Reflection+on+First+Session+of+ELT+Conference+Held+in+Yüce+Koleji+by+HÜLYA+ERGÜN

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** REFLECTION ON ELT CONFERENCE **

** First Session, Anna Maria Pinter **
==== Joining ELT conferences broadens the perspective of a teacher and contributes his/her teaching techniques. Therefore the ELT conference held in Yuce Kolej was really informative and benefical for me. All sessions and spokers are succesfull and informative. I will mention the first session of which spoker was Anna Maria Pinter. ==== ==== I want to start with a brief summary of the session. Mrs Pinter started with the definition of differentiation. She pointed out that each student in the clasroom has diffrent abilty, intelligence, competence and needs. Therefore, teacher via diffrentiation can refer to those diffrences in the class. The other issue which is the actual focus of the conference is autonomy. Mrs Pinter remarked that stusents should have some autonomy on their own learning which can foster and stimulate their interest in learning and course. Furthermore sharing some responsibilty with styudents can increase their active participation in calsroom activities and their awareness about what they are doing. Moreover, Mrs Pinter stated what aoutonmy is. She said that autonomy is taking responsibilty on one’s learning. She also mentioned how making students to take some reponsibilty over their learning. She gave some useful sample activities for sharing autonomy with students and i think they are really benefical and adaptable. For instance, she gane an example of autonomy cycle and how to adapt it into clasrrom context. The autonomy cycle starts with choice. Giving students a chance to choose. It doesn’t have to be many different tasks provided for students. Within the same activity there can be simple structures which allow student to make choices. Second step of autonomy cycle is commitment motivation. An the other step is reflection. Teacher want students to reflect on what they have done during activity. Mrs Pinter pointed out that cycle autonomy is a better way of increasing students awareness of what they are doing. The other sample activities Mrs pinter shared with us are working on poem, writing story, picture stories. ==== ==== This session as others was a real success. The speaker was really clear, precise and informative. She gave many examples how to share autonomy in the classroom and discussed the rationale behind these activities. It was the first session and it should be most informative one as it was the intrduction to whole conference and it was. Starting with what diffrention means and how teacher can adopt it gave me a perspective about whole conference. Furthermore, the most important point in this session is autonomy. I am totally agree with Mrs Pinter in the point that giving students some responsibilty over their learning will increase their interest and motivation towards lesson. Raising students’ awareness via sharing autonmy can bring better results in students’ learning. Since they are aware of what they are doing they will want to learn more. They will also a chance to monitor themselves and get overall picture of their learning. They will also gain the ağabeylity to evaluate themselves and the outcomes of their learning which is also a factor increasing students motivation and learning. Of course this kind of strategy is both energy and time consuming. It requires too much work. Students also should be trained gradually towards automy. However, when it is established, i think, it works efficiently. ====

by Fatih Gün, I totally agree with Hülya that this part of conferance was really beneficial for us as the teachers' of future. The best thing she stressed is the fact each student in the clasroom has diffrent ability, intelligence, competence and needs. As teachers we should take all these into considiration to help students during the teaching process. So we can say that diffirentiation was the best part which attract attention of audiences. As Hülya said, her part was really important as the first session of the conference and she held her part very succesfully. In general, her part was mainly focused on students ' part in a class and the things which will attarct students' attention. Her techniques also teachs students how to monitor themselves. To sum up, as Hülya mentioned her part was really succesfull.

by Birgül DOĞAN I also agree with Hülya and that session was also my favorite. I got good strategies to involve students to the class activites and I learned many things about learner autonomy. I learned about the term differentiation and its usage in classroom settings. Moreover, I liked the way Pinter presented her topic. I hope to see and listen her informative speech again. As Hülya mentioned in her reflection Mrs. Pinter talked about the importance of giving responsibility to our students and I definitely agree with Mrs. Pinter and Hülya. We should incorporate with our students and give tasks to them. By doing so, we make the students feel important,capable and confident.