2020

Summer
Training

Summer 2020

Reader
Days 1 & 2
The end of July usually provides the perfect time to reflect on the first term and look ahead to the rest of
the school year. While this July was a little busier than years previous, Borderlink did conduct 2 days of
Teacher Development (summer training) throughout the last week and a half of July (July 20 th to the 31st).

In an effort to keep everyone on the same page as we roll into the second term, we have created this
reader to recap the main points and ideas tackled during the summer development.

Due to safety concerns, the summer training program was done online.
There were two days of online training: “Day A” and “Day B”.

Day A involved using Microsoft Teams to meet online with a small group of peers to hold discussions and
share ideas. The bulk of the discussion focused on sharing our experiences dealing with the regulations
that are now in place to deal with social distancing, and then sharing ideas for activities which we modified
to adjust and adapt to the social-distanced classroom. Finally, we discussed our basic thoughts on the
new textbooks for elementary school 5th and 6th grade.

DAY B involved viewing online video content from MEXT covering different aspects of lesson, submitting
thoughts and ideas generated by viewing the videos, and then creating a new “tool” for use in the
classroom. We then asked participants to practice implementing that tool by creating a short video
demonstrating how they would use it in the classroom

Day A
Before the training started, we asked everyone to review some of the key points of Spring Training, namely
the skills you need to be a successful ALT, and the “tools” which are at your disposal to do the job of an
ALT. Below is a quick refresher.

What skills do you need to be a successful ALT?

We identified 3 skills that we feel are essential to the success of an ALT. To be sure, there are many more than
3 skills, but when you boil it down to the most basic aspects, these are the skills we want our ALTs to master.

SKILL 1: Breaking down the activities & language to support students before building it back up again.
- What is the goal of lesson (TL/ vocab/ grammar/ reading proficiency/ familiarization, etc. …)
- Breaking down the lesson into steps (language, lesson, unit)
- Presenting activities to support students.
- Understanding goals of individual activities

SKILL 2: Flexibility – The ability to evaluate, adapt, & adjust.

- Identifying the needs of your students and teachers
- Reading the room
- Evaluation: Are your students meeting the goals and lesson objectives?
- Reflection: What could be done differently?
- Adapting for positive change
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SKILL 3: Promoting Communication & Interaction
- Proactive planning
- Interaction with students & teachers before/DURING/after the lesson
- Using activities to promote production and increase student output (student-centered activities)

TOOLS:
You may recall that we loosely defined “tools” as basically anything or anyone that you can use to help you
do your job or support you.

Physical tools you can use to make materials: copiers, printing machines, printers, laminators, markers, etc.

Various Materials: flashcards, mini-cards, CDs, Audio/Visual materials, worksheets, etc.

Planning and support: Lesson Plans, Power Point Games and speaking practices, Internet Resources, fellow
teachers, HR Staff, fellow ALTs

*There are many tools at our disposal as an ALT, but not all of them are available to us at all times. The key
is to figure out which tools we can use at any given time, and utilize them to the best of our ability.

DAY A: Group Discussion

“Day A” of the teacher development focused on sharing our experiences working at school since social
distancing guidelines were implemented followed by sharing ideas on how to adapt activities and aspects of
the lesson to deal with these new guideline.

For reference, these are the questions we asked participants to answer to help guide the discussion:

PART 1: REVIEW
1. Think about the teachers that you work with. What skills have you seen in them that make them
a good teacher?

2. What are the three basic skills needed to be a successful ALT?

3. Which of these skills do you think you could improve on the most? Explain.

PART 2: ADAPTING & ADJUSTING TO CLASSES IN THE SOCIAL-DISTANCING ERA

1. What are the restrictions / guidelines that you have to now follow while at school/doing you lessons?

2. Have you found these restrictions to be uniform in all your schools or classes, or have there been
differences in the application of the new guidelines depending on where you are teaching? Explain.

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 3. What has been the most challenging aspect of teaching with these new guidelines? Explain.

4. Please outline three activities that you have found do not work particularly well with the new
guidelines. For each activity, briefly explain why these activities have been problematic.

5. Below are 6 categories of activities which would need to be adapted in order to follow social distancing
guidelines. Please outline 3 activities (each from a different category) which you have adapted and used
in your lessons in the first term (and that have worked out well).
*Class-based/ Teacher-led Practice activity using the board and/or flashcards (i.e. Missing Game)
*Group Activity (possibly using mini-cards)
*Interview Activity
*Debate
*Songs/Chants
*Class Review Activity (i.e. Jeopardy)

PART 3: ADAPTING TO THE NEW ES TEXTBOOKS FOR 2020

1. What has been your experience with the new textbooks for 5th and 6th grade? Outside of social
distancing guidelines, what aspects of using the new textbooks have you had to adapt to?

TAKEAWAYS
Of course each discussion was different and evolved organically, but there were a few themes which seemed
to pop up in almost all of the discussions:

**Adherence to social distancing guidelines in our schools seems to be a broad spectrum, depending on the
area you worked in and the administrators and teachers we worked with. Everyone has had to think on
their feet.

**Adapting class-based activities (i.e. The Missing Game) seems to be easier than some of the production-
based activities as these were often activities involving pair work or interviewing other students. ALTs (and
teachers in general) have at times found it hard to find ways to really implement production-based activities.
This, in turn, has cut down on the amount of time ALTs have to assess their students and themselves.

**There seems to be a general consensus (at least for those who also worked with the WE CAN textbooks)
that the new 5th and 6th grade elementary-school textbooks are a positive step in the right direction. One
of the aspects which ALTs like is that the new textbooks continue and expand on the theme “language
acquisition” over “learning a language.” In general, there was a consensus that the new textbooks could
provide a good platform for students to use and “acquire” English (and get comfortable and excited about
using it).

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Day B
This session was hosted online.

The same information is here for you. If you would like to complete the training online for your own growth
and experience, you can do so by using the following link:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=nS59GvlLOk6exyo5A0LnXvRrcBIjf6VAkLZrOqLnG
EZUNFg4MjBGRUNaTDQxNzdGWFBMSEFTQVBURC4u

As this year’s COVID-19 situation prevented us from meeting together in person, Summer Training was
held online. This day’s session focused on what is needed in classroom and what we can do to provide it.

The morning part of this session focused on different tools and techniques needed to help students better
understand what we are teaching, and provide them with more chances to use the language. As we
provide the necessary tools to help increase student output, and make our lessons more student centered,
students will feel more confident in learning and using the language.

There were a variety of MEXT videos that we watched, and questions were asked regarding those videos
focusing on what tools and techniques were used by the teachers to help increase student participation
and output in the classroom.

In the afternoon, ALT’s had a chance to make and demonstrate a teaching tool of their choice that they felt
would be of benefit to their students in the second term and submitted the video to HR for feedback.

There are four areas the training focused on:

1. Review of spring training content: What’s in your tool-kit?

2. Let's watch and think - MEXT Training Videos - What tools are used? How are they being used?
3. Developing Tools for Educators - Create and share a learning tool that helps you in your schools.
4. Reflection & Goals

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Part 1: A review of spring training and teaching tools.
1．Which tools do you find the most useful/available at your school(s)? Why?

2．There are many tools at our disposal as an ALT, but not all of them are available to us at all times. The
key is to figure out which tools we can use at any given time, and utilize to the best of our ability. What
are some teaching tools that you would like to use more of, but either don't have access to, or for
whatever reason can't use in your schools? How do these tools support and enhance student learning?

3．Thinking about the basic skills (listening, speaking for communication, speaking for presentations,
reading, and writing, what tools can we use to help the students become proficient in each of the skills?
Please list a few tools for each skill and explain your answer.

Part 2: Watch and Think: What tools can we use, and how can we better use them.
４．Please watch the following video: https://youtu.be/CXzH_QAHX4I
Although this is a Borderlink promotional video and part of it is in Japanese, please focus on the parts that
show team teaching. What tools are used to help improve student's understanding and increase student's
communication? What did you gain from watching this video?

５．Please choose 4 videos to watch from the following:

Goal setting
https://youtu.be/cfrf07_-iEM
Intro
https://youtu.be/9oE8ol0Dzfw
Interaction
https://youtu.be/aao7oF4lu1Y
Small Talk
https://youtu.be/ezbJbj26H_g
https://youtu.be/eMEPKJA7IYU
Listen, Speak, Read, Write
https://youtu.be/w9eir2aqhd4
https://youtu.be/eR4fxbWQsts
Brainstorming
https://youtu.be/-Ma6HmlAIDc

6．What videos did you watch? Please write a review for each of the 4 videos that you watch. Include in
your review what was taught (be specific), what activities the students did, what tools were used, how
these tools were used to increase student communication and participation, and what steps were taken to
help students achieve the learning goals and lesson objectives?

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Part 3: Implementation & Self Development

ALTs were asked to make a teaching tool and make a video showing how they would effectively make use of
their teaching tool to enhance their lessons and make the class more student centered. ALTs recorded a
video of themselves demonstrating their presentations.

If you would like to do this for your own experience, you can upload the video to YouTube or another hosting
site of your choice and share the video by posting the link here. If this is not possible, you can write the
dialogue you would use with the students and include it in this reader and send it in for feedback.

Video №1

Introduce yourself. You’ll have one minute to tell us about yourself.

Video №2

Please record a video of yourself demonstrating your presentation.

Part 4: Reflection & Goals

７．Having watched the MEXT videos, what are some teaching tools that you would like to use more of or
use differently to help your students improve their communication skills? Why?

８．Upon reflection of this training, what concrete steps will you take in order to grow as an educator?

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