SESSION VI (24 January 2006)
During this sessions trainees were invited to organize into groups and discuss the effectiveness of some reading strategies introduced by some materials handed out during the previous session.Analysis and shared discussion about the activities proposed was a pretext to elicit trainees' reflection on the complexity of selecting the strategies that sound most suitable to specific learmnig contexts and to reach the objectives set by the teacher.A questionnaire was offered as guideline to a discussion aimed mainly at promoting sharing of experiences during practice training. Also reflection on individual strategies use, habits or experimented (both in learning and teaching experience) was invited.In addition to the previous activities, some quotations from interviews to foreign language teachers from different cultures and countries were given to trainees so as to make them disuss and share opinions about different reading strategies used by different teachers in different parts of the world.
This choice had the aim to make trainees aware of how knowledge of different cultural pedagogic learning offers and reading strategies practices may offer theteacher a further chance for reflection carried out on a larger context basis.
Trainees were also encouraged to keep their eyes alert on the nature of contemporary teaching and learning contexts that call multiculturalism into question over and over again.
As teacher trainer I really believe it useful to promote awareness and reflection on the different nature of some practices that even if rather remote in our teaching context are probably familiar with learners coming from non -European or Asian countries.
Reading about different teachig habits and discussing different strategies used by the various teacher I hope could provide the occasion to experience a situation that favours inbetweennes as a learning and teaching attitude open to different realities and different students.
The session last step required group work again and traines were asked to reorder a jumbled lesson being ready to provide rational for the choice of their definite sequency. In the end two short reading passages were provided so that in the next session again in a workshop trainees will be committed in outlining a learning unit divided into thre steps:
Trainees will therefore experience what to plann a learning sequence is like and last but not least they will do it inside a team.
The session was a really hard working one and hopefully useful to trainees’ critical reflection on the effectiveness of specific reading strategies. Plenary Session on Effective Reading Strategies