The first Saitama JALT event of the New Year: Cooperative Learning by Joël Laurier
Date: Sunday, January 19th, 2014
Location: Sakuragi Kouminkan 5F
Cooperative learning: teaching that is as easy as 1-2-3-4
Current reforms in the educational landscape are pushing toward a more student-centered approach to education. The talk is now of learning more than teaching. Cooperative Learning (CL) is a research based teaching pedagogy that provides an effective teaching approach, especially in language learning. Through interactive, task based activities, students learn to take control of their own learning. By making students the center of learning, the role of the teacher becomes that of a facilitator, reducing the need to rely on teacher-centered presentations. The classroom then becomes a place where students and teachers work together to create meaningful and fulfilling learning experiences. This hands on workshop will show how attendees how they can use CL to increase active participation between students, build confidence for teachers, and deliver more student-centered English lessons. Attendees will be shown effective CL structures that make learning the student’s responsibility and facilitating the teacher’s concern.
Joël Laurier is a teacher at Gunma Kokusai Academy. Originally from Ottawa, Canada, he is equally proficient in both of Canada's official languages. His research interests are bilingualism, language policy and cooperative learning. He is a 2013 Kagan Academy Scholarship winner and recipient of the 2011 John F. Fanselow Scholarship from Teachers College, Columbia University where he is an MA in TESOL graduate. Along with his son Noah, he is the voice and face of the award-winning Yomiuri Kodomo Shinbum’s Hello Eikaiwa weekly feature. <waldolaurier@gmail.com>
Bryan Darr - Beyond Red Xs and Os [Short Format]
Bryan Darr presented a study of writing correction effectiveness, and the implications of such effectiveness for a teacher tasked with providing writing correction to their charges. Do we just circle errors? Shall we make notes in the margin? Do we demand re-writes? Do we take this information as something which can be used to counsel and conference with our students? In this presentation, Bryan provided his own shorthand for writing corrections as well as providing praise.
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