“Pandemic Pedagogy コロナ教育”This year’s virtual MEES conference will not only have teachers sharing their own recent pedagogical adjustments and ideas after a year of language teaching during the COVID pandemic, but will also explore what teaching during the pandemic has enabled teachers to further discover about themselves and their students within the EFL context. We are accepting presentation proposals (presentations in English or Japanese).
Early registration available on the Facebook Event Page
https://www.facebook.com/events/171599797673696/
Where has 2021 brought your classroom? Have you continued online, gone back to F2F? Mix of both? Have you been F2F all along? What has been your approach to speaking activities online or in the classroom with COVID protocols in place? Any life-saving hacks, tips, and tricks you have to share for the new school year? Teachers of all levels and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate and present for Iwate-Aomori JALT’s upcoming roundtable discussion. We want to hear from university teachers, secondary and primary JTEs, and ALTs!
For this event, we hope to have two designated roundtable discussions about how speaking activities are managed in different teaching contexts so as to ensure as many people benefit and take away from this event as much as possible, just in time for the new school year.
Of course any participant can chime in throughout these discussions, but if you have something specific you’d like to share that’s been working well in your classroom, please sign-up for your context category below! If you teach and can contribute to multiple contexts, you can sign up for all of them, or just the one you prefer.
Roundtable Discussion
13:40-15:00 Primary, Secondary, & University F2F
Name
Main topic/ tools used
Jason Hill
Risk management in the classroom. My experience with dealing with Covid-19 fears when online isn’t an option (ES)
John Hozack
Reading discussions, getting students to delve deeper into stories/ Google CR + F2F (JHS kids)
Evan Garcia
Amending speaking activities: How to ensure communicative language practice F2F during Covid-19 (JHS)
Parvathy Ramachandran
Strategies for communicating / speaking in the F2F classroom (SHS & Uni)
Erin Noxon
Instructional design for a blended learning communicative English class with shared devices and the need to have discussion based classes, all before and after lockdown (SHS)
15:10-16:20 University Online/ Hybrid
Name
Main topic/ tools used
Andrew Caldwell
Collaborative Activities using Moodle and Zoom
Ivan Lombardi
Communication and Public speaking with Google Classroom and Google Meet
Revathi Viswanathan
Digital tools for Speaking Practice
Jason Pipe
Encouraging Critical Thinking in Academic Writing
Barry Grossman
A ‘New-Normal’ Curriculum for Speaking and More: Anime-based Classwork and AI Video Platform Homework
Zoom link information can be found on the event page.
https://www.facebook.com/events/200740951642126/
Using Google Slides to support Writing in Online or Hybrid Classrooms
This presentation focuses on an ongoing and small-scale classroom-based research project that evolved from the need to help students overcome the barriers of writing for academic purposes. It will offer background of both the project and the literature linking sociocultural perspectives and collaboration with writing to support noticing by increasing the “visibility” (Hyland, 2003) of academic writing features. In addition, the presentation will share practical, technology-based pedagogy (primarily Google Slides and Docs) for improving writing skills that will be of interest to teachers in CLIL and other academic writing classroom contexts.
Julia Christmas, (University of Niigata Prefecture) has classroom experience that includes many years at both secondary and tertiary institutions in Japan. Her research interests include CLIL and CALL.
Using Corpora to Support and Develop Writing Skills
This presentation hopes to show the basics of how to use the CocaCorpus and Sketch Engine for Language Learners. The presenter will explain how to make materials that help students do corpus searches by themselves (e.g., collocates, connotations, noticing patterns). Participants are encouraged to play active roles during this presentation as they’ll have the opportunity to try these tools for themselves in a breakout room workshop. Possible issues with these tools and how teachers can help students avoid them will also be shared.
Sarah Deutchman currently works at Waseda University where she has taught academic writing and discussion for 3 years. Her area of research focuses on using and analyzing corpora, building vocabulary lists based on corpora, and polysemy.
Storytelling Through Google Speech to Text
Google Speech to Text is a powerful voice technology that has become part of our daily lives with its applications such as Google Home. This presentation will delve into the technology from a learning standpoint and familiarize the students with the use of it for creating short stories through Google Docs. The activity will be extended online through a breakout room group discussion.
Timothy Ang is currently finishing his Masters in Bilingual and Multicultural Education at the University of Alcalá. He teaches English at universities in the Kansai area of Japan. His current interests include Task Based Learning, Student Motivation, Computer Assisted Learning, and Curriculum Development.
Planning a Day Out with Padlet
In this short presentation, the presenter will demonstrate how to use the map feature on Padlet. They will detail how their students practiced informative writing by creating reviews of favorite places in the area, then worked with a partner to plan a perfect day out. If time permits, participants can write a review of their favorite place.
Kathryn Akasaka came to Japan on the JET program and has been here ever since. She holds a BA in Education from Earlham College and currently works at Shirayuri JHS and HS and lecturing part time at Iwate University, Iwate Prefectural University and Iwate Medical University.
Using Online Discussion Boards to Teach Summarizing & Paraphrasing
In this short presentation, the presenter will share how they have used online discussion board tasks to help students learn to summarize and paraphrase, an essential skill in academic writing. They will also share how they helped students intentionally incorporate new vocabulary and grammar into their posts, and ultimately later in their term essays.
Rachel Stuart has been teaching in Japan for 6 years and holds a MA in TESOL from Biola University, California and currently teaches in the Bridge Program at the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) in Misawa, Aomori. She is also the program chair for the Iwate-Aomori JALT Chapter.
