
- Which goal do I want to move towards?
- How will I benefit from it? How will my pupils benefit from it?
- Ho will I recognize the change? What will I hear/see? What will the pupils say/do/experience?
- What steps do I need to take to achieve it? Which one will be the first one?
- What will the success in the first step look like? What can I be happy about?