Description
This course will provide course participants with ideas for planning, creating, and implementing fun and captivating lessons that promote student collaboration and engagement.
Participants will be exposed to using a variety of real-world texts and audiovisual sources and acquire new skills in engaging learners through their own active involvement. Teachers will gain tools for managing individual, pair, group, team, and whole-class participation to facilitate active interaction and discussion on specific classroom topics.
Course activities will focus on Italy and five of its most visited cities Palermo, Naples, Rome, Milan, and Venice. Hence, while learning about how to manage classroom activities, participants will also learn about the Italian way of life – along with more about its culture, people, places, history, customs, and food in the English language.
By the end of the course, participants will have obtained important insight into the practice of managing and maintaining an effective classroom atmosphere by feeling what it’s like to be a student again.
Teachers will come away with new ways to get the most out of integrating imaginative lessons based on real-world contexts and relevant content. They will also have the opportunity to share and reflect on their own experiences with collaborative and creative activity design.
Learning outcomes
Participants to the course will learn to:
- Design creative and engaging activities using a variety of materials and classroom management techniques;
- Create and find stimulating materials from the real world to improve student interest and motivation;
- Integrate both receptive and productive skills into any school curriculum;
- Establish a safe and inclusive classroom environment to promote students’ active and engaging participation;
- Discover the real Italian lifestyle and culture while learning how to implement collaborative and communicative activities.
Tentative schedule
Day 1 – Course introduction
Course introduction
- Introduction to the course, the school, and the external week activities;
- Icebreaker activities.
Getting started with engagement
- Starting in the South, pair work discussion on Palermo, monuments, history, film, important people, culture and street food.
Day 2 – Collaborating is a tradition
- Elicitation about Naples, ordering sequence activity, characters and traditions, organized crime, notable food items.
Day 3 – Creating through listening and reading
- What about Rome? Timelines, famous people, history, how to spend a day, interviews, reflections on life in Ancient Rome, historical figures, favorite Roman dishes, and how to make them.
Day 4 – Think pair share in collaboration
- Heading north to Milan. Monuments, important artworks, famous people, historical timelines, art and artists, beloved dishes, biographies.
Day 5 – Creating through writing and speaking
- Ending in Venice. Important characters, biographies, film, poetry writing, specialties. Explorers, places, history.
Day 6 – Course closure and cultural activities
- Course evaluation round-up of acquired competencies, feedback, and discussion;
- Awarding of the course Certificate of Attendance;
- Excursion and other external cultural activities.