British Council Vietnam recently completed a series of teacher training programmes in Binh Thuan and Bac Giang provinces. Some 139 primary and secondary teachers as well as ELT specialists from each province participated in the workshops which incorporated observations and feedback of public school lessons. Participant response was very positive.
CiPELT is a global training programme for primary school teachers, which has been specially adapted for use with Vietnam’s primary sector. It incorporates the local curriculum into a series of modules to create a tailor-made training programme. It is very practical in nature and contains ideas for motivating children with songs, games and other enjoyable activities.
The ‘Motivated Teachers, Motivated Learners’ training course is targeted at two distinct groups, lower and upper secondary teachers, and also makes use of materials from the local curriculum to apply principles of methodology (many of which are taken from CiSELT – the British Council’s global product for secondary teachers) in a manner which can more easily be transferred to the local classroom context.
In both programmes, teachers work together to apply the principles, planning and delivering lesson activities in micro-teaching sessions. Additionally, both courses include school classroom visits where local teachers are observed delivering lessons in ‘real’ contexts by their teaching colleagues and master trainers. Feedback sessions following these observed lessons help consolidate the learning objectives of the workshops. Participating teachers found these opportunities to try things out, or see others trying them out, in real contexts particularly valuable with some requesting ‘more real micro-teaching in real classes’ in future workshops.
Participant feedback, both formal and informal, has been extremely positive. Teachers found the sessions to be informative, useful and motivating. They are clearly eager to apply the various activities into their teaching once they return to their schools and responded very positively to the feedback received during both micro-teaching and classroom observations. Participants found the workshops to be very practical and easily applicable in the course of their own teaching. Specifically, they found the process of using their own teaching materials, planning lessons around these and receiving feedback on their delivery to be among the most rewarding aspects of the training.