Continuous Professional and Personal Development 

As many other concepts, professional development is also subjective and covers different fields. To be clearer, I have used blog-reading and applying all the knowledge obtained from these blogs in my classes (most of which yielded fruitful results on the side of the learners and their language skills improvement). Some examples for these blogs are as follows: leoxicon (multiple lesson plans and tips for teaching English. As the name would suggest, it has a lexical approach to teaching and learning languages. It also contains many good links to different dictionaries with a lexical approach ), On the Same Page which is a language teaching blog full of lesson plans and practical tips  I have used many ready-made activities to improve study skills of the learners and endow them with choice. In this context, I have tried to use the homework choice board in the classroom and invited students to choose one homework of their choice and bring it to class or send it to me online. However, it was introduced a bit late during the term. Therefore, I will try to use it at an earlier stage to benefit from it to the utmost. Extracting information and knowledge regarding different issues ranging from learner motivation to effective and creative vocabulary learning has contributed a great deal to my perceptions of in-class activities and the use of these activities for learners and my teaching. I continue using quizlet, quizziz and padlet and all other digital tools to support student learning outcomes. Learners were encouraged to create their own quizzizz, quizlets and quizzes prepared on google forms and share them with the rest of the class. All the learners were engaged in this activity and allocated certain grammar objectives or vocabulary items from our journal. This motivated them to be more responsible for their own learning.

Furthermore, I had the opportunity to attend a training session held at Beykent University. The sessions were focused on creativity in the classroom, teaching creatively, creativity in teaching etc. The training, which lasted for three days, started off with the definition(s) of creativity, how to be creative and why we need creativity inside a classroom setting. Using our own conceptions of creativity, Kristina – our enchanting teacher trainer- took us down a journey with her vigilant presence in the room into the abyss of creativity. During these three days, the participants had the chance to not only see the theoretical background of creativity in the classroom but also its connection to praxis. In other words, the participants were actively engaged in all the creative activities originally designed for learners, which indubitably raised our level of understanding the connection between student engagement and tasks that require creativity at certain levels. This understanding was also reinforced by the role of motivation and surprise in creativity inside the language classroom. Acting as learners and teachers in Kristina’s sessions, we were empowered and demonstrated our fullest potential to achieve the tasks in the most appropriate and creative way. Therefore, I cannot imagine how empowered the learners will be feeling upon being summoned to raise their voice in such creative ways. In addition, we have also revisited concepts such as active learning, student-centeredness, and the impact of collaborative work on creativity.

Even though I was aware of the power of creativity to shine up the classroom and engage students more than ever, the sessions granted me an insight into using the element of creativity in vocabulary, grammar, writing and reading lessons. Our trainer provided us with quite practical tips on awakening the creative giant within and without. On the other hand, I was able to witness that I had already applied some of the activities that Kristina showed in the classroom.  On the last day, all participants collaborated on designing a creative lesson using our own books and provide feedback on each other’s work. These three days proved fruitful for me as we were engaged and acted as active components of the learning process with our own contributions. ScoLA’s professional development sessions were also on my agenda this term. I was able to attend one of the sessions conducted by Deniz Kılavuz on Using Ted-ED In the Classroom.

Moreover, the learners actively used LMS for online learning purposes (such as developing reading, listening and writing skills as well as vocabulary quizzes prepared on LMS). Most learners were forced to use the platform as they did not use it actively in the first term. LMS also informed my teaching and I actively used the reading and listening tasks to review vocabulary and activate previous knowledge which would facilitate the introduction to the new topic of the week. They proved as fruitful sources for discussion too as students were intrigued by some of the ideas included in the readings and listening tracks, particularly regarding artificial intelligence.

Another tool I used for professional development was online webinars provided by MacMillan. These resources endowed me with the necessary insight into the teaching profession. For instance, the Cambridge webinar titled ‘’ Teach with digital – using digital tools to improve writing’’ helped support and motivate learners to develop and improve their writing. This webinar identifies ways to encourage learners to write, provide ideas on approaches that can support them and show examples of digital tools that will make this engaging and easy. I used Google Docs for collaborative writing in B1 level to support grammar and writing skills (paragraph writing). In this way, the learners were able to use many different skills such as negotiation, decision-making, grammar, speaking, writing, creativity and active peer feedback. This was applied as group work and the groups provided feedback on each other’s paragraphs using the paragraph writing criteria (simplified version). The whole class then discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the paragraphs, and gave their input on how to improve each paragraph. I attended important MacMillan webinars (tens of webinars as of the Covid lockdown from macmillan, natgeo, new York times, Cambridge, pearson on effective gamification and extended speaking in the classroom. In the former, the distinction between games and gamification was explained, and made clear to the participants as they demonstrate clear differences such as the use of different classroom elements such as grades replaced by experience points and group work replaced by the term(s) party/ team.

Some components of a lesson/ course such as unit, group work, competition, grades, class rules were replaced by terms in order to gamify the course design so as to increase student motivation and engagement as life is a game simulation and no one wants to lose in a game. On the other hand, gamifying a lesson helps students achieve their goals by manageable chunks and see their progress. These are some of the highlights from the webinar. The last webinar I attended was on extended speaking activities. I was not able to comprehend what ‘’extended’’ implied at first; however, I came to realize that most of the sample activities ranging from presentations to debates are included in our curriculum and used actively for both assessing and improving student skills as they have the potential to personalize language learning, authenticate communication, help learners focus on meaning and create meaningful language, motivate them, enhance group dynamics, cohesion, rapport and community, allows for ‘’real-time’’ production, bridge the divide between fluency and accuracy and gives planning time. Despite all these benefits of extended speaking activities, It is also criticized in that it does not represent ‘real world’ situations in which we are expected to give impromptu speeches in public or answer questions in a meeting upon being called upon. Therefore, it is also claimed that it is not indicative of the learner’s ‘’real-world’’ proficiency. However, anticipating what sort of language is needed in a given situation is similar to what second-language users will do in real life. For this reason, preparation time should be a part of extended speaking activities as planned speech can give the speaker the opportunity to experiment with and therefore develop language. It is also good as learners who plan tasks generally attempt more ambitious and complex language and hesitate less.

I have also completed two courses provided by Sabancı University on Vocabulary Teaching and the use of QR Codes in the classroom which helped me refresh my knowledge on both issues as well as endowing me with new knowledge as to vocabulary teaching and learning offline and online.

New York Times webinars also assisted the instructor with refreshing existing knowledge in relation to teaching with images and using the New York Times learning network platform to create engaging lessons to help learners achieve learning goals more effectively. The NYT learning network provides thousands of images (‘’what is going on in this picture?’’ section) which may be used to spark discussion, introduce learners to visual literacy and practice critical thinking skills as the images pertain to current affairs and news. On the other hand, the podcast webinar also inspired me to teach learners how to create their own short podcasts (which is still premature in terms of its implementation and development as it requires hours of preparation to adapt the input and introduce learners to the art of podcasting. For this reason, I am planning to run a podcast club with learners in the upcoming semesters). Here is a list of the webinars taken by the instructor: Using Photos to Promote Critical Thinking Skills Across Subjects; How to use the Learning Network for Remote Learning; Use Photos to Practice Critical Thinking and Literacy Skills; Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts; Strengthen Literacy Skills With Picture Prompts.

Future Learn is another platform I benefited from to adapt to remote teaching as I took a course ‘’Teaching Online’’ provided by Cambridge University Press. The course provides the basics for teaching grammar, writing, reading and listening online as well as focusing on the differences and similarities between face-to-face and online teaching (practical examples are also provided to concretize the learning points). It was quite useful and helped me adapt to online education. I also took another course titled ‘’Short Film Teaching’’ which focuses on the elements of films such as sound, image, text etc. to spark learner discussion, encourage learners to write, think and create. It was quite surprising to see how sound can be used in and outside the classroom to promote critical and creative thinking before watching a movie. It was quite rewarding to benefit from materials prepared by course instructors to implement the examples in our own classes. Some of these materials were in relation to film elements such as plots, characters, sound etc. I had the chance to use one of these tables and integrate it into our own curriculum to tailor an assignment for a specific learner in the summer term. The table served as a scaffolding document to prepare the learner for the writing task which was creating a story based on some of the screenshots taken from the short movie and discussing the similarities and differences between his own story and the story in the short film. The learner stated that it was fun and quite beneficial as he had the chance to practice his language skills.

The UDL and the Learning Designer website published by UCL in the UK has endowed me with practical applications of reflective lesson planning on the ground by means of receiving and providing peer feedback on an international platform as the Learning Designer where learning professionals and teachers share knowledge, lesson plans and ideas with each other by means of constructive feedback.

Finally, it was also a great opportunity for me to participate in Open Online MOOCs such as Using Tech in the Classsrom organized by the US Embassy, Active Learning and Innovative Teaching in Flexible Learning Spaces organized by Europeanschoolnet and Cultural Heritage in the Classroom through Europeana organized by the Europeanschoolnet. You can find the final portfolio for Using Tech in the Classroom course and the final product I created for the Active Learning course is visible publicly as it was selected as a learning scenario to be shared (lesson plans) out of 196 submissions on Novigado's website.

The evaluations (both formative and summative) penned by the learners throughout the year served as rewarding tools for me since I was able to confirm that I was doing my job in the right way. In other words, I could see what I was strong at thanks to these evaluations. To exemplify, most of the feedback received focused on the variety of teaching approaches and materials used by me in the classroom. On the other hand, based on the learner feedback, I have to come to realize how learners’ ideas regarding studying, learning changed, and how they became critical individuals. I was thanked by most of the learners for my vigilance, energy, enthusiasm and help whenever they were in need.