Last Saturday 14th March some Infants, Primary and Secondary English Teachers attended the Macmillan teacher’s day. Rosana Cagigas, Erika Alonso,Diana Santiago, Beth Boyle, Tania Santiago, Maria Arzúa and Belen Orbea enjoyed some very interesting talks related to the issue of communicating in the 21st century. The following ones may serve as an example.
Alanna Gluck Speaking – a skill for life! (ESO)
She started her talk by asking if our students had difficulty speaking in front of the class and pointed out that public speaking skills do not develop over night. In this session, we learnt fun and simple public speaking games to include in our daily classroom activities that will definitely boost the confidence of every student, encouraging them to speak publicly no matter their English level.
It is true, Alanna said, that potencially we have a wealth of resources at our fingertips – course books, resource books, printed and digital activities, the list goes on. However, we don’t always have the time or the energy to really make the most of these resources. In this session,she clearly demonstrated how we can extend the use of our English class book and resources with fun,visual and practical ideas that can be easily made or incorporated into daily classroom use and curriculum planning. She insisted that using tools like what’s app and Twitter in the English classroom would definitely boost our studen’s confidence when speaking and writing as they are natural ways they have of communicating nowadays.
Alena Widows
Promoting 21st century skills in the English language classroom
This session explored the current research on 21st century skills and demonstrated activities that integrate those skills into the English language classroom so that we are not only giving students the language they need to succeed but showing them how to effectively use it in an ever- changing world. In her talk she paid a great importance to using debates in a well structured way as this technique brings together the most important aspects of good communication.