Saturday 30th January saw the first EC Teacher conference, with teachers from EC London, EC Cambridge and EC Brighton (as well as Nadya and Cristina from EC Malta) all spending their Saturday at the London school to meet, share and learn together. With opening and closing plenary sessions led by Russell Stannard (Webwatcher) and Ian Lebeau (author – Language Leader) and a range of other sessions on Music in the classsroom, Corpus Linguistics, Error Correction, Business Frameworks, Gems on the Web, Using dictionaries, Exploiting graded readers, TOEFL iBT, young learner materials, Cambridge short courses and Teaching Pronunciation, there was something for everyone to take on board, take away and take into their next lesson!
Immediate feedback was positive, with teachers saying:
“I feel motivated…really inspired!”
“I’ll be trying that website Russell recommended on Tuesday with my advanced class- it’s fanstastic”
“This was excellent…I have lesson ideas ready now till at least September!”
There was a treasure hunt, with the treasure being a toy penguin and a free book from Pearson and a raffle at the end of the day (called by EC London’s Centre Director, Bernard Dodds), with many EC teachers walking away with a bottle or book-shaped prize (the bottles were surprisingly more popular!) and the event was supported by the surely-on-their-way-to-a-Michelin-star Cafe Team who laid on refreshments, a banquet buffet and drinks and crostini to end the day.
A very successful conference for EC Teachers – surely the first of many!
- Look what Gareth and Kendra found!
Raffle prizes (Sam, Caron and Natasha not included)
Opening plenary with Russell Stannard
Cambridge Short courses with Jacky Newbrook
For more info, go to:
http://sambuchan.edublogs.org/2010/01/31/ec-teacher-conference-2010/