Atsushi Iida
Writing haiku as a reflection: Beyond extensive reading

The aim of this presentation is to discuss the use of haiku as a way for English language learning. The presenter will share one of his writing activities in a first-year college English course- writing haiku as a reflection on an Extensive Reading (ER) book.

Bio:
Atsushi Iida is Assistant Professor in the University Education Center at Gunma University where he has taught first-year and second-year English courses.  His research interests include poetry writing in a second language, scholarly publication in a second language and ESP.

Michelle Williams

This session is for VIPs only–Visual Information Plans. Learn in ten minutes what you can do in ten minutes to have your students understand and master complex information. This is not another “You Should Use Pictures” lecture.

Bio:
When she’s not teaching, Michelle is probably thinking about teaching, or talking about it. Or writing. Or cooking. Or perhaps studying sado. Right now she teaches English at Tomioka Higashi Girls High School in Tomioka, Gunma. She hails from Denver, Colorado, USA.

Robert Rowland
Icon Based Assessment for Young Learners

Creating a simple, easy to understand assessment system that language learners can follow to the goals you have set for them can be complicated and frustrating. This frustration compounds when teaching language learners with little or no previous exposure to the language, and then again when teaching young children. This workshop will look at strategies for creating visually attractive icon based assessment systems that are appealing to younger learners.

Bio:
Rowland is a Head ALT Instructor in Saitama City. He leads a team of ALT Instructors who build and assess curriculum and coordinate monthly training sessions to support its citywide implementation, and pilots creation of new curriculum and materials. His interests include translation, student assessment and hiking.

Masa Tsuneyasu
Warm-up activities for novice students

Warm up activities play an important role in getting students ready to use English. This workshop will introduce various activities: (1) individual work, (2) pair work, and (3) group work. These tasks aim to stimulate students’ cognition and schemata. Active participation as well as feedback of attendees is most appreciated.

Bio:
Tsuneyasu is a lecturer at Utsunomiya University. She received her B.A. and M.A. with TESOL at the University of Utah and is currently a doctoral candidate. Her research interest is individual differences.

Ivan Botev
Collaboration lessons: Why are they important?

Developing an educational program is not an easy task. Ensuring that program is incorporated in the core curriculum often proves to be an even harder task. Botev will cover some of the ways other teachers and school staff can help you in such an endeavor.

In order to raise their ability to communicate, teaching cultures is very important. Culture, history, religion, geography, and so on should be dealt with in English class. Then how can we do that?

Bio:
Ivan Botev, M.Ed. Applied Linguistics, is involved in the Global Human Resources Development (GHRD) Program in Toyo University. He is also an adjunct professor in Ochanomizu University. He serves as president for the JALT Omiya Chapter and also as chairperson for the Nakasendo English Conference this year (NEC 2013). Ivan is a father of two and his interests outside the education field include exploring the beauty of Japan with his family.

Masa Tsuneyasu
Pre-reading activities for university students with low proficiency

Warm up activities play an important role in activating students’ schemata. Well-prepared lessons and easy-to-follow steps enhance students learning. This workshop will explain (1) lesson procedures, (2) pre-reading activities, and (3) students’ responses. Active participation as well as feedback of attendees is most appreciated.

Bio:
Masa Tsuneyasu is a lecturer at Utsunomiya University. She received her B.A. and M.A. with TESOL at the University of Utah and is currently a doctoral candidate. Her research interests include the relationships between individual differences, willingness to communicate, and proficiency

Alexander Procter
Using YouTube in the Classroom

YouTube can be an incredibly powerful method of engaging students. This talk aims to make it easier to use YouTube videos in your lessons, and addresses some of the practical issues teachers might have.

Bio:
Alexander Procter has over 11 years of EFL teaching experience in Japan. He holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Education and is therefore qualified to teach in schools in England and Wales. He currently teaches at Kasukabe Kyoei Junior High School. His interests include collaborative learning and CALL.

Michelle Martinie
Organic Apples to Apples

This talk will explain how high school students can use the English vocabulary they have already acquired to make their own games. The two games that will be covered are, “The Picture Game,” and, “Apples to Apples.”

Bio:
Michelle Martinie is a second-year JET Programme participant who enjoys learning about languages and making art. She teaches at Kasukabe East High School and Miyashiro High School.

Rebecca Ros
How to Pen to a Pen Pal.

Writing a letter in English can be a scary prospect for Japanese High School students. This presentation and proposed project aims to break down the daunting task. Taking things right back to letter structuring, and simply asking ‘what should I write about?’ The intention here is to encourage a style of writing from the students that is rarely practiced: free writing. Breaking away from the strict grammar based style of English teaching that dominates 90% of the curriculum, writing letters can be a fun and harmless way to give writing a makeover, turn it into an enjoyable task, and perhaps allow the students to make some friends in a land far from their own.

Bio:
Rebecca Ros is a Drama and Theatre Arts graduate from Goldsmiths, University of London, now working as an Assistant Language Teacher for JET at Koshigaya Nishi High School and Koshigaya Kita High School, with occasional, but incredibly rewarding, visits to Koshigaya Tokubetsushien Gakkou.

John Finucane
WordPress

Why I love WordPress and how I use it.

Bio:
John Finucane is an EFL Professional.  He is the President and co-founder of さいたま市教育家会 (SCE). He edits the Journal of Saitama City Educators (JSCE).  His interests are writing, teacher training, event planning, debate, critical thinking and LEGO. Find out more at John-Finucane.com

Brad Semans
Attention!

In this short workshop a continuum of ways in which teachers hold students attention will be presented and briefly discussed. Participants will then profile their own teaching and share this profile with the group.

Bio:
Brad Semans has more than 10 years of experience teaching in a wide variety of situations here in Japan. For the last three years he has worked as Saitama City’s Head ALT Instructor, leading a team of ALT Instructors to develop curricula, train teachers, and improve language education in the City. His research interests include application of SLA theory to teaching young ELLs, effective teacher development, and teacher accountability.

(1) This talk will look at some of the underlying aspects of how learners produce or understand spoken English--aspects that are universally true regardless of the age group or language level of the learners involved. 

(2) The contents of this workshop will be as follows:
1) overview of Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory,
2) inventory sheet and its result conducted for university students, and
3) activities categorized by MI theory.

Masa Tsuneyasu
Speaking Activity

According to Folse (2006), good conversation teachers know the components of the target language and have the ability to (1) construct a lesson around an important language component, (2) point out important language components within a dialogue, and (3) do both 1 and 2. This presentation demonstrated successful speaking activities which were designed with these three components in mind. Procedures were introduced in an easy, step-by-step manner.

Ruth Kambartel
The Value of Yoyuu 

This presentation explored the benefits of different types of “emptiness” or “nothingness” in the classroom. Specifically, the presentation focused on how to create wiggle room for teachers’ and students’ brains.

Leander S. Hughes
Cooperative Brainstorming and Its Applications in the Communication Classroom

Cooperative brainstorming is a useful tool for 1) helping learners activate schemata necessary for carrying out an upcoming communication activity and 2) promoting the exchange of relevant language and content between learners. This presentation demonstrated a simple method for conducting group brainstorming sessions and discussed some ways in which cooperative brainstorming can be used to prepare students for a variety of communicative tasks.

Ricardo Luna
The Art of teaching: Applying Creativity

This presentation examined creating customized activities. Creativity can be broken down to 8 steps: connect, relate, experience, analyze, transform, and explore. It is not necessary to be creative to create. 

Masa Tsuneyasu
Encouraging Active Listening

This presenation demonstrated practical techniques for improving student listening.

Chikahiko Okada
Improve your language skills, using pictures

We are surrounded by good pictures in books, newspapers, magazines, cataloges, and brochures. This presentation showed how to make use of them for learning foreign languages. 

Abdel Ibrahim
Algorithm March

This presentation demonstrated how to use translations of popular childrens song lyrics and TPR to help young learners understand stress timing in spoken English. 

Leander Hughes
Effective Classroom Organization for Large Communication Classes

This presentation explored new ways of organizing classrooms to optimize the effectiveness of one’s communication lessons. Some issues discussed included how to arrange desks to maximize the amount of attention each student recieves from the teacher and how to quickly and efficiently move and group students for communication activities.

My Share / Bounenkai
Seven members took center stage at this Omiya My Share presenting ideas, techniques, games and activities that have worked in their teaching situations. Afterward, attendees went to a local izukaya for a bounenkai (end of the year party). 

My Share Presentations included: 

Masa Tsuneyasu
Prepositions
Focus: A speaking and drawing activity 

Joe Falout
Meaning-focused classroom task for listening
Focus: A drawing activity. 

Leander Hughes 
Junior High School Debates (Yes, They are Possible)
Focus: Choosing topics that work and getting an argument line. 

Joshua Halsband 
James and the Giant Peach
Focus: Using hyperlinks to create activities that assess reading comprehension. 

Ruth Kambartel
Wittgenstein and language teaching
Focus: Using a language philosopher in a language class activity 

Michael Stout
Autobiography Projects
Focus: Getting your students to write autobiographies that are interesting.

Ricardo Luna
Learning Activity Stations
Focus: How to organize learning activity stations for various sized classes.

JALT2006 Conference Preview 
This meeting provided a preview of some of the presentations that were later given at the JALT2006 Conference (the 32nd JALT International Conference on Language Teaching and Learning, in the city of Kitakyushu). The event featured three speakers, Eric Skier, Masa Tsuneyasu and Kyoko Miyazato. Summaries of each of their presentations are provided below.

Eric Skier
What motivates older learners? 

In this presentation, Mr. Skier presented a paper on the motivations of elderly learners at a culture center in Japan and how learning of those motivations affected the approach to teaching, the role of the teacher, and the decision on which materials to use. Participants, who currently are or may very well be teaching similar students that make up the fastest growing segment of Japanese society in the near future, also had an opportunity to share their stories, observations, and classroom-proven practices.

Masa Tsuneyasu 
Teaching Writing 

In this presentation, Ms. Tsuneyasu first summarized the major differences between the written rhetoric of the two languages: Japanese and English. Then elaborated on the inclinations of how Japanese students write English papers based on the findings of a writing experiment. Finally, the author discussed some effective ways to teach writing papers in English for Japanese students.

Kyoko Miyazato
Role and Power Sharing Between JTEs and AETs

The study Ms. Miyazato presented investigated team-teaching (TT) relationships between JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) and AETs (Assistant English Teachers) focusing on power-sharing between native-speaking (NS) and non-native-speaking (NNS) EFL teachers in Japanese high schools.