Week 3 review
A review of this week by Claire
This week we’ve focused on educational policy and practice. It’s been fascinating learning about how ‘things are done’ differently in different countries, and how we share some of the same challenges when it comes to educational systems and policy implementation. I do agree with Kae Takota who says we can learn from other education systems and other ways of doing things in this conversation.
The topic of child protection and dealing with bullying, whether in our classrooms and schools or on the internet is one that concerns us all, as teachers and/or parents. Thank you for sharing your stories and also how you have addressed these issues in class. Again, I do feel we have a lot to learn from each other here. Seema suggests having banners in and around the school to campaign against bullying, and Douglas proposes mindfulness and a guided meditation on defeating the bully.
Victoria and one of our course mentors, Hugh have added some great links about online safety for children and teens/adults in this conversation.
In discussions about the role of teachers in implementing policy, Laura shared how her school celebrates International Mother Tongue day I’ve added in some other activities you might like to try to create awareness and celebrate home languages and cultures – it would be great to hear more, so do join the conversation!
We talked about applying policy on coursebooks and how we adapt them to meet our learners’ needs and interests. I enjoyed your suggestions of how to adapt the materials. Nida suggested film about a famous scientist and the conversation moves on to talk about teaching on the topic of women in science. Have you addressed this with your learners? We’d love to hear about it!
Finally, I just wanted to look back briefly at the reflections from last week which was all about technology. Some of you have had a go at using Powtoon, with incredible results! Thank you so much for sharing your animations. Check them out here (password ‘reflections’).
Many thanks once again for all of your comments, suggestions and contributions. This course is a wonderful place to learn from each other and I’m looking forward to more of the same next week.
Claire
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Coming up in Week 4
Next week is all about multilingual approaches to language teaching. You will considering your own language identity and how to find out more about the languages your learners speak. You’ll evaluate ways to help learners notice differences and similarities between their first language (known as L1) and English, and how to deal with errors. You’ll watch teachers using multilingual teaching approaches and discuss the future of English.
If you’ve finished this week’s activities early you can take a look at Week 4 now.
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