BC Young learners
10 a.m.–12-30 a.m., August, 27th
Facilitators - Maureen McGarvey, Vera Bobkova

Hi everyone,
Further goes a more or less detailed account of the discussion. In case you just want to get yourself acquainted with the outcome of the panel discussion and get hold of the links that came up throughout the discussion, I suggest you skip over right to the end of this post where all the practical particulars are (added: the results now go under each group’s name).

Maureen kicked off the discussion with an energetic monologue and after a few really funny jokes (who said the British have a peculiar sense of humour? Boldly tell them go jump in a like next time your hear this rubbish). Since I’m kind of new to the Moscow teacher community and not used to the ways, I was somewhat astonished at the amity hanging in the air (is it really that way all the time?) and the facilitators’ and teachers’ mutual and, beyond all else, genuine desire to share their ideas with all comers irrespective of age and social status (in stark contrast to the world outside of teaching).

Afterwards, the facilitators put the participants into color groups (not to worry! they were just given colored stickers J ), 2-3 persons each and set each group to jot down onto a placard the technology-oriented solutions/materials they rely on to teach a specific aspect of English to little kids. Below is what they ended up with. The discussion was largely centered on elementary school kids of 6-10.

The yellow group: “alphabet and the very first steps”

• Cartoons
• Open lessons
• Flashcards
• Watching video (e.g. wisadora)
• songs, chants, games, ex-s (physical)
• Art Work
• CD-ROMs (interactive)
• drawings by children
• assignments devised by children
• Art Work
• Youtube (GoGoLoves English), 3w.boowa-kwala.com, 3w.upto10.com
  

The Soft Pink Group : “Family and about myself”

• Colouring worksheets
• Drawing family tree
• power point presentation
• Oral test
• Create your own blog involving parents
• Britishcouncil for kids – songs and games
• Youtube – songs and poems for children
• Parties for children and parents (Testing)
• Games projects, posters (Testing)
• Englishtips.org
• multikulti.ru
• theatre
• dolls/toys
• interactive whiteboards

The Dark Pink group: “Animals, colors”

• Animals + colours
• Kids box (flashcards, DVDs, CDs)
• PlayWay 1, 2, 3, 4 (Video, Flashcards, CDs, puppets)
• Leap Frog (book, cartridge)
• Tedy’s Train (songs + CD)
• Performance: Three-Billy goats

The Red group: “Basic greetings”

• Text messages
• Flashcards
• Songs
• Roleplay games
• Group on Facebook, vkontakte
• e-mails

• www.onestopenglish.com, interactive boards
• school websites and social networking sites

The Green Group :“teaching basic grammar”

• social events and extracurricular activities
• web resources, learning English for kids
• Youtube cartoons and songs
• Songs, Games
• Interactive CD-ROMs and IWBs
• Visual aids
• The council of Europe, language portfolio (with parents, teachers) TESTING
• School links projects (Homework)
• Competition between student groups (teamwork, groupwork) TESTING
• printable tests from student’s book
• Mini projects (homework)

Next, Vera made a very impressive presentation of one most useful wiki-source she uses including all the related sub-sources you can access through the link to the main wiki page.

Beyond that a couple of sites were shown that really struck a chord with the audience. Here are the names:
starfall.com (a short clip on each alphabet letter)

genkienglish.net (an amusing “have you ever” song was played that prompts activity and promotes competition since it calls for choosing one of a 3-piece set of pictures popping up along the song that best matches the lyrics being played on the tape. Everyone got really excited at that point, so I’d most definitely give it a try)

After a short coffee break the participants under Vera and Maureena’s supervision flung themselves into sharing their outcomes (1 public presentation from each group’s spokesman). The results are pretty much what is mentioned above under the title of the respective group. Take a look if interested.

Now I think it's pretty much how the discussion went off. Thank you for your attention.

Bye for now. 

Links

• Wiki
• starfall.com (short clip on each alphabet letter)
• genkienglish.net
• GoGo loves English