CERTIFIED TRAINER’S TRAINING PHASE: 2 NAME: Diana Miladinovic JOB: Teacher (C3 English) TRAINING VENUE: Emirates College For Advanced Education GROUP : 1 TRAINING NEEDS Priority 1: Student engagement (Focus on reading skills) The training is primarily needed to those teachers especially whose experience is new and need to know on how to improve students’ behavior and their level of performance. In order to make an effective interaction with the students of various psychologies and behaviors the teachers need to take a professional and development training process. This is based on the survey results and discussion follow-up with the participants; semi-structured interviews with school management and the data analysis of the term 1 exam results for grade 12. GENERAL OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the impact of teacher’s training and development session in order to enhance the professional attitude To handle the students of different behavioral as well as psychological attitudes inside the classroom To identify the areas on how to improve the results of students by providing them a systematic guideline To acquire knowledge: Knowledge: Identify/explain at least three creative student-based strategies/activities through specific collaborative tasks. Skills: Design an activity that incorporates a strategy to ensure student engagement. Execute it and reflect on how well it went. Attitudes: All participants are to assess the learning process using the “student engagement wheel” (Develop an appreciation of student-based learning) and choose which strategy they liked best and will utilize in the future. Topic 1: The importance of teachers’ training and development program in order to enhance the professional attitude in handling students’ behavioral approach Topic 2: The significance of teachers’ training and development program in developing students’ knowledge and skill Topic 3: The impact of teachers’ training session in enhancing the students’ result Topic 4: The role of trainers in handling the students’ psychological approach from different perspective Content categorization: Extremely important: Topic 1 Important: Topic 2 Additional: Topic 3 Optional: Topic Relative importance of each task: Extremely important : Skill Important : Knowledge and Appreciation Content selection: The benefits of movement and games based pedagogy in learning as strategies for student engagement: Moving work stations Throw and tell Ball Student engagement wheel The cube strategy/ThinkDOTstrategy Race Games strategy Crazy Professor Reading Game Training content: Evaluation and knowledge enhancement plan of teachers for improving the psychological and behavioral attitudes of the students are the content of this specific study. Students within a specific classroom are possessed with several types of psychological attitudes and behavioral approaches. Therefore, the teachers should have efficiency on how to deal with the students of various psychological and behavioral approaches. An effective training and development session can help the teachers to handle the situation more competently. TRAINING METHOD Direct method: Interactive method: Communicative method JUSTIFICATION Trainers sometimes use lecture method in order to make the teachers understand about the importance of this training and development session. In order to describe the entire situation, trainers do not need to use communication approach or interactive method While making the entire training session the trainers generally tends to use interactive method as well as communication approach in order to understand whether the training session is going to be effective for the teachers or not Two sessions: 45 minutes each. Forty five minutes is sufficient timing to keep the participants motivated, engaged with a variety of activities linked to the objectives. Training has to be timely. STARTER: “Throw and Tell ball” strategy : I explain the rules of the game. Finish the sentence: “Students are engaged by….” I throw the ball at a participant. She responds and throws the ball to another and so on. ( A few minutes) b. Spaghetti Tower activity : Materials: Spaghetti Marshmallows The idea is to push the spaghetti through the marshmallow, though one has to be careful as the spaghetti is fragile and easily breaks, and create the tallest tower! MAIN ACTIVITY Each table has an activity that focuses on different skills and different learning styles. A bell is used every five minutes to signal movement of the participants. Working Station 1: PRE-READING Prediction Brainstorming : The participants jot down on small whiteboards ideas/words related to the title: Should women stay at home? Laminated visuals are provided. Working Station 2: Read with a pencil strategy (The participants read the text silently and use symbols as a reading strategy to identify confusing words; the main points; evidence for support; draw own connections to the ideas from the text; summarize, interpret and make evaluations on the text. Working station 3: Roll the dice! CUBE strategy. The participants roll the dice one at a time and complete the activity that comes up. PLENARY: All participants are to assess the learning process using the “ student engagement wheel” ( student engagement tool) and thus develop an appreciation of the educational benefits of using movement and games in collaborative learning. SESSION 2 Starter : Throw and Tell ball strategy : Finish the sentence: The student engagement wheel is useful as…. Brainstorming: In groups, jot examples of student behaviorwhich typifies a “reluctant reader.” (on a whiteboard) Ellicit briefly feedback for each group. Brainstorming: Pre-viewing Show picture of the crazy professor. (Overhead transparency) Use the throw and tell ball to elicit answers. Watch the video of the Crazy Professor Reading Game. 10 mins Main activity: Participants engage in stage one of the Crazy professor reading game. Each participant has the same text. Participants work in pairs. (Partner 1 and partner 2). Partner 1 reads aloud the text dramatically while partner 2 listens carefully and uses hand and facial gestures. To show meaning. RACE GAMES Instead of getting the participants to run as they are adults, they will engage in a game where they write on the whiteboard as many sentences starting with the letter “T” Duration : 1 minute Criteria: Figurative language. Winner: gets a prize. Will judge the amount of sentences written using figurative language. Prize: Each gets a chocolate. Plenary/Conclusion Use the TWO STARS and a WISH strategy for reflection. The participants put their wishes and a star on a post it and stick onto the larger piece of paper stuck on the whiteboard The point to the “Throw the ball” strategy is to engage all participants, not just rely on volunteers. It is fun. It requires quick thinking skills. It can encourage critical thinking skills, too. It is a quick way to gauge what the participants know. The “hands- on” spaghetti activity is what the participants preferred as a training method reflected in their survey comments. The activity is fun and requires the group to work as a team and again, the aim is to intrigue the participants and get them to focus and actively participate. The participants actually come up with the benefits of the exercise through practicing the activity themselves, more effective than lecturing on the benefits as participants tend to switch off or send texts on their phone , from my own observations of PD sessions in the past seven years. (And, even going back to the PD sessions I had in Sydney). Again, “a hands-on” approach is used for the participants to see the benefits of the strategy by performing the tasks themselves. The participants get to put themselves in the shoes of their student learners. They see the benefits first hand rather than being lectured on the benefits. They are more likely to implement the strategy in their classroom. RESEARCH “Analyzing the Role of Visual Clues in Developing Prediction-Making Skills of …Language Learners”, The CATESOL Journal 27.1.2015. According to this research study, the use of visuals for context clues are beneficial for the learner. Learners are able to “think critically about what they are reading.” Pictures need to appeal to the students ’cultural background and age, to optimize the benefits. As Emily Campbell articulates, “…the most effective visual clues are those that activate the students; schemata, as children are more likely to understand something they can relate to, and that are appropriate to their developmental level.” Prediction should be a regular activity and it does not matter if a child gets it wrong, what is important is the process. “ When students do not predict, they lose interest in the story and stop reading.” Prediction is positive, strengthens students’ “motivation and independent thinking” as well as connecting to what they already know with the “ new information “ that they have gained from the text. The use of ThinkDot is to differentiate; make the learning experience fun and it appeals to kinesthetic learning. “Reading with a pencil” – is a “close reading” strategy. It aids the learner to do a number of things : Identify new or confusing new words; main points and evidence; make connections to the text and understand the text. Read with a pencil” helps students to DEEPLY comprehend a text” as Jen Bradshaw highlighted in her article, “Close Reading- How to read with a pencil strategy,”www.Teacherkarma.com RESEARCH : www.curry.virginia.edu, ‘Cubing and ThinkingDOTS” This strategy uses Bloom’s Taxonomy (Remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing and evaluating). The cube has six sides in which you have to use a specific skill. Forces the learner to see things from different angles. It is fun as the learner throws the cube and does the task that comes up. It is differentiated, as you can have different leveled groups have different cubes to stimulate their thinking skills. Also, differentiate according to interests or learning styles of the group. Flexibility of the strategy is that the cubes/laminated thinkDOTs can be done individually or in pairs of as a group. Students get a chance to roll the cube at least twice depending on the task and how much time you have allocated to the activity. www.daretodifferentiate.wikispaces Students are engaged “in idea and information processing activities.” Can be used as an AFL strategy, too. The activity has a twofold purpose: Participants see how this strategy works. Evaluate on my session, at the same time. RESEARCH Student engagement Wheel (For Teachers to self-assess, www.scappooseengagement.wikispaces A self-assessment tool for teachers to see how engaged her students were during the lesson. Wheel has 10 spokes. Each spoke focuses on a specific way that you get your students engaged. You count the number of spokes and get a total. 0-1 2-3 4-5 6 and up So, it would be great to have the score at least 4. You can get a class average over the week. The point to the “Throw the ball” is to engage all participants, not just rely on volunteers. It is fun. It requires quick thinking skills. It can encourage critical thinking skills, too. It is a quick way to gauge what the participants have learnt and their reflection of the game. The participants draw upon their world of experience and share with the group their thoughts. I chose this strategy as it promotes active reading and student engagement. It is different and makes reading fun. Participants view the actual strategy and how it works in a real classroom. I quite like the teacher’s explanations to the viewer and the real life classroom situation where one witnesses how his enthusiasm is contagious on the students. Benefits of the game: According to the speaker in the video: 1. Emphasizes key words and comprehension of the text. 2. The use of hands adds a motor element that deepens their understanding of the text. 3. By asking questions, they are building their paraphrasing and summary skills. 4. Perfect situation: one person who really wants to teach and the other who really wants to learn. Both are involved in the game. Participants get a feel of the game and how it is played. RESEARCH “ Cruizin’ Through WBT”, September 20th, 2012 by Ms Cruz. (A teacher’s perspective on how this strategy really worked in her classroom.) Step 1 : “Dramatic Reading” It is good idea to pair a” high ability” and a “middle” student ; a “middle” and a “low” student. Better to pair low and middle as the low student might feel threatened and shy in front of the high student. Might feel anxious and we want to avoid that. “Partner1 read slowly and VERY dramatically while Partner 2 comes up with gestures to go along with the story. Praise those students who are reading dramatically, really loudly and the ones doing the gesturing, do so not with comments but with body language. Step 2: “Paraphrasing” Partner 1 paraphrases the story and uses bodily movements too, while partner 2 copies the gestures of partner 1. Step 3: “Q and A” Partner 1 thinks of questions to the story and asks dramatically using bogy movements and partner 2 answers also, dramatically using body movements. Step 4: Partner 1 is the crazy professor and partner 2 is the student. Using gestures- facial and/or body, the crazy professor summarizes the story while asking the student to copy the gestures. The enthusiastic student keeps saying, “ Tell me more, tell me more”. And, they switch roles. This step is meant to be the most active and amusing. Some benefits: “ Using gestures , and even reading words expressively activates the WHOLE brain,…which means memory is stored in different areas of the brain which equals MORE COMPREHENSION AND RECOLLECTION.” Body movements appeal to the kinesthetic learners. “This game brings words to life and makes it FUN so that they are remembered. Learning happens when we connect old information with new information!” ' Creative Games for the Language Class' by Lee Su Kim 'Forum' Vol. 33 No 1, January - March 1995, Page 35. “1.Games are a welcome break from the usual routine of the language class. 2. They are motivating and challenging. 3. Learning a language requires a great deal of effort. Games help students to make and sustain the effort of learning. 4. Games provide language practice in the various skills- speaking, writing, listening and reading. 5. They encourage students to interact and communicate. 6. They create a meaningful context for language use.'” 'The Use of Games For Vocabulary Presentation and Revision' by Agnieszka Uberman 'Forum' Vol. 36 No 1, January - March 1998 Page 20. "Games can lower anxiety, thus making the acquisition of input more likely" (Richard-Amato 1988:147). They are highly motivating and entertaining, and they can give shy students more opportunity to express their opinions and feelings (Hansen 1994:118). They also enable learners to acquire new experiences within a foreign language which are not always possible during a typical lesson. Furthermore, to quote Richard-Amato, they, "add diversion to the regular classroom activities," break the ice, "[but also] they are used to introduce new ideas" (1988:147). In the easy, relaxed atmosphere which is created by using games, students remember things faster and better (Wierus and Wierus 1994:218)” It is a fun way to reflect on the session. The aim is for the participant to use this strategy in their own classes. . Other research: Nina Fiore,’ The Benefits of movement in schools”, THE CREATIVITY POST, | Aug 08, 2014 http://www.readwritethink.org/files http://www.fortheteachers.org/friday-five-cubing/ Faye’s Blog,” Peer Assessment”, January 2o,2013 Resources required for training program: Physical resources such as infrastructure of a training room, chairs, boards, chalks, podium Financial resources is highly important Technological resources Training venue: Institutions should have a specific training room with necessary training accessibilities. Learners who are having health issues can get an effective online training as well. In addition, the lectures of trainers can be saved in a pen-drive. The teachers who are unable to attend the training session can attend the session at a later convenient date. Realistic time frame: English faculty meeting time and the PD week would be the perfect time for conducting the training session While providing the training session every head of the department would have to be present. At the same time, the delivery arrangement regarding the training program would be confirmed with the help of the head of department and the AVP. While providing the training, the trainers would have an effective communication with the management to conduct the entire session systematically.   Bibliography: Cardon, Teresa A. "Teaching caregivers to implement video modeling imitation training via iPad for their children with autism." Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 6, no. 4 (2012): 1389-1400. Finan, E., Z. Bismilla, C. Campbell, V. Leblanc, A. Jefferies, and H. E. Whyte. "Improved procedural performance following a simulation training session may not be transferable to the clinical environment." Journal of Perinatology 32, no. 7 (2012): 539-544. Reece, Ian, and Stephen Walker. Teaching, training and learning: A practical guide. Business Education Publishers Ltd, 2016. Stuart, Graham. Great Teachers: Attracting, Training and Retaining the Best, Ninth Report of Session 2010-12, Vol. 2: Oral and Written Evidence. Vol. 2. The Stationery Office, 2012.