BKC-Ih Teacher Training Centre

💥Last Saturday we had two webinars about General Methodology as part of our Teacher Training Marathon "Experience, Excellence, Expertise" 2023.

🎉We thank our attendees for their very enthusiastic participation - the sessions very much benefited from their input!

🗓More interactive sessions are coming in June:

The next are on 1 June (Thursday) and are on the theme of ESP with our experts Olga Fomina and‍ Anna Kuliashova;

17 June (Saturday) - on the theme of General Methodology with our experts Anna Kashcheeva and‍ Olga Connolly;

30 June (Friday) - on the theme of Teacher Training with our experts Olga Connolly and Anastasia Dereviankina.

💻 Click here to sign up and see what else is on the programme: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡We have passed the halfway point of our Teacher Training Marathon 2023 "Experience, Excellence, Expertise", with 5 events and 10 online workshops already completed.⚡

But there is plenty still to come - 4 more events, and 8 more sessions between now and the end of June!

🗓⏰👩‍ Next up on Saturday 27th May will be Irina Grekova, talking about how to use the flipped classroom approach to work on speaking skills, and Heather Belgorodtseva, who will share some ideas about how to help students listen more successfully. 

📑 Both are crucial skills, both are high on students’ priorities, both are perhaps not as well served by current coursebook materials as they could be.

💻 To sign up for this event, find out how you can get the videos for past events, and to see what is in store in June, click here: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡The BKC-IH Moscow Teacher Training Marathon: Experience, Excellence, Expertise is going on! Experienced presenters are delivering interactive, engaging seminars. Find a time slot that suits you!
🗓 12 May 2023 (Friday): Teaching YL and Teens
⏰👩🏫 11:45 - 13:15 (Daniel Saraiva, Academic Director for the BKC-IH Online School, CELTA Tutor and YL tutor)
📑 Scaffolding activities for Young Learners
"Just like the temporary support that surrounds a building under construction, scaffolding in ESL is extremely important. It provides our students with the necessary help that they need while their language system is being built.
Furthermore, scaffolding enables students to perform in a task at a level that is currently beyond their present abilities, thus giving our learners a sense of real accomplishment and satisfaction and pushing their learning even further.
Scaffolding is even more crucial with Young Learners as it deals with their cognitive abilities which are being formed, social skills and all the other YL characteristics. Not to mention that it reduces their stress and increases their motivation to keep on learning.
Join this session so that we can see how we can scaffold different types of activities to better cater to our students' needs."

💻 Visit our website to find out more, and to book your place: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡The BKC-IH Moscow Teacher Training Marathon: Experience, Excellence, Expertise is going on! Live online sessions which combine depth of understanding and a wealth of practical ideas.

Find a time slot that suits you!
🗓 12 May 2023 (Friday): Teaching VYL and YL

⏰👩🏫 13:30 - 15:00 (Anka Zapart, Teacher, teacher trainer, VYL and YL tutor at BKC-IH Moscow)

📑 Kids can speak! Maximising production in primary and pre-primary classes

"Yes, it is true, our primary and pre-primary students can be only 4 or 5 or 7 years old and yes, it is true, they are, most of the time, still in the huge grey zone called pre-A1.

And yes, it is true, their contact with English is limited to those few academic hours in our classroom, with the addition of some songs or videos on youtube.
All that does not mean that their language interaction should be limited to memorising vocabulary and communication on the one-word level.

Absolutely not. Kids can speak! Even on the pre-A1 level. We just need to help them. In this session, I would like to share with you My Professional Passion and My Professional Obsession #1: maximising production and how to go about it in class."

Visit our website to find out more, and to book your place: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡Join our BKC Teacher Training Marathon Team!

🗓 4 May 2023 (Thursday): Teaching Online

⏰👩‍🏫 11:45 - 13:15 (Daria Rzhenetskaya, Academic Director for the BKC-IH Online School)

📑 Do you speak digital? New literacies in the classroom

"Digital literacies have become an integral part of school curriculums everywhere in the world. Students today are being asked not only to search for information, but to actively create content and collaborate with others online.

How can we foster our students’ digital skills in the classroom? We begin with a lesson plan.

In this session, we’re going to discuss both simple activities you can integrate into your regular classes as well as project-based lessons explicitly dedicated to developing digital skills. Join us to find out how to engage and educate digital citizens of tomorrow."

💻 Visit our website to find out more, and to book your place: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡Join our BKC Teacher Training Marathon Team!

🗓 4 May 2023 (Thursday): Teaching Online

⏰👩‍🏫 10:00 - 11:30 (Claire Barnes, Teacher, teacher trainer, CELTA tutor, Cambridge Assessment specialist and Cambridge presenter)

📑 Making better use of online tools and apps for teaching

"Three years on, and most teachers have gained some experience teaching online. More and more students around the world are discovering the benefits of learning online. As teachers we must continue to rise to the challenge.

By using the features of tools like Zoom more effectively and combining them with other external apps, teachers can create an enhanced learning experience for their students. Integrating external apps can help to bring your lessons to life and keep your students engaged and motivated. So why not attend this session to experience and discuss further how to take advantage of these powerful tools and take your online teaching to the next level?"

💻 Visit our website to find out more, and to book your place: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡Join our BKC Teacher Training Marathon Team
🗓26 April 2023 (Wednesday): Assessment / Exams
⏰👩🏫 11:45 - 13:15 (Anna Kuliashova, Academic Director for the BKC-IH MBA Centre and MBA Online School)

📑 5 Essential Strategies to Teach Inferences in Exam Classes

This session will focus on understanding inferences, mainly in an exam context, although it will be useful for General English teachers too since making correct logical conclusions based on the text is a crucial skill for students to acquire, and not easy!
While reading and listening (even in L1), we interpret information on multiple levels, a substantial number of which are not on the surface. In order to fully comprehend the author’s ideas, we should be able to identify his or her attitude and opinion, which are usually not stated directly. Developed inference skills enable us to do that and a prerequisite for higher-order thinking. Without these skills, students cannot be considered proficient language speakers; therefore, testing inference understanding is included in all language exams to this or that extent.
During the session we will look at how inferences are included in exam tasks and work out 5 essential strategies to deal with Inference questions successfully. The strategies will be illustrated with examples from common English exams on different levels: starting from lower level ones (YL, A1-B1) to Cambridge C1-C2, EGE, and academic exams (IELTS/TOEFL/GRE/GMAT/SAT). Participants will learn how to identify inferences in various tasks (mainly in Reading and Listening), differentiate them from more familiar Factual Questions and help students overcome the most common difficulties with ease.

💻 Visit our website to find out more, and to book your place: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡Join our BKC Teacher Training Marathon Team

🗓26 April 2023 (Wednesday): Assessment / Exams

⏰👩🏫 10:00 - 11:30 (Natalia Borisova, Academic Director for BKC-IH Moscow)

📑 5 ways to maintain motivation while preparing for exams

Exam classes are notoriously known for fluctuation in students' motivation. While having a goal helps students to start strongly, the often long period of study, sometimes with not clear rates of improvement, and the effort and high stakes involved all make it hard tro remain positive and focused at all times - and yet self belief, and the drive to keep on working hard is also important for exam success.
To help teachers with this, the methodological literature of ESL teaching offers strategies and techniques to tackle the issue. In the session we will speak about five highly effective ways of sustaining our students' inspiration for learning, which is based on the latest publications in the field of the study of motivation in second language learning.

💻 Visit our website to find out more, and to book your place: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡Join our BKC Teacher Training Marathon Team!⚡

15 April 2023 (Saturday): Teaching Young Learners and Teens

11:45 - 13:15 (Irina Senatorova, Senior Teacher, Teacher Trainer)

Catering to students’ learning styles (YL)

Helping students to process information most effectively is one of the key skills of a teacher. Understanding which learning styles our students have will definitely help us to achieve this goal.

In this session we will focus on different learning styles both we and our students have, discuss ways to find out the strongest learning style, ways to adapt coursebook material in order to cater to these
different learning styles and analyse a demo lesson. You will also get some useful tips by sharing your experience.

💻 Visit our website to find out more, and to book your place: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

⚡Join our BKC Teacher Training Marathon Team!⚡

15 April 2023 (Saturday): Teaching Young Learners and Teens

10:00 - 11:30 (Yulia Kovaleva, Academic Director)

5-point checklist when planning student centered lesson for teenagers

One of the main criteria for measuring the success of a lesson when we talk about the communicative approach is student centeredness.

Often, when preparing for our lessons, we feel overwhelmed with the amount of advice and opinion about how to go about this. Does ‘student-centred’ mean more pairwork? More guided discovery? Lots of speaking? Throwing away the coursebook completely?

In this session, we will look at a checklist which will give 5 clear guidelines not only on how to implement a student-centered approach in one lesson, but how to keep this pattern from lesson to lesson.

💻 Visit our website to find out more, and to book your place: https://marathon2023.bkc.ru/

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"One of the resources I like to look at when I am preparing for lessons is a dictionary, but not just any dictionary - I find learner’s dictionaries very helpful. These are not bilingual dictionaries with translations, but they are intended for students who are learning the language to use.

Dictionaries are not (just) for looking up the words you are feeling a bit hazy about yourself before you teach. They are actually very useful for looking up words you know perfectly well yourself.

Because they are written for students, not native speakers or teachers (or even teachers who are native speakers), learner dictionaries give definitions and example sentences which are simpler, sometimes far simpler, than the regular dictionary.

This helps me to think about how to convey the core meaning, but it’s even more helpful in preparing questions to check understanding (or CCQs). One of the hardest things about CCQs is making sure they are worded simply, so students can understand them. Learner’s dictionaries can help with that.

Of course, if you want to see all the possible nuances of meanings, for different contexts like business English or American English as well as more authentic sentence examples taken for real life (and I’m sure you do), then it’s worth checking with the full dictionary as well.

Here are two easily accessible online links for Cambridge dictionaries (other dictionaries are available).

The full dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/

The learner’s dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/learner-english/

Try typing in some words to compare the information, its wording and examples.

Do you use dictionaries to help you prepare for lessons or for any other reason? Do you have any favourites? Do you encourage and / or show students how to use them? I am interested to hear from you!"

(с) Heather Belgorodtseva, Academic Director for Teacher Training

Please find more >>>https://www.bkc.ru/pre_teachers/programs/cet/