Last session for the day was with my CELTA tutors from days of yore and it really was like a trip down memory lane as well as giving me plenty food for thought. 

This session is for people who have been trainers for one or two years.

Five main areas:

• Transitioning from treacher to trainer
• input sessions
• spprt with lesson planning
• obs and feedback
• dealing wtih trainees

We started with a gap-fill to make us think about what new trainers need to do. (See handout for details.)

Next we ranked possible features of an input session from 1-10

Depends on the context and who the trainees are – whether CELTA or Delta. All have some importance.

Support with lesson planning

We discussed a list of reflective questions.

These questions are things to think about. E.g. look at the plan before the lesson rather than doing both at the same time. `

Board game

Then we played a board game with dice and counters, in which we had to say whether we agreed or disagreed with the statement in the square we landed on and why.

Role plays emphasising people skills

The role plays, our final activity, were very detailed, setting up a situation and giving us instructions. I’ve not got any pictorial evidence, but basically in pairs A was the trainer and B was the trainee (taking it in turns) and we role played discussions in which we had to deal with issues that might crop up during a course (in fact they have been harvested from various courses over the years!)

The goal was to think about what we would do in that situation, basically like looking at case studies. You need to be able to cope with various situations that come up.

It was a great session, very action-packed and thought-provoking.

Here is the handout we were given: