Day 1, October 22

Journal: Today was the first day of our workshop at Ploy Palace Hotel in Mukdaharn. Approximately 30 teachers participated in the project organized by ERIC Mukdaharn. These teachers, mostly from secondary schools, were from various parts of Thailand: Rayong, Kon Kean, Korat, Amnart Chareon, Chantaburi, Mukdaharn, etc.

The workshop started when the three presenters, Joan Harper, Graham Harper and John Eyles, introduced themselves and the goals of the workshop to us. The main goal was for the participants to design community -based, sustainable business English project to develop students' critical thinking skills.

In the morning session, we did four activities: Warm up, two information gap activities, rating teacher's roles in conducting a project. During the warm up activity, we had a chance to get to know each other, had some fun laughing at the joke and dancing. We also got some ideas on how the warm up activity can be used as the advance organizer for an English lesson too: Talking about self, describing things ( e.g. shoes ), introducing the grammar points (e.g. past simple/past perfect tenses, direct and indirect speech). In the first information gap activity, we read "Changes in Thai Education" and completed the missing information. We thought it was intended to inform the participants to relate the group work project to what was expected of students in Thai education. Here are two examples of the standards, Section # 23-knowledge, understanding, experience in management, conservation, balanced and sustainable manner. Section # 28- the substance of the curricula shall aim at human development with desirable balance regarding knowledge, critical thinking, capability, virtue and social responsibility. We realized that at least there are five standards related to the group work project.

The second informtion gap activity was the differences between the "traditional teaching" and the "project work facilitating". It was quite clear here about the main objective of this task. In groups of four, we compared the differences of these two ways of teaching. In addition, we got some ideas of how we could make use of this activity in our own class: How to do the dictation, help each other with the pronunciation, help interpreting meanings of words and the whole ideas and even the spellings. In the "Teacher's roles in project work" activity, the objective was for the participants to realize various roles teachers could take when conducting the project work. They are at least eight roles: Participant, opposition, mutual facilitator, instructor, committed instructor, interviewer, observer, absent leader. Our task was to rate which role(s) we often take on the five scales ranging from 0-"none" to 5-"always". When we did this task, we were a bit confused at first. It became clearer when Graham clarified it later. The morning session was wrapped up by the last activity. We were asked in groups to discuss and answer the questions concluding what we had done.

During lunchtime, we had a good chat. We learned more about the situations of English teaching in various schools from our friends sitting together. Knowing this, we felt very grateful that John, Graham and Joan came to help us with this project.

After lunch came the afternoon session. John was about to present us with the Mukdaharn case, the last year project. But because of the technical problem, Joan took over the floor. Joan's main objective was to analyze Mukdahran project in terms of Bloom's taxonomy. She first defined Bloom's stages of critical thinking skills. She also showed us how teaching strategies and evaluation could be utilized too. We thought she had done a wonderful job.

John's presentation finally started. It was Nov. 23-26, 2000 when the project began. There were 100 hundred students and 12 teachers taking part in it. The project consisted of three parts: 1) Teacher training-(2 days) to learn what to do with the students. 2) Students executing the project. They had done some research for two days at Ploy Palace Hotel concerning its sustainability . The students talked to the hotel's staff in order to get the information about sustainability and visited different sections of the hotel. 3) Student's presentations. Here the students presented what they had found plus the recommendations to improve the hotel's environment.

John not only informed us what the project was but also how the teachers felt. Some of them were afraid that they would lose control of the students since sometimes they did not know what they were doing. The last activitiy of the day was Joan's. She informed us what we were expected to do for the rest of the week. As a group, we were to design a project similar to the the Mukdaharn case. We knew then what our final task would be like. It is not going to be easy but definitely worthwhile. We wish more teachers could have participated in this workshop. We are looking forward to completing the tasks we have been assigned.

Personally, we are very impressed with our presenters- the ways they talk in front of the group, the manner, the pace, the techniques of their presentation. We are quite glad that we decided to attend this workshop.

　

Day 2, October 23

Journal: Today Ms. Joan Harper presented about ways that help increasing students' reading skills since reading is important because it helps enhancing knowledge. According to Bloom's taxonomy, knowledge is the fundamental base of all higher critical skills so it should be raised. The presenter began the session by telling an ancient Chinese story titled 'The man who could not read' to the participants. Then the worksheets were given in order to check the participants' comprehension. She also suggested good techniques for teaching language. The first technique was giving students chance to read aloud because it will help students hear, appreciate the sound of the language. Reading silently was also referred as the second technique since students need time to read silently in order to gain comprehension. Giving opportunity for students to write something every day to reflect his or her independent thinking was the last suggested technique. The presenter also let the participants to brainstorm ways the three techniques can be taught in reading. After all groups presented about their ideas. A lecture on determining difficulty of reading materials was also given. The presenter closed the first session very impressively by reading the poem titled 'The Book Beast' to the participants.

In session two, Graham Harper let the participant be exposed to six different web sites in order to practice the participants to distinguish whether those web sites are reliable or not. Participants had to rank that which ones were the most and the least reliable according to the criteria set. Then, every group was asked to make a lesson plan according to the selected web site and do the presentation.

In the last session, John Eyle showed the alternative lesson plan available on the Internet. It's known as 'instant lesson' which are various in the web-site English to go.com. The exercises raised were about reading which all participants had chance to do those exercises.

All sessions mentioned above were put in to practice and all participants were interested in it since each session was practical. This was a worthwhile day in the workshop since the participants had chance to learn innovative things through direct practice.

　

Day 3, October 24

Journal: October 24, 2001 Time does fly! It is hard to believe two days had gone by already.

Today, our 3rd day, was even more fun with new activities to explore. We began today's sessions with an ice-breaking song "Hello, what's your name?" and a hand-clap counting chant. Lots of laughing and exercise. After the 15-minute warm up activities, everyone was relaxed and ready for the day's theme - Project Report Writing Skills.

Joan began her session with "Three Blindmen and the Elephant" tale which made the concept of "parts and whole" in language teaching easy to understand. Literature has shown us that many new ideas have been discovered, inquiry learning, life-long education, resources-based learning, whole language, individualized learning, to name a few, all of which have a lot to contribute to effective teaching and language. However, to put these new ideas to work, the old basic principles of teaching language are still needed. That is, every pupil must learn to read aloud every day, they must be taught to love reading, and they must write something every day to improve their independent thinking skills. In other words, the 4 language skills must be integrated in every lesson. Joan, then asserted that writing must be taught meaningfully since in reality people write for particular purposes. Different forms of social, academic, and business writing were explored - memos, letters, notices, announcements, invitations, thank you notes etc. Writing practice should begin with words, sentences, paragraphs, and then move towards reports, and finally research papers in accordance with Bloom's Taxonomy. To put writing purposes into use, we were put into groups of 4 people. Each group then chose 3 from a list of writing activities suggested and then elicited ideas on how and when each activity could be used. The group then presented their ideas orally. Everyone seemed to feel more confident to teach writing at this point. The next topic Joan shared with us was how to integrate other skills into writing, techniques of taking notes from reading, making an outline from note-cards, and incorporating information from note-cards into an essay without being plagiarized, for example. Book report is another activity that enhances students' reading. A hand-on experience on how it could be used was enriching. We worked on an exercise after listening to "Mr. Lazy in Sleepy land" read to us by Graham. We also learned how book report worksheets could be made more complicated to suit older students and different types of books. In addition, we learned how work cards/story cards/project cards could be employed to teach creative writing. Joan, concluded her session with suggestions on what it takes to write effectively - considering the audience and purpose, finding/compiling information, organizing ideas logically, synthesizing or putting information together to make something new, and using/presenting it to someone who will make use of it.

The second morning session was "Integrating Education for Sustainability (EfS) into the EFL Program" by Graham. We learned the concepts of "needs vs wants" and "sustainability" and that "future" is the final goal of learning. Our job as language teachers is to help our students create a clean, peaceful, and healthy future for everybody. It is important that everyone understand issues related to peace, environment, health, family, business, development, and future. World's problems are relative and are everyone's problems. There is a strong need to help our students communicate with other literal peoples in other parts of the earth about the problems so that we all can help to find the best solutions. Such communication can only be done through the use of English. We, English teachers, are directly responsible for enabling our students to do so. This calls for the need to teach them to write effectively. With the concept of integration of EFS into EFL classroom clearly explained, Graham then elaborated on "Steps in writing," from brainstorming, researching, to drafting, and finally revising/editing. We then worked in pairs on a topic related to global warming, using the 6 web sites from the 2nd day, and applying all the writing steps. The pair chose the websites with relevant information, took notes, organized the information into a paragraph with a topic sentence and supporting points. Here we learned that writing is certainly not easy; telling our students to write at our command is a frustrating experience for them. Thanks to Graham for this direct experience as student writers. We wished he had had more time to finish each writing task in each of the writing steps. Group 3 unanimously agreed that we could certainly use or adapt the activities to our own situations.

The last session of the day was on more writing skill practice by John, who showed us how to use a writing activity from English-To-Go - using students as a resource for writing. It was amazing to learn that writing could be fun when integrated with other skills (speaking, listening, and reading). We were first told to imagine our dream holiday with someone special, tell our partner about it. Then each drew a picture of his/her holiday and went around and asked others about their pictures. This was fun and noisy - lots of talking, almost of control, just like our own students back home. After the chaos, we got together again and brainstormed for more possible writing activities. The last activity was a hand-on exercise doing a post-reading activity from the wind power energy handout from English-To-Go. In groups of 4, we helped to write a short, argumentative article in support of wind power energy for a youth magazine. This activity was another learning experience for us. We learned that writing needed not be boring. When the other course participants left for the day a little after 5 p.m., our group, Group 3, stayed for another hour to prepare for the following day's warm up session as well as journal writing for Day 3, especially our reactions and impressions on each activity. We unanimously agreed that our first 4 days were fantastic!!! Thanks to Joan, John, and Graham.