ELTCommunity.com: our discovery island community: Indonesia Pearson Day

Hi everybody,

It's a rainy chilly day in seoul today. Hope the weather is better where you are?

I am about to set off for Jeju Island off the south coast of Korea, to visit some amazing teachers - and the thought of amazing teachers brings memories of my recent visit to Indonesia flooding back. I was simply stunned by the energy and enthusiasm of Indonesian teachers and administrators. I offer evidence with the pictures below this post.

To teachers who attended - I'd love to know what things from the sessions affected, challenged or entertained you the most. Please do share!

Here are a few key points to trigger your memory:

Think-Pair-Share

I talked about and demonstrated a number of activities with timed pair-work, group-work and mingling stages to create 80%-20% classrooms where the teacher becomes the "guide on the side" rather than always being the "Sage on the stage". Think-Pair-Share = Think time for an individual + timed pairwork + sharing with new partners + mingling.

http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03b_Introduction.html

The 4 C's - Communication, collaboration, creativity & critical thinking

We had heaps of fun doing an activity where teachers in large groups had to create a song, dance or chant about one of the Our Discovery Islands... the performances were awesome... You can use these principles/strategies to create activities, to analyse and choose good materials and to motivate learners.

Read more about the 4C's and 21st century learning here: http://www.p21.org/overview (Pearson is a partner in the project)

21st century learning with blended solutions:

Offline and online, digital and paper... what's your mix? I demonstrated an amazing new course-book and blended learning solution for young learners from Pearson called Our Discovery Island. Samples of two of the components are in my previous post on this blog and you can see more here too: http://www.pearsonlongman.com/ourdiscoveryisland/high_american_english/what_is_odi/lets_look_inside.asp

Love to hear your feedback, reflections,comments and questions... and scroll for cool pictures below