• Dates for nex talks will be posted here shortly

Places for the talk are limited to 35 people only.  We hope you’ll join us for Cheese and Wine after the talk.

We look forward to seeing you there.

On 12th March Barbara Littlewood gave us the benefit of her experience in “Running and assessing projects”.  She showed how a project can be broken down into manageable parts, how to establish criteria for what we assess and how to hand over more responsibility to the students and involve them in the assessment process.  Thanks for the nice ideas! I do think project-based learning can be great fun and useful!” Very good and practical and “Interesting and well-focussed” were just some of the comments.

On 18th February Alix Tregenza explored Creativity and Imaginative Play in the Early Years.  In her session she looked at both the theory of why children play and the practice of how to set up imaginative play and get creative in the classroom.  It was very interesting. I have found different ideas that I can use with my students”, said one participant.  “Thank you very much for these kinds of talks, they are very useful” commented another.

On 10th December Ann Foreman gave an informative and practical talk on helping students exploit their creative capacities with the new generation of web resources.

The session focused on creating animated characters in Voki, choosing photos and talking about them with VoiceThread and making movies with Animoto.  Ann emphasised that not only are these resources a lot of fun to use, but they also help us to record and assess the advances our students make in their language skills.

On 29th November teachers were introduced to an exciting new DVD resource that the British Council is producing and were invited to comment on some units from this.  The materials are aimed at teachers of primary and secondary students across the world and the British Council greatly appreciates the informative feedback that was given during this session.

On 22nd and 24th October Sally Haigh tackled pronunciation problem areas for Basque and Spanish speakers.  Teachers found the workshop fun and amusing and enjoyed the 4 candles excerpt.  “I’m currently working with oral presentations of projects and can see the need to work the pronunciation together with the content” commented one participant”.  “The session was really, really interesting and useful”, said another.

On May 17 Ann Foreman gave 2 talks to around 50 people at British Council, Bilbao. Ann focused first on the Internet as a source of authentic material and suggested basing language work around areas of interest to teenage students, e.g. Youtube for song lyrics, pronunciation practice in raps, etc. She demonstrated some of the extensive range of information available on the Web which students can access to find out about a variety of subjects. Examples of students’ work clearly showed how their motivation is enhanced when they exercise greater control over their own learning and use technology which they find attractive. As one participant said, “I am trying to encourage my students to participate more actively in their learning and they love computers so it may be a good way to make classes more attractive.” Another commented,” I think there is no limit to all the applications this material has.”

On March 26th James Banner, Director of External Courses at Hilderstone College, UK and author of articles on language teaching and cultural issues gave two seminars on techniques for teaching vocabulary with particular reference to art and design, cult objects, fashion, icons and figures from popular culture. Using techniques such as memory exercises, word circles and learner training ideas, the talk provided teachers with some new ideas for vocabulary development and materials to adapt to their own use in class.

On February 5th there was a large attendance for Karen Elliott’s two sessions on storytelling, “Learning through stories”.  The more than 50 participants engaged in a lively discussion on the ingredients of a good story and delved into their childhoods to tell a story of their own.  They also picked up lots of tips and techniques, for example it was suggested that teachers should use each of their 6 voices!  And it gave all involved the rare chance as adults to indulge in the sheer pleasure of listening to stories.  One experienced storyteller said “I usually tell stories at school and I think I’ll use some of your techniques” whilst a teacher who has not previously used stories said “It helped me so that I dare to tell stories with my children”.  Participants left with a handout which summarised the content and pointed to books and websites that provided sources for stories and storytelling tips.

On Monday 22nd January and Tuesday 23rd January the British Council Arts department in conjunction with Talks for Teachers held a storytelling workshop with Jan Blake.  The sessions were well attended and, in addition to being captivated by Jan’s marvellous stories, participants also picked up lots of useful techniques for telling their own stories.  Jan is one of Europe's leading storytellers and has been performing world-wide since 1986, starting out with Common Lore Storytellers and Musicians. She was born in Manchester, of Jamaican parentage and specialises in stories from Africa and the Caribbean. She has developed relationships with several major theatres and has performed in many Festivals. She recently took part in the Word Alive! 2004 project, performing at the National Theatre with Daniel Morden and Hugh Lupton.  Jan also leads storytelling workshops for schools and universities and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio programmes. Her own storytelling company and school is the Akua Storytelling Project.

On November 20th 2006 more than 50 people attended Dominic Streames’ sessions about using theatre in the classroom.  After picking up practical tips participants donned wigs and costumes to stage The Monster of San Sebastian, practised developing their own scripts and finally recorded a radio play with sound effects included. Everyone left with an accompanying booklet plus a soft copy on CD so teachers could adapt the plays to their classroom.  ”Something that will definitely add a great dimension to the classroom.” and “A really productive context for practising the language and a fantastic alternative for students” were some of the extremely positive comments made by teachers.

Dominic teaches at Lacunza in San Sebastián.

On October 24th 2006 Julie Mills of British Council Bilbao gave a talk on “Using Poetry in the classroom”.  Julie gave a motivating talk in which she looked at a range of poetry and brought out the creative side of participants who enthusiastically produced their own verses.  Several teachers commented that, whilst they had never used poetry in the classroom, they now felt inspired to give it a go.    

On March 27th 2006 Jo Budden from British Council Barcelona Young Learners Centre gave an entertaining and informative talk on using readers with learners.

On March 7th 2006 Steve Bilsborough gave a talk on “Getting Teenagers Talking”.  With his customary style and enthusiasm he looked at practical ways of getting teenagers to speak and introduced the audience to a series of activities that can be used in the classroom.

On November 21st 2005 we were pleased to welcome Graham Stanley from British Council Barcelona for the first of our new series of talks for teachers.  Graham is an enthusiastic blogger and has recently been nominated for an edublog award for his podcasting blog.

Graham gave a comprehensive presentation of Blogging and its potential use in the English Classroom illustrating his points with his own experience.

You can see his podcasting blog here

http://www.pod-efl.com

The full Edublog shortlist is available here

http://incsub.org/awards/2005/the-edublog-awards-2005-shortlist/