I had a great time on Saturday morning at the Macmillan Teachers’ Day and met some lovely people, both organisers and participants.  It was the perfect “burst” of TEFL – just two sessions in the morning which left you with some ideas to crack on with, but also most of your weekend to relax.

I saw Philippa Davies in the first session and she shared some great ideas on Critical Thinking, one of which I’ve tried out this evening.  My PET group are a bunch of boys who in their own ways (and individually) are all wonderful people.  The problem comes when you have more than one of them in the room at the same time – lots of Spanish, the need to show off to their peers (though unfortunately not about their level of English) and just some awkward class dynamics.  Also, a lot of them have nicknames, though certainly not through choice and I’ve been struggling this year to get them to stop using them.  In Philippa’s session, she suggested an activity in which learners discuss the causes and consequences of issues, so I did just that with my class today.  We discussed where nicknames stem from (appearance, skills, sexual preference, etc) and why people use them and some of their ideas were very insightful.  Then we went on to discuss the possible consequences (Philippa broke these down into short and long-term consequences) and they came up with some quite creative possible consequences.

Whether this will have any substantial effect, only time will tell, but I think it was a very useful activity and definitely encouraged them to think analytically and in some depth of the causes and consequences of their actions.