I’ve just written a post for Barbara Sakamoto over at Teaching Village about the differences between teaching in Europe and in the UK. Even if you’re not interested in my post, I would heartily recommend taking a look at her blog as there are so many great contributions for teachers all over the world.
Enjoy!
From 2008 to 2011 I spent three brilliant years living and working in Brno in the Czech Republic. It’s difficult to put into words everything I love about the town and the country, so I decided to make a video instead. It’s about 20 minutes and shows my pictures and videos from the time I was there. I also tried to include as many people as possible. I hope you enjoy it and that it inspires you to visit this fascinating, little-known city in the east of the Czech Republic.
The Czech Republic: A Love Story from Sandy Millin on Vimeo.
Enjoy!
I read Cecilia Coelho’s most recent post with interest, wondering what prompted her to begin her adventure as a blog challenger, having been a sucker for any challenge that came her way. Being just as much of a sucker myself , here is my response to What’s your plan?
Having only started full-time teaching three years ago, I actually have copies of lesson plans on my computer from virtually every lesson I’ve taught at IH Brno. I had done some summer school teaching and a year of pre-CELTA, where my planning largely consisted of opening the book for 10-15 minutes and trying to work out if I knew the grammar (my poor students!) already, but when it got serious, I decided my plans should too.
The first format that I came up with was based on the CELTA plans I’d done, as I think many fresh teachers’ plans are. This is the plan for the first ever lesson I taught in Brno:
If you look closely you’ll see I still had an aims column on there. By the end of October, I stopped writing the aims, and a couple of weeks lately I deleted the column from the lesson plan. One thing you can see on the plan is where I’ve edited it after the lesson – this shows any changes I made, things we didn’t get through, ideas on how to improve the lesson if I teach something similar again and more.
It just so happens that this 1-2-1 student is the only one who I have taught for the entire time I’ve been in Brno, so here is a plan for the first lesson I taught with him in my second year in Brno:
Again, you can see where I’ve edited the plan after the lesson – this is a great way of reflecting on the lesson for me. I used highlighting in my plans when there is something I really didn’t want to forget, although this is gradually disappearing now as I settle in to my teaching and planning. Another feature is a list of notes at the bottom of the plan; these are things which have come up in discussion and could be potential themes for future lessons. I copy and paste them from plan to plan, adding and taking away from them as things are covered.
The plan from my first lesson from my third year in Brno, is essentially the same:
What you’ll probably notice though, is that the plans are getting shorter and shorter. This is because there are fewer and fewer reminders which I need during a lesson. The main one here is for before the lesson: something I need to remember to copy is in red.
This year I’ve made one more change to my plans: originally I would print them to take into class, but since the end of October 2010 or so, I’ve started taking my computer everywhere with me, so it seemed a bit of a waste to print plans as well. This means that I can edit lesson plans as they are happening – it’s easy enough to move lines up or down as I decide to change something. It also means that anything unfinished can be copied to the following week. (Of course, I only do this when the students are busy and don’t need my help – the rapport is good enough that they know they can call on me whenever they need me).
This is my latest plan, from last Monday’s lesson:
The biggest thing here is the amount of empty space – I’ve become more and more comfortable with the lesson taking the course required by the student, rather than imposing my own will on it. This is especially true in this class, where I’ve got to know the learner very well.
The one thing that has remained constant throughout all of my planning is the materials column. This is the most important part of any plan for me – I can check it just before the lesson and make sure I have everything I need quickly and easily. I also copy and paste file names of specific worksheets I’ve made in there, so that I can just search for something on my computer and all of the lesson plans featuring that sheet / activity appear so I can see how I’ve used it in the past. This works in reverse too: for example, if I think “I had a great activity for second conditional, but I don’t know what I called it”, I can search for “second conditional” on my computer, and see which lesson plans come up. I was very careful right from the start to give every file as clear a name as possible, and thus far it seems to be working!
Many of my colleagues would ask me if I was being observed when they first saw me planning like this, but they have gradually become used to it. I type much faster than I write (although I still write often), so plans don’t take long to produce. I have a database of all of the lessons I’ve ever taught, ready at hand on my computer whenever I need / want to consult it, and as soon as I see a plan, I can almost always remember exactly what happened in the lesson when I taught it. Best of all, I don’t have reams of paper all over the place.
So, these are my plans. Thank you to Cecilia for prompting me to write this post!
Enjoy!
On Saturday February 19th 2011, I presented this session on online professional development, with a focus on blogs and Twitter.
If you have any questions, comments or feedback, feel free to comment on this post or contact me on Twitter @sandymillin. I look forward to seeing you again in my PLN!
Don't end up like this!
Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.
I have also included some more links related to Twitter and blogs to help you out.
Blogs
Other posts on my blog which you might be interested in
Final thoughts
Updates
These links have been added since the conference:
Blogs
PLNs and Continuing Professional Development
I came into school at 7:15 this morning, having woken up an hour before my alarm at 5:15. I wasn’t in the best of moods, and although I knew I would be fine once I was in the classroom, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to my longest teaching day of the week.
Then, I checked my email, and found this message:
Hi Sandy,
You are a best super special teacher! You are stir to me learning! (I thing that is bad order, but, you are teacher I understand my English attempt.)
Today I was a proudly to your teachers achievements. Your pupil (I) had today meeting with European RND (detail network development). This gentleman are British, and spoke nice British English. Wonderful! I spoke more than one hour, and he underwood me. I underwood too, but 50 – 70%, not all.
Again, you are a good teacher and I bad pupil, but but but….. I am in progress.
Many thanks
(if I read this, I thing, we‘ll must training writing, Word order, tenses, spelling, atd………………………
Regards,
K
I went into class with a huge smile on my face 
K was the first person I ever taught in Brno, and I have now taught him once a week since September 2007. He’s a businessman in his early fifties who owns a car showroom. When I first started teaching him, I was newly-qualified and often felt like tearing my hair out. I regularly got very frustrated (after class, not in it!) and felt like we really weren’t making any progress. He had been studying for two years, and had managed to get through one and a half books without really remembering any of the grammar.
It took a lot of learner training to get him to the stage where he would do an exercise without looking at me for approval after every question. It took at least four months to persuade him to open his book between classes, much less do homework. By the end of the first year, after revising the first half of the book, we’d managed to get through 2 more units, and I’d just about got used to teaching him.
Since then, I’ve started to really look forward to my lessons with K. We chat about all kinds of things, and he now works really hard. He’s just started an Intermediate-level book, and the amount of progress I’ve seen over the last 2.5 years has been amazing. He often calls me a ‘brutal’ teacher, but always in a jokey way. Knowing what kind of activities he enjoys and hates means my plans have become much more suited to his style and the amount of laughter has increased exponentially.
Feedback like this really encapsulates why I love my job. Thank you K!
The first session of the IH Certificate in Advanced Methodology (CAM) was as inspiring and stimulating as I expected it to be. My school, IH Brno, is offering CAM for the first time this year, so I’m studying in a group of 12 teachers as we’re all trying hard to develop professionally as much as possible. I’m by far the least experienced, as I’m only just entering my third professional year of teaching (I taught for a year pre-CELTA in Paraguay too). Everyone else in the group has at least 7 or 8 years! On the plus side, this means I’ve got plenty of other people’s experiences to draw on.
In the session, we looked at the overall structure of the course and at one specific issue from each teacher in the group. We did this through a mingle to gather ideas and get an idea of what each of us was concerned about. I can already see lots of opportunities for my own development, and that was after only one session!
Our homework was to great a personal action plan focussing on the areas we would like to improve in. As part of the course we will be doing research and experimenting with new things in class. The four areas I’m planning to look into are listed below, along with my rationale and the way I plan to follow up on them. I’ve tried to be as exhaustive as possible when listing the sources I’m planning to use. If you have any extra ideas, please put them in the comments.
Don’t forget to come back to the blog to find out how I’m getting on.
Integrating technology into my courses
How?
Making homework an integral part of my courses
How?
Presenting and grading writing
How?
Provide student-driven lessons
How?
(Originally posted on my googlesites blog, 26 September 2010)
After a month back at IH Brno my timetable has finally settled down, just in time for a public holiday on Tuesday 28th September! I have a range of classes covering:
So, a little bit of everything really!
And as if all that weren’t enough, I will also be studying for my Certificate in Advanced Methodology (CAM) starting on the 1st October. I will use this space for my course journal, as well as for my aforementioned thoughts on technology in the classroom, which so far has run to creating a space on Edmodo for all of my groups. The FCE Intensive group have really embraced it, replying to questions and posing their own, as well as submitting homework through the site, and generally taking the ‘community’ out of the classroom, and practising their writing skills at the same time! There’s an example of some of their exchanges below. Hopefully this can be repeated with at least some of my other groups!
I’ve also done a technology survey with almost all of my groups to find out what they already aware of. In the next month I hope to put the information I’ve gained to use and start encouraging students to make the most of the technology they have at their fingertips.
How can we get the most from conferences whether we attend or not?
Conferences: Spreading the Love
How to train students to use technology appropriately
Pronunciation: what, why, when and how?
Encouraging English in teen classrooms
What I learnt on #eltchat today (Materials / Online Professional Development)
