2017 January | LAKMA and BC winter school “Focus on Teenagers”

The British Council and LAKMA are pleased to invite English language teachers to a WINTER SCHOOL 2017 “FOCUS ON THE TEENAGERS: resources and methods”.“Focus on the Teenagers: resources and methods” is a two-day training course for teachers of English working at the lower secondary level in Lithuanian schools. It aims at helping the teachers to enhance their professional competences which are necessary to meet the needs of their teenage students. TARGET GROUP- teachers of young teenagers working at the lower secondary level of education- teachers from different regions of Lithuania- teachers representing and / or working with students from various cultural / ethnic groups- teachers with different working experience, including pre-service teachers / trainees 

VENUE  The Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences, Studentų g. 39, Vilnius

DATE    6–7 January 2017PRESENTERS AND THEMESPaul Braddock. TeachingEnglish and CPD resources.Michael Connoly.  British Council programme “Teaching for Success”.Chaz Pugliese. Why Creativity is the Teacher’s best friend. 

Paul Braddock. TeachingEnglish and CPD resources.  

In this workshop, we’ll be looking at the British Council’s TeachingEnglish website and, in particular, at the resources to help you with your continuing professional development (CPD) aimed at improving student outcomes. I’ll show you some of the video content, articles and webinars that can all be accessed for free. We’ll also look at our self-assessment tool to help you reflect on your teaching and select pathways for your development on an ongoing basis. I will demonstrate how our paid-for self-study modules can be integrated with our free resources on TeachingEnglish by looking at potential ways of expanding your learning, including our MOOCs, webinars, communities of practice and online conference.

Paul Braddock is the manager of the British Council’s TeachingEnglish website. He has been involved in the development of the British Council’s new global Continuing Professional Development framework for teachers and aligning this with content on TeachingEnglish. He is currently involved in the implementation and marketing of online teacher development courses as part of the British Council’s Teaching for Success approach to professional development. Now based in Barcelona, he has previously worked in Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Japan and the UK as a teacher and teacher trainer.

Michael Connoly. British Council programme Teaching for Success.

In this talk, Michael will ask participants to reflect on their current professional development journeys, their needs, and what might help them in the future. He will introduce the Teaching for Success programme, which seeks to ensure that all English teachers have high-quality continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities that improve their own practice and their learners’ success. We will look at British Council resources and examine how they could best support teachers in Lithuania. Finally, we’ll look at how we might monitor CPD activity from a variety of perspectives, trying to ensure that we keep learners and learning at the centre of professional development planning.

Michael Connolly is the British Council Manager English for Education Systems in Europe, based in the Czech Republic. Michael began his career in 1998 in Japan, working as a language assistant in local high schools. He has since worked in a variety of teaching, teacher training and academic management roles in Spain, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and India. Currently, Michael is responsible for the strategic direction, leadership and management of British Council English teacher development projects across the EU.

Chaz Pugliese. Why Creativity is the Teacher’s best friend.

In this workshop I will suggest that teaching creatively has an impact on the students’ enthusiasm and may fuel their interest and curiosity to learn. The workshop strives to combine theoretical input with the practice. We will firstly debunk a few myths and look at the different types of creativity. We will then outline strategies that may enhance our creative potential, and finally, we will illustrate with numerous practical examples how these can be implemented in the classroom. The ultimate goal is for the teacher to come up with teaching ideas that engage their students both affectively and cognitively, are simple to use, require little or no preparation and are fun and challenging to do in the classroom.

I’m a trainer, presenter and author working out of Paris. I’ve been a regular presenter at internatonal conferences over the years, have trained teachers in over 30 countries and have contributed extensively to several ELT journals. My research subjects are: Creativity in Education, Motivation, Group Processes, Fluency and teaching spoken language. My publications include: Being Creative: the Challenge of Change in the Classroom was (DELTA, 2010);The Principled Communicative Approach’ with Zoltàn Dörnyei and Jane Arnold, (Helbling, 2015); Creating Motivation (Helbling, in press). I’m a founding member (with Alan Maley) of the C-group (Creativity for a Change) www.thecreativitygroup/weebly.com I’m also a keen jazz and blues guitarist, and I like any music that’s honest, genuine and raw.