Opis warsztatów i prezentacji zaplanowanych na konferencję „Wczesnoszkolne nauczanie języka angielskiego – ciekawe, aktywne, stymulujące!”

Jennifer Holder

Reaching all Students in Inclusive Classrooms - The speaker will address the impact immigration, globalization and better screening tools for disabilities are having on the demographics of classrooms. In an increasingly demanding environment for both teachers and students, the speaker will discuss how the concepts of differentiated instruction and cultural awareness can provide a framework to foster a successful environment for everyone while still maintaining high academic standards. 
Teaching to the Strengths of Our Students - The principals of Learning Styles have guided teacher instruction and lesson planning for decades. This workshop will identify the key elements of Learning Styles and why they are especially important in today's classrooms. Ways to create opportunities for students to explore their strengths, including the use of learning centers in the classroom, will be addressed.

Margaret Cholodecki

Songs, Chants, and Games: The Core of the Lesson - Children love to sing and spend hours playing games.  Most teachers incorporate songs and games into their teaching curriculum, however, these fun activities usually serve as opening or transitional components of their lessons.  This session will focus on how we can use songs, puzzles and games as the core of the lesson.  During our session we will explore children's intrinsic and extrinsic motives for learning, demonstrate how the use of games, songs, and chants can spark our students interest and retention level, lower the student's affective filter, and build their self confidence and a love for the English language. You will leave this session with audio materials, song lyrics, chants, new games, and stimulating lessons for your classroom.

Maria Wasilewska-Łaszczuk & Małgorzata Zasuńska

Seeking a new teaching concept for a gifted pupil foreign language classes. - Children having a greater range of ability than average are called gifted pupils and might also be described as these who present a high level of general abilities (intelligence) or have a special gift for something.

There are two basic features of a talented pupil: above average achievements or potential capability of acquiring them. Although teacher’s responsibility is to support pupil’s personality development, gifted kids often achieve their goals lonely as they seem to be invisible in the classroom. Some young people manage to reveal their talents later at university.

At school they are curious, ask difficult questions, love analyzing, experimenting and solving complicated problems. Teaching these pupils requires a special teacher training.  If teachers wish to develop pupils’ creativity, they should be creative themselves, continuously improve their teaching skills, learn new methods and techniques and gain some knowledge of psychology.

As kids who like learning and have a positive attitude towards the subject are not the only students in the classroom, teachers need to know how to keep all pupils involved – despite their abilities and personality.

There are several methods and strategies which are of some use in the classroom, such as group activities, games and solving problems. They help activate and involve gifted pupils, teach them how to be leaders as well as to cooperate , be responsible and competitive. While solving problems kids learn spontaneously, focus on the task and search for possible solutions.

This workshop will not only give a chance to review some useful techniques but also will allow to work on an individually effective teacher’s approach to young learners.

Dr. Anna Murkowska

Developing plurilingual and pluricultural awareness in language teacher education The workshop consists of two parts. The first is a short PowerPoint presentation of the Graz ECML project: LEA Language Educator Awareness (completed in 2007), which developed modules to be used by language teacher educators to promote curricular changes so as to integrate the plurilingual and pluricultural dimension into language teacher education.

The second part deals with the presentation of ‘real’ activities exploring the broad topic of ‘Developing one’s knowledge about language’ i.e. Families of languages and types of writing systems. The activities to be presented are built around the text of a well-known old Polish legend about the origins of the Polish nation, translated into 7 languages, ‘The legend of the white eagle called the legend of Lech, Czech and Rus’.

Dr Magdalena Szpotowicz

Early Language Learning in Europe - This workshop is going to focus on how foreign languages are taught at lower primary level in different European counties (England, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Croatia and Italy). It will provide insights into how classrooms are arranged, where the course books are used and where they are not, what teachers and students think about an early start in foreign language learning and how teachers run the classes. The participants will be able to compare their classroom experience with that of teachers form six other countries. They will also have a chance to get access to the data collected on children's motivation to learn languages and compare the amount of foreign language or mother tongue used in lower primary classes by teachers across Europe. The participants will be able to find out in which of the European countries teachers do not correct young learners' language mistakes.

Dr Anna Walewska

Ja-Ling – Gate to Languages and conclusions based on the implementation of the program. The workshop is a practical presentation of the Council of Europe "Language Awareness" project and shows its implementation in lower primary experimental classes in Poland.  Participants will experience activities where children are encouraged to hear sounds in different languages, see their graphic representation and compare elements of languages in a series of hands-on experience activities.
Do we know what onomatopoeic sounds the Chinese can hear when a pig produces them? Have we seen Hebrew or Persian scripts and can we distinguish words written in those two systems from the Chinese alphabet? Do we know what names the Little Red Riding Hood can have in eight European languages?
And, most importantly, what do the children feel when they experience the tasks?