Advice and hints for running

seminars and workshops

It is a good idea to aim to hold seminars fortnightly with your student teachers before, during
and after their teaching practice. These will give the student teachers an opportunity to share
their successes and challenges, and strategies for
overcoming these challenges. Through structured
activities and discussion at the seminars, the
student teachers will improve their ability to plan,
teach and analyse their lessons. You will help
them and they will help each other to draw up
action plans on how to improve their lessons.
They will also provide each other support to try
new learning and teaching strategies.

By listening carefully to them, you will gain a

better picture of how your student teachers are
developing their teaching skills.

Planning a seminar
When you plan a seminar you will need to think about:

 What is the purpose of the seminar? (The first of these seminars could introduce the
TESSA materials, the second could be preparation for teaching practice and another
seminar could be focused on reflection from lessons during teaching practice.)

 What strategies will you use to achieve the chosen purpose(s)?

 Who will attend the seminar? (Just student teachers or also school staff?)

 How will you group the participants? (Student teacher and/or teachers.)

 How long will it last? (Two hours is the maximum recommended for a seminar; it
should not be less than 30 minutes.)

 What problems might arise? (For example not everyone might contribute) How will
you resolve these problems? (How will you get everyone to contribute?)

 How advanced are the student teachers in the areas that you propose to deal with?
(For example thinking critically or learning from action?)

Using a range of learning in teaching strategies during the seminar

Face-to-face seminars are just the perfect place for you to give a live demonstration of
active-learning and teaching methods. Try to take every opportunity to do so.

Activity 18: TESSA teaching strategies in a seminar

This activity provides a model on how to use TESSA teaching strategies in your
face-to-face seminars.

It would be helpful to model some of the TESSA strategies at your face-to-face

seminars, just before asking your students to use them in micro-teaching, for
instance.

 Download and print one or both of the following two key resources:
– Using mind maps and brainstorming to explore ideas
– Using role play/dialogue/drama in the classroom.

 Choose one.

 Use the technique in one of your seminars.

 Discuss how the technique worked for your students with them and how it
enabled them to participate.

 Either ask them to use in a micro-teaching session or to plan to use in one

of their next lessons and to report back to you in a telephone text message.

1. Using the TESSA strategies

I use the case studies in the TESSA module sections extensively. They are like a
film of a real activity in the classroom, showing how the key point can be enacted in
practice. It really speaks to the teacher. I use the case studies a lot in my seminars.
We use them as starting points for discussions or for brainstorming strategies to
teach in different ways. If the case study lends itself to it, we use it as a starting
point for dramatisation. We have even acted the lesson described in the case study
as a starting point for micro-teaching.
I find it very important to make sure there is some time available for student
teachers to ask any questions they have about anything, and particularly the
reflective reports and the plenary discussion. I am also very aware that the
environment during the seminar is relaxed so that all can express themselves and ask
these questions. I have found quite a few ideas in the Life Skills section of TESSA.
The materials help to refresh my memory and give me some practical ideas which are
easily adapted to working with my student teachers.

I use micro-teaching and activity seminars to help my student teachers to

become familiar with the approaches in TESSA as well as making
suggestions on their lesson plans.

Throughout the Toolkit, there are ideas on how to use the TESSA
resources in face-to-face seminars. These ideas can refer to:

 Different techniques being used

o Activity 3: Using audio drama clips for working with your student teachers
o Activity 14: Using the TESSA handbook Working with Teachers as support

 Activities to do with your students

o Activity 8: Identifying active teaching methods
o Activity 9: Active teaching methods – auditing your own and your student
teachers’ familiarity with these approaches
o Activity 10: Features of good lessons
o Activity 11: Active teaching methods – supporting student teachers

 Ideas to adapt for the use of resources with your students

o Case study 1: Triggering interest and supporting integration of ideas into the
classroom teaching
o Case study 2: Student teachers using the materials to develop one
competence
o Case study 4: Teaching Practice Supervisor for distance learning programme
with in-service teachers
1. Useful hints

Here are some useful hints on running your seminar.

 With a small group of student teachers (ten or fewer), you can work in one group.
With a larger group, decide how to divide the student teachers so that they are
most likely to benefit from the reporting process.

 Decide how to encourage active listening. For example, you might ask student
teachers to make notes for use in a subsequent written reflection or other
demonstration of what they have learnt, or for use in a plenary discussion.

 After individual group members have reported their reflections, and the group has
had some discussion of the reports, have a short break (with a time limit) before
you lead the plenary discussion.

 Decide how to encourage maximum participation in the plenary discussion.

(Refer to Case study 10: Critical reflection – Tool 2: Ideas for encouraging
participation in a plenary discussion for some ideas.)

 Make sure that there is some time available for student teachers to ask any
questions that they have about the reflective reports and the plenary discussion.

 Make sure that the student teachers understand how to prepare reflective reports
– see Case study 9: Preparing reflective reports.
Case study 9: Preparing reflective reports
In a seminar, student teachers were asked to prepare a reflective report on a classroom activity that
they had used recently. Many tried to write about a lesson in which they used the beginning of a
traditional story to promote speaking, listening, writing and reading.

One student teacher Saratu was very unsure what she was expected to prepare. She wrote a draft
report in which she described how she introduced the story, what she asked pupils to do with it and
what they did.

In the seminar, her supervisor realised she did not really understand what it means to write reflectively
when reporting on a classroom activity. So he prepared a set of notes on how to prepare a reflective
report:

Instructions and questions for supervisors and student teachers to use when
preparing a reflective report on a classroom activity
1. Write a brief description of what you [the student teacher] did and what the
pupils did during the activity.
2. What were you pleased about?
3. What, if anything, disappointed you?
4. What surprised you?
5. What did the pupils learn? Were there differences in what they learnt?
6. What did you learn from the experience of using this activity with your pupils?
7. Now that you have responded to these questions, how do you feel about the
activity and the way in which you used it?
Case study 10: Critical reflection

After receiving guidance about how to prepare a reflective report on an activity that they had used in a
primary school classroom, a group of 30 student teachers assembled for a Saturday morning seminar
during which they would present their reports. Some of the student teachers had been teaching for
years without formal qualifications, whereas others were young men and women straight from school
who were having their first experiences of working in classrooms.

Chidi, their supervisor, divided the student teachers into three groups of ten. She asked them to
present a five-minute report to the other members of their group and to listen carefully to what they
heard, so that everyone could participate in a plenary discussion after the tea break. While she
circulated among the groups, Chidi became aware of a few problems in the reporting process. After
tea, the plenary discussion was lively but Chidi noticed that some student teachers did not contribute
and some of them looked quite ‘switched off’. At the end of the morning she sat down with a snack
and made some reflective notes for herself on the seminar. Her notes looked like this:

Reporting groups –
(i) perhaps mixing experienced and inexperienced student teachers was a
mistake – the experienced dominated and some went off track with
‘stories’ from the past
(ii) need for a chair – I should have appointed and briefed one.
Plenary –
(i) some student teachers switched off – could I have invited their
comments or asked them some questions?
(ii) some could only talk about their own activity – had they listened to their
colleagues?

As a result of her reflective notes, Chidi developed the following tools, which she thought would be
helpful in her next seminar:

Tool 1: Being an effective chairperson of a reporting/discussion session

 Make sure that all participants are clear on the ‘rules’ and objectives for
the seminar. For example if each student teacher is allocated five
minutes for their report, after five minutes the chairperson will ask
them to stop. Or, for example, that everyone is expected to keep to the
topic of the course. If they begin to tell stories or make comments that
are off topic, the chair will call them to order.
 Keep time accurately.
 Keep student teachers on topic. For example if the topic is the use of
TESSA materials, the focus of discussion should be only on the use of
these materials. Or if the topic is the ‘challenges during teaching
practice’, this should be the focus.
  Encourage quiet teacher trainees (‘small talkers’) to participate and
signal to ‘big talkers’ that the views of everyone are important. For
example ‘Ahmed hasn’t had a chance to give us his views yet. Ahmed,
would you like to tell us what you think?’
 If the group has a particular task, such as reporting back to a plenary
session, make sure that time is allocated to preparing this report and
that the group has a spokesperson

Tool 2: Ideas for encouraging participation in a plenary discussion

 Ask someone to report one ‘thing’ he or she has learnt or found interesting
from listening to the reflective reports. Then ask those who have
something similar on their list to raise a hand. Choose one or two of these
‘hands’ to explain, for example, why they were interested.
 Ask someone for a question he or she has about the reports to which he or
she has listened. Then ask those with similar questions to raise a hand.
Next, ask volunteers to suggest answers to these questions.

Case study 11: Emotional support for student teachers

In the evaluation of a seminar, one of the student teachers said: ‘We are wasting time with all this
teaching practice activity stuff and discussions. Just give us the facts we need and we will learn them.’

Mrs Eugenia, the Teaching Practice Supervisor, did not immediately start defending the teaching
practice based activities. She sensed that the student teacher was saying this because he was not
used to learning in this way and that he doubted his ability to learn through action and reflection. She
decided to try to encourage him to be less anxious and to help him to feel more motivated. She said
to the student: ‘It is always difficult to adjust to new things and new responsibilities. These activities
give you responsibility for your own learning and thinking, and this is different from what you are used
to. But I know you are capable of rising to the challenge. I am convinced that, if you can overcome
your anxieties, you will find that this way of learning is relevant to your needs as a teacher, and
interesting too.’
Activity 19: Planning a face-to-face seminar
In this activity, you plan a face-to-face seminar and reflect on its effectiveness.

Use the information you have met in this section to help you to plan a face-to-face
seminar. The purpose of your seminar is for your students to be introduced and
practise active teaching methods.

 Write up your plan.

 Check it with another Teaching Practice Supervisor.

 Give feedback to each other on your plans.

 Use your plan for a seminar.

 Reflect on the effectiveness of your seminar. Are there any tools

you have considered before that might help you to do this
differently?