Traditionally, spring break is the time for professional development of Zaporizhzhia in-service teachers. Zaporizhzhia National University organized a professional development workshop “Distance foreign language teaching: online features” within the project Erasmus+ KA2 CBHE MultiEd (“Foreign Language Teacher Training Capacity Development as a Way to Ukraine’s Multilingual Education and European Integration”). The professional seminar-practicum was organized by the Faculty of Foreign Philology in cooperation with Zaporizhzhia City Council’s municipal establishment “Centre of pedagogical professional development” and the Faculty of Journalism.
The workshop was initiated by the Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Philology Halyna Moroshkina, PhD, the Associate Professor of the Chair of the Second Language Teaching Olha Kanibolotska, PhD, and the consultant of the Centre of pedagogical professional development Iryna Nahornova.
The trainings aimed to introduce the participants to the online tools used in the English language classroom while integrating Media and Information literacy (MIL) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology into teaching English as a foreign language.
Two workshops “Infomedia Literacy Online” (trainers: the Head of the Chair of Theory and Practice of English Translation Svitlana Zapolskykh, PhD, and the Asso
ciate professor of the Chair of English Philology Maryna Zaluzhna, PhD) covered the basic principles of information and media literacy teaching with online tools applied: Mentimeter, Padlet, Jamboard. The participants of the seminar discussed the use of MIL materials in e-classroom (Mentimeter), analysed the main types of infomedia content (Padlet), and learnt to create interactive posters (Jamboard).
The second training was “Media literacy basics: analysing and creating content” (trainer: the Associate Professor of the Chair of Journalism Katerina Sirinyok-Dolgaryova, PhD). The seminar participants got acquainted with main principles of Media Literacy, acquired basic skills in analysing and visualizing information in the online service for mind mapping MindMup. There was a mini-practicum in creating content – infographics, posters and interactive presentations in the graphic editing software Canva.
The third training conducted t
he Associate professor of the Chair of English Philology Natalia Nadtochii, PhD. The topic was “CLIL lesson: practical activities to focus on language”. This workshop aimed to present to the participants the purpose of CLIL methodology – subject-language integrated learning – combining subject and language competencies. The speaker noted that the tasks at the CLIL lesson should be distributed equally between content teaching and foreign language teaching. The emphasis of the training was on teaching English as a foreign language.
The workshops participants pointed to the importance and urgency of studying distance forms of teaching in their English classes, since during the ongoing adaptive quarantine fluency in online forms of work remains a relevant skill of a modern teacher. This training program for in-service English teachers was the second online workshop within the MultiEd project, the first program was held in October last year.
