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Developing learners' oracy skills through three types of talk
In this professional development event for secondary teachers, I illustrated how learners' oracy can be developed by targeting three types of student talk in speaking activities, using the framework designed by the National Literacy Trust (2012). We looked at various ways of incorporating dialogic, exploratory, and Socratic talk in discussion tasks, question-and-answer activities, and spoken presentations.
In the workshop, I helped the teachers to create a marking criteria for assessing spoken presentations and a self-evaluation form for peer-to-peer feedback.
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Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and Learner Agency
In
this series of workshops, I used a mix of needs analysis, reflective practice, and modelling to
help teachers connect their current teaching practice to Social-Emotional Learning and Learner Agency. The participants did hands-on activities, shared ideas with each other, and reflected on what they had done.
Macmillan Education Days 2024 are jointly organised by Macmillan Education and Mondadori Education in Italy.
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Cambridge YLE Movers and Flyers
In these online workshops, I used needs analysis and reflective practice to help teachers prepare their students for the Movers and Flyers exams. I identified the teachers' needs, created the space for them to share classroom ideas, and gave them additional suggestions based on my teaching experience.
I also guided the workshop participants on how to interpret the criteria statements for writing and speaking, which they subsequently applied to assessing sample candidates' responses.
Organised by International House Milan and San Donato, I received official training from Sarah Ellis (Cambridge Assessment English Italy) in October 2021.
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Assessing Cambridge Preliminary, First and Advanced Speaking
In this series of workshops, I used reflective practice as an approach to help teachers fine-tune their assessment of learners. We identified the main indicators of each of the four key marking criteria. I guided the workshop participants on how to interpret the criteria statements, which they subsequently applied to assessing sample Cambridge Speaking exams.
Organised by International House Milan and San Donato, I received official training from Sarah Ellis (Cambridge Assessment English Italy) in October 2021.
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IELTS Tips for candidates
This recurring webinar ran weekly until August 2021. In each session, I showed the prospective candidates some test strategies for each of the four test components: listening, reading, writing and speaking. There were opportunities for the webinar participants to apply the strategies to selected IELTS tasks. Towards the end of the webinar, I spared five minutes for a Q & A.
IELTS Tips was a product of International House Milan and San Donato, Italy.
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Bringing IELTS alive in the classroom
Mentored by my former colleague Gary Hislop, I delivered the part on teaching IELTS Academic Writing in this workshop. Gary looked after the other part on IELTS Speaking. We used modelling as an approach to demonstrate how teachers can guide their students step-by-step in Writing Tasks 1 and 2, as well as encourage weaker learners to produce extended stretches of speech.
This series of workshops was organised by International House Milan and San Donato, Italy in collaboration with Anderson House, Bergamo (February 2020) and a local secondary school in Monza (April 2020).
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