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Organising the CPD Exchange: Week #7

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A weekly blog on lessons learned by PDNorth Events Lead, Lou Mycroft

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about all the events we have in FE – more than we ever used to, or I lived under a rock at Northern College (possible). Since Twitter, they have become a lot more transparent. I love following the hashtag when I can’t physically attend and I get frustrated now if an event doesn’t have a hashtag! Breaking the ‘fourth wall’ of closed events allows for diversity and in particular the voices of those who can’t afford/can’t get free of work/are not empowered to be there.

So as we begin to close on the workshop presentations for #PDNorth2020 I’ve been thinking about two things:

  1. How do we open the workshops up even more effectively to amplify voices in our sector who go unheard? More than ever, with uncertainty ahead, behind and under our feet, it feels important to let new thinking in.

And, given the steep learning curve of the past weeks,

  1. How can we support workshop presenters to create inter-active workshops in a digital space? 

I’ve been dropping into various events and I’ve seen some great practice (and some terrible practice too). I don’t think it’s just me who is finding that screen time is exacerbating my short attention span. Like other ADHDers, when I find flow and focus I can be in it for hours, but there’s something about Zoom which makes that harder to hold onto. When there’s something for me to contribute – a mentimeter, perhaps, or responding to a question in chat, I can pull myself back into the conversation. It needn’t be anything fancy. This is about relationship building, to hear new thinking and ideas. 

I’ll report back progress in a fortnight and I’ll tweet those questions out too. I’d love to know what you think.

Book here for the CPD exchange: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pd-north-virtual-cpd-exchange-tickets-101550022852

Using ‘Job Sheets’ to Get Prisoners into Maths & English

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By Barry Hartle, Instructional Officer –  HMP Haverigg

From meetings with Claire Collins (PDNorth Exchange Lead) and Dave Everett (my manager) on the idea of introducing embedded learning maths and English into the workshops I was asked if I could develop ways to engage the prisoners to improve their maths and English.

With prisoners not wanting to engage in education, I came up with the idea of developing work related job sheets that didn’t look like an education test sheet.

The sheets had:

  • A pictorial cover sheet of the finished product or the equipment the prisoners were going to use to complete the product they were working on.
  • No more than five questions on maths and English; this could have consisted of three maths and two English related questions, the variations could be any, all English or all maths etc.
  • A feedback section for the prisoner instructor. I also decided to change the naming from prisoner and instructor to employee and employer, so the prisoner could take them when they were discharged from the prison.

 

To engage the instructors on this was difficult because they were thinking: “more work added to my work load?!”, but after having a meeting with all the instructors, I explained that the job sheets would be based on  information they gave to me on the products being made in each workshop and that it would be me designing the job sheets as I was their pen and paper =This seemed to get full approval.

We now have four workshops delivering the job sheets with very good feedback from the prisoners and the instructors. With the  prisoners who say they can’t do maths and English: the instructors are able to say to them, that they have answered questions at certain levels. This with the possibility of encouraging them to take up education and at the moment we have a good success in doing that.

This is an ongoing development making the sheets at different levels to show progression of their maths and English. For us here, this was the way to go. The idea is there and could be developed in other areas.

 

 

 

You can download Barry’s Job Sheets (and other task based learning resources) for use in your own workshop by clicking the image to the right:

 

Unlocking the ESOL Mindset

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Delivering a workshop at a national conference

by Colette Butterworth & Sue Primrose

This year the NATECLA (National Association for Teaching English and Other Community Languages to Adults) conference was held in Birmingham.  This national, annual conference is a huge event that is held specifically for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) practitioners.  This year there was a variety of workshops, a resources exhibition and an Ascentis Teachmeet.

Sue Primrose and I delivered a workshop called “Unlocking the ESOL mindset”.  This workshop looked at how to develop a learner’s mindset so that they can learn more effectively as they gain a better understanding of their own thinking and develop strategies to tackle internal and external barriers. Practical and interactive exercises were demonstrated to show how structured and deeper questioning in the ESOL classroom can guide learners to become more reflective and autonomous thus taking ownership of their progress.

 

Having never presented at or even attended a national CPD conference, we were unsure what to expect.  Would we buckle at the knees and freeze?  All these thoughts were flying through my mind so in a state of nervous excitement I began the seminar.  Fortuitously, we had provided 30 packs because instead of the 18 delegates we were expecting, there were instead, 29 attendees.

 

We came up with some ideas for our students to think in a more creative way to enable them to become more independent in their learning.  For a warmer exercise, we started with a competition.  The prize was a big bag of fruit to keep the winning delegate energised for the weekend.  The warmer allows the teachers to work out the students’ starting points and the barriers to their learning.  This then allows the teachers to encourage the students with barriers to become responsible for their own learning and think about how they can manage their time. We then moved on to a Padlet which included creative thinking exercises and reading images using ‘wh’ questions and ‘What if…’ questions.  The main part of the seminar was to deconstruct the goals of each student to allow them to think about what they want to achieve and how and when they are going to go about achieving it.  It allows the students to take personal responsibility for the work they do throughout the year to achieve their goals.  Some teachers were unsure how to apply the techniques. This was particularly at lower levels, where the students’ command of English is weaker. However, we were able to offer advice about questioning techniques and showing the value of students taking responsibility for their own learning. The sooner this is done the better!

The seminar was thought-provoking and it gave the delegates some ideas of how to encourage more independent study skills with their students. The feedback we received from NATECLA was tremendous.  Delivering at a conference and sharing ideas was a great experience.  We can all learn by sharing resources and ideas through conferences, teachmeets, blogging and Twitter.  I think these are all worthy ways to bring good practice together. We hope to present again next year and look forward to seeing more innovative teachers delivering at future conferences.

Teaching Basic Literacy – Quick and easy strategies for the toolkit

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Teaching basic literacy

by Chloe Hynes 

 

In recent years we have become increasingly more concerned with social practice approaches to ELT (English Language Teaching) pedagogy as opposed to a focus on skills (a bottom up approach encouraged by Skills for Life strategy). In her workshop: ‘Teaching Basic Literacy Skills’, Anne-Margaret Smith (ELT Well) suggested we shouldn’t necessarily favour either of these attitudes but instead combine the top down and bottom up models to form a complimentary teaching and learning experience.

 

Begin with the spoken word

Anne-Margaret explained that once we become competent in literacy, it’s hard to remember what the difficulties may be. Particularly for learners who are building upon the foundation of another language. These foundations may be solid but they may also be rather rocky, if existent at all. Anyone who has learned a foreign language (or attended the foreign language lesson in a CELTA course) may remember some of these difficulties: A new script, new sounds, discovering patterns, needing to break habits, forgetting,  lack of confidence…

It’s ideal if we can begin with the spoken word because “nobody is born with a pen in their hand” but also – and more specifically for our adults – because this will give learners the confidence and empowerment to use language, play with it and make mistakes.

 

Next, lay the foundations

The social practice point of view suggests we should begin by asking our learners what motivates them and what interactions are most important to them. From here you can build something to work towards. Anne-Margaret suggests asking your learners to bring in a text that they want to be able to read and keep it in their file or book. This then acts as a physical reminder of their goal and something to work towards. It also helps you to make your planning more personalised.

 

To combine with skills practice: it’s integral we start at the beginning and that means starting with the alphabet. Teach both names and sounds (all of them!) and focus on 1 (or a handful) each lesson, preferably vowels first and progressing to variations a little later e.g. teach f first then later teach the ph blend.


Then, move on

Smith implored that recognition should come before production. This recognition can help with decoding skills. To illustrate, we were tasked with decoding a little Korean!

 

Flashcards are a staple in the ESOL classroom but Anne-Margaret suggested asking your students to make their own so they can choose words that are most relevant to them and their lives (with some suggestion from yourself, ofcourse!).

 

At this point the learners may start to notice patterns, but due to the complexity of the English language these patterns and rules are rarely steadfast. In fact, the top 100 most used words are mostly irregular!

 

Anne-Margaret finished with a particularly interesting activity for teaching context. Using the Jabberworky as a colourful lead in, use nonesense words within a piece of text and invite learners to guess their meaning from reading the rest of the sentence (or paragraph). Most importantly – follow up by asking questions so they can share why they came to their conclusions.

 

 

Considerations

  1. In your first lesson explore what learners are comfortable with: different pens, pencils and paper (or whiteboards). Bear in mind that some learners may have never held a pen before or have negative associations attached to writing materials from school experiences.
  2. Be considerate of fonts used in printed materials. Some letters look different in font form than written which can cause confusion eg. many fonts use the hooded ‘a’ and circular ‘g’. A Sans Serif font is always recommended as the rounded letters are easier to read for many learners. Sassoon, Tahoma and Century Gothic are good options.
  3. Some languages are pictorial, communicating through concepts and ideas which ‘build’ visually rather than individual written words e.g. Chinese.
  4. Don’t make assumptions on prior knowledge of script. Not every language which uses the Roman alphabet uses all the letters we use in English. Additionally – some languages use more letters than the 26 letters used in English!

 

 

 

 

Anne-Margaret’s workshops are always an absolute pleasure to attend. She does so much more for inclusion, SpLD support and ELT via her company, ELTWell. For more information on all the work ELTWell does go to: http://eltwell.com/

 

 

ELT Acronyms FYI (For Your Information):

ELT – English Language Teaching

ESOL – English for Speakers of Other Languages

EAL – English as an Additional Language

EfL – English as a Foreign Language

EAP – English for Academic Purposes.

 

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#PDNorth2020

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The CPD Exchange 2020

Summer 2020 saw the culmination of our 3 (+) years together as a programme funded by the Education + Training Foundation. To celebrate the past and to look to the future we threw a big party! Whilst we originally planned for the ‘do’ to be held in our three regions with a digital link-up between the three, instead we were restricted to taking the party fully online. We took the challenge head-on and you can read all about it from our events lead, Lou Mycroft starting here.

Like any other conference, you’d expect: a sign-in desk, exhibitions, a main room with keynotes, tweeting, workshops and a chance to network and chat. Using Wakelet as our starting point – we crammed all of that in, and more!

Below is the post-event curated Wakelet including extra resources, feedback, tweets and even workshop recordings from the day.

Enjoy!