Webinar #1

 

GPTE students participated in a Webinar entitled Teaching English to Young learners using Visuals presented by the talented Dominika Krawczynska. The aim was to present various activities that can be incorporated into online class. This was extremely helpful for teachers as myself, who have been trained for conducting lessons in a physical classroom and completely unprepared for online classes.

First of all, she starts with activities that are already known by educators and simply transferring those tools in our online classroom. For example: the use of flash cards, realia, pictures (from coursebooks), multimedia, gestures and miming. One can still play games with flashcards virtually such as which picture/word is missing? Tell me when to stop and go find something in room.

Online classes can still incorporate our beloved puppets. The main advantage is that children believe that the puppet is real and they don’t see the teacher hand up his/her backside (if you know what I mean). There are still a lot of activities that an educator can do with a puppet as he/she can introduce an activity or play/talk with students (e.g. odd one out, What colour is your…? True or false questions and storytelling). A good tip is to create videos with your puppet to teach vocabulary, it will be a true superstar that student won’t get enough of. So, thanks to this presentation, teachers do not need to freak out about their lessons as they have a bunch of activities up their sleeves.

She mentions the abundant advantages of teaching online. For instance, one can show students realia that we don’t have to carry! Things can from our own homes such as, clothes, plants, kitchen utensils. And it can be interactive as pupils are able to show us things, for example their favourite toy, pet or food which would not be possible to bring in a physical classroom.

Dominika presented three useful online websites and apps. She mentions a few websites such as Wordwall, and Liniot. But the third one was the most interesting. Inshot is a website or an app on your electronic device. This app can help a teacher to create their own content such as an educational video.

My favourite part of the presentation was the inclusion of Art activities. There are many benefits of art activities as they help student’s cognitive function, enhance problem-solving skills, improve verbal abilities, and, of course create a positive attitude toward the target language. It was interesting that Dominika used famous paintings in her lessons such as Stary Night by Van Gogh. She connected this specific painting with a classic English song as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Thus, there a number of activities can still be done online as drawing a picture, arts and crafts, mixing colours and etc.

Overall, I was inspired to not let the current situation worsen the quality of my lessons because there is a lot that can still be done.

Please leave a comment down below, what was your favourite part of the Webinar?

Sara