Category: Day 5 - Friday

Some might be asking if it’s true that many English conversation schools that claimed to offer “fun English classes” and “lessons with native English teachers” are closing their doors, while many English cram schools are overflowing with students and even have waiting lists.

One of the reasons for this possible shift from English conversation classes to English cram schools is that many parents are beginning to feel a disconnect between what these native English classes offer, and what their children need to succeed at junior high school English.

These parents who send their elementary school children to learn English want their children to have completed the third grade of junior high school by the sixth grade, or to pass English certification tests like Eiken.

This presentation will focus on grammar instruction following the new curriculum guidelines for junior high schools starting in 2021. By doing this three-year curriculum for middle school, students will inevitably reach the level of EIKEN Level 3.

We will show you how to incorporate better, ministry guided grammar instruction, while maintaining the individuality of your school.

(1) This teaching material corresponds to the new Courses of Study presented by MEXT for 2021.

(2) The text uses UD fonts, which will be used in school books from 2021.

(3) These materials are designed for elementary school students who are studying the contents of the third year of junior high school or up to Level 3 of the EIKEN.

(4) It will be useful when explaining grammar in both your online and in-person classes.

(5) The file format is Microsoft Power Point. You can download it free from the App store to open it with your iOS devices.

With representatives from Global PD Organizations including, APVEA, JALT, KoTESOL, LatinCALL, OTJ, and TESOL Gulf.

How have professional development groups coped with their new circumstances during these past 18 months, in particular with the need to incorporate technology into education? Most of us are familiar with at least OTJ, but what of other groups around the world? How have they grown and changed due to these new challenges? What developments do they foresee – both good and bad – due to the pandemic and the circumstances it brought? Online teaching was forced on most of us. It was a shock to many but for others it was a light bulb moment. For others it was “yes, now everyone sees the benefits of technology in education”, whilst for others it was “look at what this has done to the quality of education”. We doubt anyone will be able to conclusively say what was right and what was wrong but a lot of interesting changes and challenges were born of the pandemic. Come and listen to representatives from the PD and technology groups from around the world and share your thoughts and ideas with them in this roundtable discussion.

Upcoming Global Events

• 2021 KOTESOL Filmmaking Festival and National Conference
• PacCALL’S GloCALL 2021 Conference – Kuala Lumpur
• LatinCALL Webinar Series- September 3rd, 2021

David, Cassie, José, and Adam will have a discussion on the past, present and future of of online learning and the role OTJ has in shaping and adapting to that future. 

The past 18 months have seen us all through OTJ create a vibrant community of teachers helping teachers, but what happens from here? The pandemic is still very much affecting our work. OTJ will certainly remain relevant for the foreseeable future even if we just kept going unchanged. But how do we make sure that what we have created as a community resource keeps its momentum?

Join the four of us in a discussion about what is in store for OTJ.

“The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”

This presentation will describe how to include discussions in a graduate-level course for science majors. The discussions are in small random breakout room groups which meet weekly to talk about events from their laboratory or research lives. The chats are unscripted, and the main point is to share their experiences with scientific topics that are familiar to each student. Students come to learn how to simplify their language for students in different majors, as well as how to describe science-related topics that are familiar to them. This is a prelude to finding themselves at conferences and chatting with other researchers using English as a common language. The teacher circulates to each group to listen in and offer advice, then when the discussions are over, the teacher recaps common mistakes or problems. email: glenahill@gmail.com

This presentation was on the BigBlueButton (BBB) system, not Zoom. If you want to see some of the controls, check out the Google Drive doc linked here.  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RDi5eU9PJ4XBYT-EAozJyyA1Z2QaTC_N/view?usp=sharing 

If there’s anything we can learn from this COVID 19 pandemic is that education is a privilege. To be able to learn online is a privilege that not all learners across the world can experience. Imagine being a student from a country where learning resources are scare already to begin with, and then COVID 19 happens and then a military takes over the country and starts arresting youths for taking part in protests. In a situation like this, how can the youth continue their education? Should they stop learning entirely? Can they continue to learn from free resources available? On the other hand, how can language teachers from abroad or the diaspora help learners continue with their language learning journey? I’d like to talk about what I have been doing to help learners in Myanmar continue their language learning and with this talk, I want to brainstorm ideas on 1). How teachers from different contexts can help 2). How we can use the ideas to introduce/integrate equity and diversity topics in our classes and 3). How can we connect our learners with the learners from conflict zones?

With students unable to meet in person with any of their classmates during online classes, many (especially first-year students) feel alone, isolated, and unsupported by teachers or classmates. What can we as online teachers do to help students get to know their classmates, feel engaged and supported, and feel like they are part of a community? This presentation demonstrates simple, low-tech ways to engage students and turn your class into a community for learning and socializing. (This is for teachers seeking low-tech options. High-tech teachers, walk away.) But there will be opportunities for participating teachers to exchange ideas.

My Share presentations are often a number of 10 to 15 minute long talks. However, my goal for this SS21 time slot is where we can have discussions and share our ideas and ways of doing all of those ‘tricks of the trade’ activities.

Volunteers are needed to give a short presentation and then manage the discussion. Some of the ideas that I have been thinking about are Teaching YL online, Teaching YL outside, Q&A time…….

Please contact me at maryvirgiluchida@gmail.com if you want to join the team.