Adapting
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How to adapt this course for a teacher development programme or workshop
If you are a teacher trainer, you could consider using Changing Englishes as part of a teacher development programme, or one-off workshop, for teachers in your school, city or region. The course is published under a Creative Commons licence (see above), which means that you are free to use, and adapt, its contents to suit the needs of your trainees.
There are a number of ways in which you could adapt the content for a teacher development programme. Here are three suggestions:
1.
Blended learning
Five weekly one-hour face-to-face sessions plus online independent study.
Your trainees work through the online materials for the Unit during the week. You arrange to meet face-to-face for an hour to discuss the ‘Reflect and Discuss’ questions at the end of every Unit/week.
Working in groups, your trainees draft a written response, which they submit to the Discussion Board. As long as everyone in the group includes their name with their submission, they will all be counted as working towards fulfilling the requirements for a certificate (see above).
2.
Online learning
Five months to work through the course, with online moderation.
Your trainees work through the online materials for each Unit over the course of a month. You set a deadlin for the Discussion Board contribution (see above) and monitor their participation.
At the end of each month, after every trainee has submitted their answers to the ‘Reflect and Discuss’ questions, you send out a summary of their contributions, with additional comments/feedback of your own.
You could split the task of moderating by requiring on trainee to write the summary of the Discussion Board contributions and share it with the rest of the group. You can then share your additional comments/feedback with your trainees.
3.
Face-to-face learning
For when your trainees have no/limited internet access.
Meet your trainees regularly, face-to-face. Use the text that is labelled as as the basis for a lecture and ask your trainees to take notes while you speak.
If you have access to the sources we list on the References list and Resources page, you could add to the points that we make in our text.
If you have access to a projector, you could create some PowerPoint slides to highlight the main points and display any images.
If you have access to a photocopier, you could also copy and paste the text in the sections labelled as , and print handouts to accompany your lecture.
To make your lectures interactive, you could ask your trainees to do the in groups and then feedback their findings to the class.
You could then cross-check your trainees’ feedback with the content in our sections.
If you are thinking about adapting the content for a one-off face to face workshop, here are three, related, suggestions:
4.
Choose one
(or more) from any of the Units and one related
Consider whether to begin with a mini-lecture using the text in the section, followed by the and , or whether the reverse order might work better for your trainees. You could end with a relevant ‘Reflect and Discuss’ questions as a group discussion, followed by more feedback.
5.
In addition
to the above, you could use any of the images that occur in the Unit to set the scene for the .
Begin by showing your trainees the image(s) and asking them to speculate on the main points that might be covered in the workshop.
You could set a pre-listening task, asking your trainees to listen to your mini-lecture and then feedback to the group on which of the points were, or weren’t covered.
6.
Instead of
a mini-lecture, you could create handouts by copying and pasting the text in the section and ask your trainees to read (and feedback on which of their predicted points were, or weren’t, covered in the text).
If you are creating handouts, you could divide the information in the section into a number of different handouts, ask your trainees to share the information (without showing each other their handouts) and check which of their predicted points are covered.
