“Küçük hanımlar, küçük beyler! Sizler hepiniz geleceğin bir gülü, yıldızı, bir mutluluk parıltısısınız! Memleketi asıl aydınlığa boğacak sizsiniz. Kendinizin ne kadar mühim, kıymetli olduğunuzu düşünerek ona göre çalışınız. Sizlerden çok şeyler bekliyoruz."

Mustafa Kemal ATATÜRK

I liked this and wanted you to see it too because I believe we all need encouragement. It is from ATATÜRK and as you see he was very good at seeing the future clearly at those old days. Whenever I read these lines,my heart turns out to be full of encouragement, hope,peace, and happiness. What about you? I am only curious about which feelings these lines leave on your hearts once you read them. Let's share them...

HOW IS EVERYTHING GOING NOWADAYS?

Hi EVERYBODY, How is everything going in your life nowadays? I think most of us were relaxed last week when assessed teaching issue was completely over and we took a deep breath. Also, there are not many lessons that you have to study, which is really good for our mental health in my opinion:) Applications to private institutions are over for me and I do not want to deal with anything related to preparations for meetings, lesson demonstrations, etc. (I am really fed up with them:( Now I am very fine and I believe I need a peaceful life for the rest of my life:) As you see I am a bit tired, what about you? what are you doing? I wish good luck and a peaceful life for you in your future life...

TED- ELT CONFERENCE

Hi everybody, Let me tell you that there is an ELT Conference at TED Ankara on 24th May, 2008. It is not free as it had been at Atılım University so you should spare 30 YTL for such a conference. I wanted to attend, but on this day I have a drama course. I suggest that you should do your best to be there because all the speakers are foreigners and you may get lots of things from them. If you are interested in it, you can visit the website and here you are http://www.tedankara.k12.tr/ I will keep informing you on such occasions:))

A FAREWELL TO OUR LITTLE STUDENTS AND DEAR MENTOR TEACHER

Unfortunately today was the last day of our practice teaching adventure:(( We did our teachings and at the end of the lessons took photos with our students and mentor teacher. All the students were very kind to us. We really liked them throughout the term. I believe that I am very lucky to be together with them and have such a dear mentor teacher like ours. In the end our mentor teacher gave a detailed feedback to us and we gave her a present. She was very kind and concerned with our teachings, problems, etc. She was very friendly and sincere while talking to us in the school. In short, everything went without a problem and we were happy to be there...

So my dear friends what about your farewells?

ASSESSING... ALL THE TIME ASSESSING SOMETHING...:((

Hi friends,

Today ı have done my assessed teaching. I did not like my performance in the class. I think I made a mistake in deciding on the difficulty level of the reading text. My mentor teacher said it was really difficult on the part of the students as they are both young learners and at elementary level of English competency. In my previous teachings I had never made such a mistake- as my mentor teacher said. Nevertheless I believe that every failure will add valuable experiences in my competency.

I wish good luck for my friends who haven't done his/her teaching yet...

READING SKILL WITH A GRAMMAR POINT

Incorporating different skills into the lessons is really important because reaching as many students as possible is our aim. In this ways, we have the chance to encourage our students to participate in the activities. To make grammatical points be internalized on the part of the students, we can benefit from reading skill a lot. What can we do with a reading activity? we should choose a meaningful passage covering the target structure and the function. Your text may include different people's plans in the future. While making the students read the text, we may include a pronunciation game (it is like a game in which one of the student starts to read the text and if s/he makes a pronunciation error, then the turn will be given to the next student). After all the students take part in reading the text, you can ask some questions related to the passage in the target structure like "what is Sandra going to do?" Also, you may provide your students with a task in which the ss are provided with some kinds of plans taken from the text and asked to find out the person whose plan given there. At the last stage there should be some comprehension questions so as to give the ss the chance to produce sentences in the target structure.

SO ı like reading very much and ı will make use of this skill a lot in my future lessons because ı want my students read a lot in their daily lives. I believe that most of the students will get bored, but if we enrich reading time with different materials the ss will gradually have fun. What do you think about this skill? What can be done with listening for sake of making reading an enjoyable task? ı am waiting for your creativity:D

CONDUCTING AN EXPLICIT TEACHING... the steps...

let's choose "going to future" as the grammar point.

• provide lots of communicative exercises, activities, different kinds of multi sensory materials,
• gradually come to the point of teaching the grammatical aspect explicitly, but how can you do this?
• you may provide your students with an info-gap activity and expect them to ask questions to each other and give answers of them,
• after such a speaking activity, you may tell them to make dialogues making use of the previous information,
• you should write the dialogues on the board and underline the target structure after the ss produce them,
• after making dialogues ask the ss to form sentences with the structure and again write them on the board,
• if they give a sentence starting with "she or he", then ask them to reform the sentence with "they"
• then, ask them such a question: "which tense is this? what can you say about it?" here the ss are expected to talk about "plans, future, etc."
• the other question should be related to the form. you can ask, "what about the form? how can you make up sentences with this tense?"

as you see, you can complete such a part in this way.after completing explicit teaching you can enrich your lesson with a speaking activity.

so what do you think? does it make sense to you? if you have suggestions, ı will be pleased to read all of them:D

http://brainenrichment.blogspot.com/ by SİBEL KORKMAZGİL

A Roadmap for Teachers -Create an emotionally and physically safe and comfortable learning environment.

-Make the content relevant and meaningful to students.

-Present the new information linked to prior knowledge or skills.

-Identify the immediate relevance and the possible future use of the lesson content.

-Thematic instruction is a powerful tool to bind the subject matters together and to find how they relate to each other.

-Make learning fun and interesting. Use interesting instructional strategies that make the skills so interesting that they can’t help but learn it;

-Provide students with a lot of alternatives or choices in their learning.

-Integrate the skills in the learning process. Make use of different modalities (visual, kinesthetic and auditory) at each lesson.

-Use hands-on learning, active learning in your lessons. It always arouses interest and joy.

-Use discovery learning. Develop problem-solving skills. Don't give them the answers, rather provide them with questions, which makes them find their own answers and construct their meanings.

-Infuse some surprise, humor or spontaneity into the learning. Use clothes, songs, games, puppets or props to get their attention.

-Let them speak, discuss and share their ideas.

-Try to spark interest and confidence by giving positive and inspiring suggestions with your words, intonation of your voice, your body language and your attitude.

-Present the information into meaningful chunks so as to make the information useful and manageable to remember.

-Provide as many real-life, authentic experiences as possible to minimize the experiential differences between students. Examples may include field trips and experiential learning by using hands-on activities, simulations, websites, models, experiments and guest speakers.

-Provide high-volume input for the students because such an environment makes the brain’s cortex more fully functional. The cortex manages higher-level, more meaningful thinking processes including problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, analysis, synthesis and decision making.

-When some control and choices are provided for students, the content relevance is increased, their interest is heightened, stress is reduced, learning styles and ability levels are better accounted for, and both motivation and effort are enhanced.

-The more ways we present information, the more senses are involved, the more chances we give our students to understand and remember the material.

-Each student should experience a sense of success through their dominant intelligences and should be encouraged to strengthen their weaker intelligences in a multi-sensory, rich stimulating learning environment.

-Brain-compatible assessments should be learner-centered , performance and curriculum-based. These assessments may be formal or informal. Assessment should match the nature of instruction process. If the brain-based instruction involves active participation, emotional engagement, stimulation, activities addressing to senses and different intelligences and integration of music and movement into the curriculum and application of what has been learned, that is, skills and knowledge, then the assessment should be designed accordingly. Essays, products, performances, oral presentations, portfolios and demonstrations can be given as examples for such assessments.

WHAT WOULD THE WALLS OF OUR CLASSROOMS TELL?...

Hi FRIENDS, I wanted to tell what is hidden deep in my heart about this issue. We are all student teachers and lucky to do our practice teaching in METU Development Foundation Schools. Almost everything goes OK. in our classes with our mentor teachers. What I suggest you here is that while considering our future as professional teachers we should also take the reality of our state schools into consideration. I believe that if we work in a private school, we could do lots of things which will most of the time be easy to conduct in nice settings of such schools. What about our reality or state schools? Will we be able to realize what we plan in our minds which I believe are idealistic ones? What should we do? Will we be transformed into "stable, not changeable" teachers? I sincerely want to hear my dear friends' voice here. What can we do in our state schools? What are the facilities that we can provide our students with? Can we create nice settings as in private schools? Sharing our thoughts on such an important issue will certainly broaden our horizon...

CREATING A STORY...

This is a kind of follow- up activity after teaching some new vocabulary items. It is our mentor teacher's style to continue in this way. She first provides the students with nearly ten new items and works on their meanings together with the students. For this activity, the teacher elaborated on the items in the previous lesson. In the following lesson, she put the words on the top of the board. She asked the students create a story using the words on the board. Each student made a sentence and the teacher wrote them on the board. In the place of the target item in the sentence the teacher put the colorful word card (instead of writing the word). The students continued to tell their sentences until all the items were used. At the end of the activity, there was a full story that the students themselves created using the target vocabulary items. As you see our mentor teacher gives her students some "autonomy" in their learning. Or you may call this "responsibility", too. The students have the responsibility for their learning. They realize that when they do not participate in the activity, there will be no learning on the part of them. Thus, the teacher also aims to keep the students' attention on the activity and creating their own products. Another advantage of this activity is that the teacher helps the students internalize the newly- learnt items in a meaningful task. So my dear friends, it is all about the activity. What do you think? Does it make sense to you? Can it work in your class? Do you want to add some more aspects to it if it is not efficient in your own opinion?

A PRACTICAL EXERCISE...

HI friends, I want to share one of the techniques of my mentor teacher. It was related to make the students create their own fill- in- the- blanks exercise to learn the newly- learnt vocabulary items. First the teacher provided the students with the items and they together worked on their meanings. Then, she gave each student a word and required them to write a sentence which would have some clues related to the target item. The students were required to use the target item in the sentence, too. In our observation hour, the teacher told the students write their sentences with blanks of the target items on the board. After all the students had written their sentences, the teacher said, "As you see this time you created your own exercise." (which is really motivating on the part of the students:)) The students tried to find the missing target items in their friends' sentences. I liked this kind of exercise. First, it was really good for helping the students get motivated and continue to be motivated during the lesson. Second, the students created their own products. Third, all the items were covered successfully at the end of the lesson, which is really desired on the part of every teacher. So my friends what do you think? Can you add some more advantages of such an exercise? Do you think there are some disadvantages? Do you think you can do such tasks with your own students in your class?

2nd ELT CONFERENCE at ATILIM UNIVERSITY

Hi all my dear friends, On 19Th April, 2008 there is the 2Nd ELT Conference at ATILIM UNIVERSITY. Registration date is over but if you want to attend such a conference, you can make contact with the representatives whose mail addresses are on the website of the university. I hope we will be there altogether, have a nice day, and share lots of things (you may include whatever you like into the list:)) SEE YOU there!!!

KPSS EXAM:(

KPSS exam and state school have become the hottest issue in my life this term. From the very beginning of the academic year, really everything turned out to be very different from what I imagined, hoped, expected, etc.:) My ideas about my future profession went under construction and I made my decisions in the end. I want to continue with MA degree...I want to work at private institutions...and I want to live in Ankara...Now I need to take some advice from my dear friends who are already teachers at private courses. My questions are :

- What do you think about KPSS exam?

-When you compare state schools with private courses and schools what can you say?

-Do you really feel like a teacher when you are both inside the classroom and outside?

-How about the relationships at your job?

- Do you think you are working more than you should work? (if you understand what I mean)

- Are you happy with your development and current performance?

FIRST STEP... FIRST IMPRESSION...

On last Tuesday we went to the school in which we will do our practice teaching. I was the first time that I went to a private school. Before going there I had some prejudices and I wished that they would turn out to be positive when I saw the students and the teacher. Now I am happy to say that I liked the school, the teacher, and the students. First, I want to tell about the students. I was impressed with the way they were talking in the target language and the manner they talk to each other and the teacher was very impressive. They were silent while working on a task and especially I want to emphasize that they were very hardworking students. They were talking in the target language fluently. Maybe there were a lot of mistakes in their speech but nevertheless they were successful at communicating what they want to tell to their teacher or peers. Also, they were very kind to us, which was very nice for us at our first meeting with them.

As to the teacher, I can say that she was behaving as a competent teacher in the classroom. She was very confident of her abilities and thus she gave the impression that she was doing well and everything was under her control. I liked the way she was approaching towards the students and the way she was talking with the students. The students were like mature adults and the teacher was also talking to them not like fifth grade students, but as if they were adolescents. Also, I liked an expression that the teacher used in the classroom when she saw some students were talking during the tasks and it was like "be my students". I think it was very effective in terms of putting some responsibility on the students as to the operation of the classroom tasks and activities.

On the whole, I can say that I liked the school, our mentor teacher, and the students. I hope there we will gain valuable experience, which will be helpful in our future profession. With such students, we will do our best to conduct effective lessons according to their English levels. It will be different from the lessons that we had in state schools and in the process we will gain a lot of experience.

DON'T YOU KNOW ABOUT ME? THEN HERE YOU ARE:))

When I thought that what I should tell about myself, I found the things below. To be able to enter into my inner world, you are required to possess these information about me:)) If you are not interested in, nevertheless, please try a bit to learn all these things because it will help you reach me:))

If you are ready, I start to list the very things that describe me clearly:)

• I like reading books and in the near future I want to have a large library of my own. If you are to give me a present at any time:), please decide on a book:)
• I like eating chocolate, popcorn, çekirdek:) together with tea.
• Mathematics deserves to have a place as a nightmare in my life this year.
• While doing something, music is my best friend, motivator, and shield against sleeping.
• After a long and tiring day, I like very much sleeping with the dearest creature of my life, who is actually my mother:)

HI FRIENDS...

YESSS. FOR THIS TERM WE WILL BE HERE TOGETHER SHARING EVERYTHING. I THINK THIS WILL BE VERY ENJOYING TO WRITE ABOUT OUR EXPERIENCES AND SHARE WHAT WE THINK AS VALUABLE WITH EACH OTHER. I BELIEVE THAT WE ARE LUCK TO HAVE SUCH A TOOL AND OUR TEACHERS WHO ARE READY TO HELP US. THROUGH OUR BLOG WE SHOULD SHARE WHATEVER WE LEARN ABOUT THE LIFE, THE TEACHING PROFESSION, AND THE NEWS.