January 2022 Professional Development and Personal Growth - Advanced Speaking Practice

Maintaining range and fluency while teaching beginners or younger learners is at best challenging, and many if not most teachers have been unable to manage either or both in today's reality. We all need adult conversation, and these session provide just that. Each session is a guided discussion so prior reading and consideration is helpful, and the sharing of personal views and experiences expected. 

January 2022 Professional Development and Personal Growth - CAE Preparation : Reading and Use of English Practice

These sessions review tasks from recent Cambridge English "C1 Advanced" examinations. (We use "CAE", the examination's former name, because it is the more widely-known term in Chile.) They are not General English or Language acquisition and development sessions, but Exam Preparation : Practice; while we review possible responses, we do not explore the language behind correct and incorrect responses.

January 2022 Professional Development and Personal Growth - Advanced Use of English : Practice & Feedback

These sessions focus on accuracy, appropriacy and on developing the speaker's range. Each explores advanced instances and implications of the topic, problem areas, common errors and traps, using True/False, fill-the-gap, discrimination, matching and other exercises. As these are Practice and Feedback sessions, we explore language points which arise from the prompts and if time allows, we also include a problem clinic. 

January 2022 Professional Development and Personal Growth - Advanced Use of English : how the language works

Each session explores advanced instances and implications of the topic, problem areas, common errors and traps, and includes illustrative examples and exercises to develop and explore the points made. Where time allows, there is also opportunity for a "problem clinic".

January 2022 Professional Development and Personal Growth - Advanced Reading Comprehension

Texts or text-links are sent to participants before each session for prior review. This is a "Knowledge and Understanding" programme, with the addition of Language acquisition and development; participants are asked about the text's "explicit meaning" and any Language questions they may have. The Guided Discussion format also allows for Advanced Speaking Practice.

January 2022 Professional Development and Personal Growth - Active Learning

Active Learning is a student-centred approach to teaching and learning in which the student is actively engaged with the materials, topics, skills and outcomes. In mnay respects, it it she opposite of a traditional teacher-centred, top-down, direct or passive approach. Each of these sessions considers one aspect of Active Learning and how it might look in a classroom. 

Although the target audience here are Primary teachers, all teachers should follow an Active Learning approach and so would find these sessions valuable.

Plug-and-play reading comprehension : Vaccines

A plug-and-play lesson involving Reading Comprehension, Use of English, vocabulary acquisition and development, speaking and listening and writing. For use with High School, college and adult learners at B2 and above levels in an EFL programme, or for Middle School and above in an E2L or bilingual programme. Based on a 90-minute lesson.

Coming soon - more Active Learning

Active Learning : Tabletop Science

Cambridge Primary Science should not be a subject, but a student's exploration of the world around him/her while s/he develops scientific inquiry and learns how to follow scientific practice. Science should be incorporated into daily activities and into the regular classroom; a laboratory and specialist equipment are not required; this science can be done on the top of a table.

Active Learning : Purposeful Play

Play for young(er) chidren is seen as "a good thing". It is often described as the child's "work" and "play-based" programmes abound. However play is frequently misunderstood and mis-applied, and it can have no educational value which is where purposeful play comes in. This session considers one view of Developmentally Appropriate play and how it can appear as an effective learning and teaching strategy.