Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Melipilla Report

28 teachers from the Metropolitana Region participated in the first workshop "Stand and Deliver". It was a very active and rewarding day.
The programme included four sessions. The first one started with an introduction to what the expression "Stand and Deliver" means. This expression comes from the stories of old, when the bandits would assault the rich people, travelling in their horse and carriage through the forests of England with "Stand and deliver", meaning "Give up all your goods", leaving the victims with nothing. The metaphor is that teachers participating in the sessions will become aware of their need to stand and deliver quality active lessons using drama techniques and stagecraft. In this way they should be able to better motivate their students to also "Stand and Deliver" with confidence, and a certain presence, their growing repertoire of English language competence.

Part of the first and the second session included an "active activity" called the layers of the onion, where teachers reflected on and shared the problems they face everyday in their practice and expressed why they had decided to attend this workshop.


There was also a revision of theoretical concepts, like
*what is drama?
*how does confidence relate to liking and motivation
*which is more important? fluency or accuracy?
We also discussed the different skills and resources a teacher should reflect on and use in the classroom.
After lunch, Susan had the teachers participate in some activities in order to wake students up, since after lunch everyone was thinking about a siesta! Once the participants had been "refreshed" we went through different activities that can work in large, mixed-ability classes (40-45 students). Teachers became students, and, we have to say, they behaved very well and participated actively. There was lots of activity, laughter and learning.

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