Reflections+on+Practical+Classroom+Ideas+at+American+Culture+Association+by+Ummuhan+Aslan


 * Reflections on Practical Classroom Ideas at American Culture Association by Ummuhan Aslan **

A ghost story/grammar (I want, I will), integrated two hours of lesson Sessions aim was to give participants some practical classroom ideas to use with their young students. This session is my favorite because the presenter was very lively during her 60’ of session, involving us, cheerful, and also because the other presenters were just like lectured us, the one I am going to talking about was actually taught us a lot! The session begun with breakfast items, and then a story, in the story there was a family (mother, father, brother, sister and a baby) having breakfast, the baby wants milk from mother but she has to go to the basement, there is a ghost down there, everybody is scared to take the milk and at the end, the baby goes and scares the ghost. Then there were plenty of activities, from puppet ghost making to role play the story, and then to a simple fill in the blanks activity. The thing that I heard for the first time in that session was to give young learners short instructions to complete an activity, the presenter told that they can learn very well while doing something. This was what I found contradictory to what we know, I think. Connecting the topic from breakfast items, then to an enjoyable ghost story, then supporting the topic with a variety of activities were the session’s highlighted points. There were lots of materials and although it should be the way to teach English to young learners, I don’t think each teacher can prepare that much materials, games, activities for even two hours of lessons, unless the organization is private. I would ask the presenter “What if we teach in a state school, maybe our students will not be able to communicate in Turkish, let alone the English, and how can we afford, prepare all these material, make the classroom language English and keep on that?” Role play, pictures, drills, involving students kinesthetically can be applied directly to real classes in Turkey. Of course I learned lots of ideas from the session and I am planning to apply some of them to my future class. Puppet making, role playing a story, having pictures, drills especially for young learners are some of them.
 * Comments **


 * Durak Cesur **


 * I attended the same session and I totally agree with Ummuhan. The presenter prepared so many materials and she was active throughout the whole session. She taught us how to use theoritical knowledge in practice. From the reflection that Ummuhan wrote we can understand what the presenter did but I think Ummuhan must include her own opinions more. The presenter didn't do anything that is contradictory to our previous knowledge. We were all familiar with what she did but we didn't know how to do teaching. I learnt so much from the session like ummuhan. I also think that I can use some of the techniques from the session. **

 I attended the same session in the same conference, too. So, I agree with Ummuhan. The session gave us some practical classroom ideas to use with young learners. Moreover, this session is my favorite one, as well. As I wrote the same things in my reflection, I can't help agreeing with her that much because the presenter was really cheerful and made the other presenters look like they were lecturing us. I disagree with Ummuhan because every teacher can prepare lots of activities. However, the problem is that every teacher cannot use all of these activities in time.
 * Comment by Ebru Bertan **