Dear ToTs in Danang and HCMC
It's Friday and our week together is almost at an end.
We hope you have found the workshop both interesting and useful. We have certainly enjoyed working with you again - and reading all your reflections on Phases 1-3 (We hope to respond to these separately later).
So, now for your final task. We would like you to spend a little time to reflect on the past week, and in particular how you feel about the process of developing your workshop plans and using this online community. Try to do this over the next few days while it is still fresh in your mind.
We look forward to reading your posts.
Best of luck with your workshop planning and materials development and of course with the delivery of your 3 day workshop next month.
Davide, Debbie, Julia and Rebecca
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With regard to the past week's Training Workshop, it can be said that the workshop was successful in terms of organization,sequence and delivery. All of us-the HCMC key trainers have made an attempt to develop the workshop plan and get the job done under time pressure with lots of support and constructive feedback from our Master Trainers-Davide and Julia. In fact, we all actively engaged in shaping our highly-structured workshop plan though there were a lot of things related to content, material, tasks/activities that need to be of concern.
The first matter of considerable concern is always the quetion of time allocated for each session. Some sessions looked nice on paper but might take longer than expected due to the amount of information on the power point slides shown in the micro training session . Perhaps, the trainer could have cut down on those slides and kept refering back to the information given in the previuos demos.
Another issue to take into consideration is how to give concepts and balance between theoretical input and practice . Maybe more support and examples could have helped.
One more thing of concern is that who is going to cover the part of the trainer who happens to get sick / be absent from the Teacher Traning Workshop for personal/ family reasons. Therefore, each trainer is supposed to get ready for his/her own part as well as to cover his/her peers' session in case.
To sum up the workshop proves to me that there is always a desire for professional development amongst key trainers. I do hope that we will be able to keep this flame burning in our future workshops thanks to the enthusiasm and the support from our Master Trainers.
Thanks to the 1st workshop of phase 4. I have achieved many useful and practical things from my master trainers
-Setingt up issues and thinking causes and possible sollusions
-Reviewing the role of teachers'needs is important in workshop plan
-Reviewing professional development
-Reviewing the differences between aims and objectives
-Chosing interesting topics based on teachers' needs
-Impoving some outcomes following "SMARTER cretirias"
-Reviewing some criterias for evaluating a workshop
-Great ideas from the master trainers about my micro demos: logical steps through sessions and 3 day workshop
-Not overload language and content in the workshop, slow down to make sure everything clear
-Link and remind or use somethings in previous parts for my session
-Teamwork for workshop success
Thanks so much my master trainers, you're very suppotive. Anytime I have chance to work with you, It's a wonderful time to learn many experiences from you Everything seems fresh and new to me. I mean that I have to learn and practice a lot and a lot.
See all my master trainers soon
We have worked so hard over the past week. What we have now is a plan for the practice workshop in July even though it still needs developing further. In fact, we felt a little challanged at first because we had to do everyting, but at the end of the workshop, we could have an overal idea about what to do in the three day workshop. What I really in the phase four is our group made choice of the topic for the practice workshop based on teachers' needs as well as the current teaching context of PELT in Danang city. After discussing together, we finalised the topic, i.e. "Adapting Activities from Coursebook", which is expected to meet PELT teachers' demands.In addition, all the trainers in my group were very satisfied when we could identify and solve problems by ourselves. Compared with the workshops of phase 3, this workshop helped us learn a lot. I'm very impressed with the way master trainers asked us to work out the outcomes of each session so that in the end, we could have an overall aim for the whole workshop. In other words, we had to develop in a logical way in accordence with the priciples workshop (SMART).
I think this workshop benefits trainers a alot; and we still have lots of things to work on for the next workshops.
The first workshop of Phase 4 has given me a pleasant change from the regular teaching job, though that meant my work has been going uploaded at the same time.
We had a good start with reflections on good practice gained from phase 1-3, and lots of thoughtful analysis on issues and concerns we have encountered. Working together on the problem map provided us a thorough and logical insight into every aspect of the matter. I highly value my colleagues’ opinions as well as their devotion to the primary English teaching in our local area, and especially Rebecca’s commitment in tackling delicate challenges we have faced. Also, I am interested in the online communities of practice where I can find large amount of useful information and support for my job as a trainer. It should have been set up earlier so that we could share ideas during the whole project.
The development of practice workshop plan and training materials, in my opinion, is well-sequenced. The logical scaffolding in this process, from a thorough analysis of teachers’ needs to the determination of workshop topic and SMART learning outcomes, made the tasks specific and achievable to us all. Interestingly, we had exciting arguments which have brought about so many issues to take into consideration.
We have also taken full advantage of the delivery of micro-training sessions. Lots of laughter, arguments and colleagues’ comments after each session fed us beneficial ideas to adjust the sequence and materials more properly. I do recognize that assigning appropriate tasks among trainers and trying out training sessions beforehand have lots of impact on the success of the real training tasks.
Last but not least, the immediate support of master trainers and their enthusiasm during the workshop, along with the series of books awarded by BC have definitely given us a big hand in fulfilling our responsibilities. Without their help, we could not carried out such a great amount of work.
The first workshop of Phase 4 was really interesting and useful.
I am very intersted in this online community where I can share my problems and recieve advice from peers, where I can find a lot of useful information supporting my teaching.
At first, I felt it was challenging for us to do everything by ourselves(from analysing teachers' needs for choosing a relavant topic to producing a complete plan). Then, with the support from Master Trainers and after having several arguments, we finally completed our plan for the practice workshop in July. I am happy with the chosen topic because it is relevant to teachers' needs and their teaching context. And the micro-teaching session was very helpful. We recieved lots of constructive and supportive feedback which helped us to adjust the sequence, the activities, as well as the materials.
Many thanks to our experienced Master Trainers. We would not be able to do such great things without their support.