Reports+from+Recent+Conferences

Please write a short paragraph sharing your experience at the Doğus ELT Conference (or at any other similar event in the past three or four months). If you prefer, you may leave an audıo and/or a video message. Creative embellishments to substantial content are, naturally, appreciated. Don't forget to include your name!

Matthew Tenerowicz - I'd like to keep this short, so I'll just share a little bit about one of the lectures given by Michael O'Neill. The talk was about the current research going on in America attempting explain what makes a good teacher and how we can turn good teachers into great teachers. Among other things, the research has shown that the two things that most influence a teacher's pay (senority and level of education past a bachelor's degree) have the least impact on how their students performed on standardized tests. Of course, there's the rub; an "effective" teacher is one whose students perform well on standardized tests.

The lecture focused on Doug Lemov's 49 strategies used by "effective" teachers (Cold Calling, No Opting Out, Normalizing Error, etc.). At the end of lecture we recieved a list detailing these 49 effective strategies, so let me know if you'd like a copy. You can check out some videos of some of these strategies in action here, [|here], or here.

I couldn't find an electronic version of the document, so I scanned the handout from the lecture. I hope the quality is okay. If you'd like an actual copy of the list, let me know.





Andrew McDaniel: I would like to comment on Tom Godrey's workshop about "Whole Person Learning". As always, Tom was very entertaining and the first thing he did was show us a warmer about how to prepare your body and mind for a class. This exercise was as much a benefit for the teacher as the students. We spoke the first few lines of 'Singing in the Rain' over and over and then he started to inject chunks of vocabulary. These chunks were imperatives for our reading practice, Cinderella ("You have to scrub the floors, "you have to wash the dishes", etc.). Then, Tom taught us some hand gestures which could be used in storytelling. We used these hand gestures and some pictures to retell the story of Cinderella. The exercise really incorporated different learning styles and intelligences plus allowed the audience to participate. Overall, an excellent workshop.

Erdem Zeyrek: First of all, I have to say that I and my colleagues from High School couldn't attend the Doğuş Conference on Saturday because we had a parent-teacher day all day long on Saturday. But on Sunday, I attended Ms. Zeynep Ürkün's (Sabancı University) workshop on narrowing the gap between actual classroom teaching and the assessment process. She talked of people's prejudices against exam makers & assessors and said that this is a two-way street; in that, both the exam maker & assessor and the class teacher should take the blame if they are making the mistake of not working together in this arduous and significant process of exam preparation. Aside from encouraging the teachers about taking part in the exam writing process by talking openly and productively with the exam makers in their institutions, she also suggested that we asked students for their comments on the exam questions that they fight through. This was a fun workshop embellished with nice PowerPoint pictures and some interesting music. I also attended a shorter workshop again by three Sabancı University English teachers who have recently been assigned the task of English for Math & Science (EMS) teaching, and in this workshop they showed how they gave a one-hour to two-hour lessons to Prep students vying for a major in Natural Sciences in that university. They got us in groups and asked us to explain Math terms in a mathematical fashion, at which we failed at first, and then got us to watch a few short videos mostly on Physics and asked us to explain those to one another. I think this was a beneficial short workshop, too, since we have a population of students in our school who choose to go to such universities as Sabancı and since also Math & Science teaching in our school might start to be held in English in the near future.


 * Özge :** I was at the conference for one full, and one half day. I presented "May I Have Your Attention, Please?". It was about social networking, how to learn and get the most out of them for professional development. I want to keep it short so I want to write my reflection on my favorite presentation : Lindsay Clainfield's critical thinking session. It was about very simple activities to boost critical thinking. I really like the idea of showing a picture to the kids, dividing them into groups, asking the first one" Describe the picture", the second one "you are from the village, describe the picture", the third one "You are tired of city life, describe the picture" We did the activity I did enjoyed it. I have also attended Burcu Akyol's presentation on blogging with her school, Esra's session on digital storytelling and Burcu Tezcan's session on class observation. I did enjoyed the conference but that would be much better if it had been a one day conference.
 * Esra:** I had a presentation on Sunday about "Digital Storytelling" . I also watched Ozge's "May I hve your attention,please" She talked on PLN (Personal Learning Network) and she talked about RSS, e-portfolios, twitter, social bookmarking and gave good examples and tools for them. Also, I watched Burcu Akyol. She talked on blogging, class blogs and gave real examples of class and teachers' blogs.