Over 120 middle school and senior high school English teachers from Yunnan province gathered at Pu’er No. 1 Senior High School for a full-day workshop focused on easy ways to make their teaching more interactive and communicative. English Language Fellows Rebekah Gordon and Heidi Jo Bartlett led workshops for the participants in the morning, which used content from the local textbooks to highlight scaffolding techniques, communicative activities, and interactive teaching methodologies.
In the afternoon, the participants had a brief session on lesson planning basics before creating their own lesson plans. In small groups, the teachers spent the rest of the afternoon designing lesson plans using their local textbook as well as at least two activities from the morning workshops.
Finally, each group created a poster in order to share their lesson plan with the other teachers during a gallery walk. At the end of the event, participants expressed gratitude for the training opportunity and requested longer and even more comprehensive trainings in the future.