21st Century Skills Traning

Reflection on the Second Week of the Traning

We are keeping progress!! The second week of our training is done. We have enjoyed so much and created lots of ideas. 

This week our main concerns were; Collaboration and English Language Teacher as a native speaker of English or a non-native speaker of  English. 

In the first session, we did lots of group works, our trainer Melda Yılmaz showed us a picture which is an angel shape formed by a lot of words. She said these words are from a song and asked us to guess what might be the song about. She posted out guesses via Linoit. There were lots of creative ideas about the song. Then she wanted us to divide into groups and choose at least 15 words from the picture and write a story about the song. After we wrote our stories we posted them on Linoit and read our stories. There were lots of crazy stories and ideas about the song and we have enjoyed a lot.  Finally, she made us listened to the song and we discuss it. The song was The A Team by Ed Sheeran here is the link of the song so you can just click it and listen to The A Team by Ed Sheeran. Lastly, we discuss what kind of video we can take for this song with our same group members and shared our opinions with our classmates. 

Here the picture that we used. 

Before our second week's session, our trainer sent us some photos and cards that include a hose plan, a schedule, and suspects' declarations. We used them in the second session, our trainer divided us into groups and with our group members, we tried to find the murderer. 

Thanks to these two sessions we understood and experienced how collaboration works. What we need for teamwork, which roles do we need, how can we manage an effective interaction, and create our product. For good teamwork, group members should listen to each other respectfully and everyone should have a word to say. And for a good organization, a group needs a leader,  a time-keeper, a note-taker, and a speaker. Honestly, I think we managed to work collaboratively with my group members but we had some difficulties at the time span. We might try to be more organized for a better result. 

For good teaching and being a good modal for students, a teacher should know what collaboration means and how it works. We can not do everything on our own, we need someone sometimes, and creative ideas come more when there is more than one person. And besides creating ideas collaboration makes us know ourselves better.  So these two sessions were so beneficial for us as prospective English teachers of the future. 

At the last session, we discuss 'Is there a divide between native English-speaking teachers and non-native English speaking teachers? ' We agreed that being a non-native Engish - speaking teacher (NNST)  is not a negative and stressful thing. Actually, NNSTs can be more competent at teaching this language because they have experienced learning this language so they are more close to students. They know their students and their cultures more than a NST who comes from a different country. NNST teacher can combine their mother tongue with English and show links, similar and different sides of these languages. And I believe seeing that his/her teacher is not a native speaker but still s/he can use this language, communicate via this language confidently is a sign for a student in the terms of s/he does not have to be a native speaker, s/he can still learn and use this language in his life. 

Finally, our trainer showed us some web-sites that are so beneficial and practical for a teacher to use in the class. And we finished our second week which added a lot of value to us. 

And here is the links that we discovered thanks to our trainer;

 Linoit   

Poll Everywhere

Mindomo

Coggle it

You can use them for creating mind maps, pre, post listening and reading activities and more. 

#language #learning #global #davidcrystal #linguist #thinking #critical #globallanguage #training #ELT #teaching #collaboration