ELC Professional Development Workshops 2022

Magda El-Awady
Magda presented to the ELC staff
The workshop mainly focuses on clarifying the difference between rapport and discipline. It also helps teachers to create an effective classroom management plan and be able to understand the needs of their students in order to manage their behavior or prevent behavior problems.

Asmaa Yousry
Asmaa presented to the ELC staff on Brainstorming

During the session, the teachers gave an opinion about their beliefs about brainstorming, and the difficulties they face when they ask their students to generate ideas. Then, different brainstorming techniques were presented, and the teachers discussed which techniques to use depending on the type of writing the students are doing.

Marina Samir
Marina presented to the ELC staff on ESL writing approaches

Throughout the past years, an increasing interest in ESL studies was shown. Many handbooks and research were published, focusing generally on ESL education and specifically on sub-areas related to the field. One of these sub-areas that caught the attention of many scholars is ESL writing. Writing has always been a challenge for both teachers and students. That encouraged me to dig deeper into the topic and share my findings with the ELT community at the NileTESOL annual conference 2022 that took place in January. The presentation focused mainly on two approaches to writing, the product and the process approaches, highlighting the difference between them, their advantages and disadvantages, and their usefulness according to the teaching context. Around 70 people attended the session and they were interacting at every stage of the presentation. Interaction took place through Zoom chat box and other interactive online tools. The presentation ended with a final fruitful discussion about both approaches. The discussion was mainly concerned with the interaction patterns and inclusiveness of both approaches. The presentation and the discussions aroused many questions, most of which were related to the application of the two approaches in different contexts.

Sara Magdi
Sara presented to the ELC staff

The workshop starts with a question “Do you think all of the students that you teach are the same? / How are they different?”. Teachers, then, get introduced to the three types of students. After that, teachers try to give a definition of each type of student along with examples. Then, the presenter elicits the challenges of teaching a mixed abilities class. Also, teachers are introduced to differentiated learning. Moreover, the teachers start the practical stage which is tailoring an activity to match the level of a lower ability student. After that, the teachers are introduced to “Adapting the process of teaching”. They’re asked to answer 3 questions while watching a video about freer activities. After that, the teachers are divided into groups to answer a question “How can we extend freer activities according to our students’ level?” Afterwards, the teachers are introduced to another practical stage which is “tailoring a lesson plan according to your students’ level”