Successful "Fun English" Workshop

Following on from the success of my workshop erm, two years ago (!) I once again offered my wisdom and experience to any and all teachers who were interested in teaching young children English in a creative and fun way.

We'd done the publicity for the workshop, and asked people to sign up if they were interested, so that we knew how many people to expect. By yesterday evening, we had a grand total of 9 teachers signed up. It wasn't a huge number, but I didn't mind - I figured if God wanted just a small number to come then that was his prerogative and I would give it my best for those few. By the time the workshop started this morning, there were 14 teachers, and four more appeared over the next half hour or so... In the end, I had twice the number of people I was expecting. It was wonderful to see so much enthusiasm! Most of the participants also bought my book and the CDs of songs and resources. Hooray!

I had a great time once again - I love helping others become more creative in their teaching and it's a wonderful privilege to be able to pass on what I've learnt to people who are keen to do the best they can. Oh, and I love the whole "performance" aspect of teaching anyway, and with such a willing group, it was a joy to encourage them to sing and play games with the eagerness of children!

Here's a wee look at what I do:





And you'll find some photos here:

Fun English Workshop 2009

© Fiona L Cooper 2009

a busy couple of months

It's been a while, I know. There has been a lot going on at work but nothing new or unusual enough for me to feel the urge to write about it. I did workshops with the 1st and 2nd year teacher trainees on how to teach English to young children. The second year group are a lovely bunch of girls; we are blessed to have them at FEISA, and they were very enthusiastic from the beginning. The first years are a much more difficult group and, while doing the workshops I got the feeling that they were thinking it was a bit of a waste of time, so I was very surprised and gratified that my perceptions in fact had been wrong, when they wrote out their evaluation of the workshops. There were only one or two negative comments and almost all of them gave me 5 out of 5!

My parents came for their second visit in as many years! They had a fabulous time watching birds in the Chaco with a British bloke called Paul. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of birdwatching so I was pleased to leave them in the safe and capable hands of Paul while I got on with work at FEISA for a week! We visited the Iguazú falls again and the Jesuit ruins, in the south of Paraguay. I got to see a different part of the country with them, which was lovely. We stayed together at the SIM guest house in Asunción, so I had to get used to my mum's snoring quickly! And that meant Mum and Dad met (albeit briefly!) a number of the other missionaries I work alongside.

It was a very dry winter here, which meant drought for those living in the harsh western region called the Chaco, and it also provided fuel for thousands of forest fires to break out. Fortunately, there has been some rain in the past month or so, which has helped, though not enough to solve the water shortage yet.

I did my first solo visits to girls on teaching practice in October. A bit scary at first but I found I enjoyed being able to input into their training in a direct way. I saw some fantastic teaching and some decidedly underwhelming teaching too! Fortunately, there was a lot more that was positive than negative!

This photo shows one of our students as she supervises kids painting their playground wall

And here the children are painting themselves!


Other things I've been involved in include the design for a website we're putting together. There will be a Spanish part for prospective students and an English part for prospective donors/praying people. The Spanish part is with the website design company now and should be up and running within the next few weeks. The English part will take longer, but we're all quite excited about it, as you can imagine!

We have also taken the mobile play scheme to many, many schools over the past month. Our third year students have taken advantage of this service to enhance their teaching practices in schools in very poor areas. Some of the kids have been so overwhelmed they just didn't know what to do when faced with so many toys! I was playing in the home corner with one little girl, going along with the story she was making up and she was so delighted that I was responding to her play that she gave me a kiss on the cheek!



It's now near the end of the academic year so exams are coming up, which make the students quite stressed, as you can imagine. Everybody is exhausted and it's getting hotter, which makes everything that much more tiring, so we're all looking forward to the end of term!

At the end of October, I went away to a lovely hotel in the trees near a lake about an hour from Asunción, for a women's retreat with 6 others from the SIM team in Paraguay. It was a really wonderful weekend. We were the only guests at the hotel for most of the weekend, so it felt completely luxurious, swimming in the pool by ourselves, having the waiters at our beck and call...! It was fantastic to get to know everyone a bit better and to spend time with each other focusing on God and how to make Jesus our treasure. It really touched my heart and made me reassess my commitment to my Lord. If I really want to experience the joy of the Lord, I have realised this will entail discipline and sacrifice as well as suffering along the way. A hard thing to come to terms with but I am now convinced that the price is worth paying. If you want to pray for me, please pray that I will find fullness of joy in my relationship with my Saviour.

These are some of the women on the retreat; clockwise from left: Kelly, Alyssa, Vonnie, Lissy with Timmy


the extra ones in this picture are Sarah (front left) and Cherlynn (back right) oh, and me, as you can see!

Fame at last!!

"Ah, you're Fiona Cooper, I've heard about you!" So said Nelson Aguilera, a university bigwig and author, when he read my name badge as the conference speakers were having lunch on Friday. It was the Paraguayan conference of the Association of Christian Schools International and I was there to do two workshops on teaching English in a fun way to 3-11 year olds. I'd heard a lot about him, he's quite famous in education circles here, so I felt it was quite something for him to have heard about little old me!



I had great fun doing the workshops, though it was a challenge for me because I really feel my expertise is in the pre-school age group, so I didn't feel quite as confident about everything as I had when I did the workshop to the pre-school teachers in March. Two of the teachers who'd come in March were also there on Friday, and one of them told me she was using a lot of what she'd learnt at the previous workshop in her teaching. It was really encouraging to have that feedback.




I was surprised in the morning on Friday when, as the first participants trickled in to the room for my workshop, they were speaking English to eachother and to us (Sam came with me as my moral support and techie!) so I asked them whether they'd prefer to have the workshop in English or Spanish. To my surprise they all wanted it in English, so I did it all in English, even though my powerpoint and all my notes were in Spanish. More and more people came into the room after I'd started and I felt a little for the latecomers since they didn't get the choice of having it in Spanish! We played games and sang songs and there was much fun and laughter. I love teaching when it's like that! There were about 40 teachers at the morning workshop and when I repeated it after lunch, 12 people came. ("siesta time;" a similar thing happened to us last year when we did the play scheme workshop at the conference).




At the start of the afternoon session, I asked which language they wanted it in and they chose Spanish, so I got to do the same workshop in two different languages, which made me feel very versatile indeed!! One of the morning teachers returned in the afternoon with someone else from his school. It was better to have fewer participants because everyone could get involved in the games, whereas in the morning, some people had to sit and watch and then, when I gave them the opportunity to participate, were too comfortable in their chairs to come and sit on the floor with me!!




So, there I was doing exactly what I hoped I'd be doing when I said to God after our play scheme workshop at ACSI last year that I'd like to do one on teaching English. The teachers who came to the workshops on Friday all seemed very interested in what I was sharing with them and my prayer is that every one of them will have gone away with new ideas that they can implement to add something new to their teaching.

Fun English for Kids

My workshop on Saturday was a success!

Thank you to all who prayed. It was a miracle, but everything got done in time and I was only a little bit nervous! I spent last week running around doing last minute things like getting my flashcards laminated and recording the songs onto CD (yes, I am officially a Recording Artist!) and supervising the printing and photocopying of the booklet (see the photos below). As you can see, Leo (the graphic designer) did a fantastic job making the booklet look fab. There are similar designs throughout the booklet and it's just wonderful to see my work looking so lovely. The booklet is manual for how to teach English to young children, including advice on classroom management, lesson structure, curriculum development and a prepared curriculum for 5 year olds, including a list of games and songs as well as advice for the first ever lesson. It's taken me about a year to put it together with the flashcards, worksheets and songs, which are now on CDs the participants were able to buy. (All proceeds going to FEISA, of course!)





12 teachers came from different schools in and around Asunción; we sang songs, played games, did a worksheet and looked at how to structure a lesson and how to design a curriculum. I enjoyed it very much and the teachers were very enthusiastic. One has asked me to do a workshop with the other English teachers from her group of schools. There's also the possibility of doing another workshop in the next couple of months, for teachers who didn't hear about this one. We need to work on the publicity a bit more!

Last May we did a workshop on learning through play at the Paraguayan Conference of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). Then in September, we went to Argentina to do the same workshop with the Argentinian ACSI Conference. Well ACSI seem to be quite keen to have me do a workshop on teaching English at the Paraguayan Conference this year... Watch this space!!!

English teaching workshop

On Wednesday this week, I went with Ana, the head of teaching practices at FEISA, to a meeting with the director of ACSI Paraguay (the Christian schools network), to ask for ACSI's help in publicising and organising a workshop for people who teach English to very young children. It was a great meeting, Esteban, the ACSI director, was very positive about the idea of the workshop and the materials I've produced so far. He was very helpful in getting us to work out how best to organise the workshop and so it looks as though it's going to happen on the 3rd March!!! That's now just two weeks away and there's a lot to do before then.

I've written a booklet on how to teach English to young children, including advice and a sample scheme of work, together with songs and a list of games. I've also produced worksheets to accompany the scheme of work and vocabulary flashcards for use in games. We have a graphic designer who is going to help with making the booklet look attractive for pre-school teachers here (they like pictures!). Please pray that he has enough time to do that! I've got to finish the worksheets and possibly put them into pdf format, and finish the flashcards then get them laminated. Then I've got to plan what I'm actually going to say to the teachers!! Please pray that I can get all that done and feel happy with the standard of work I've produced.

I am very excited about the chance to share with teachers here the skills and knowledge that I've gained over my teaching career, it's as though this is the culmination of all my previous experience. I'll let you know how it goes!

English Teaching Workshops

I've now done workshops with the first and second years on how to teach English and other languages to young children. I'm very pleased to say that they went well and the students all gave me positive feedback. I taught them songs and games and gave them advice on how to read a story, give instructions, structure a lesson etc. Here are some comments from the students:

"I liked the variety of activities, songs and games which are really lovely and very useful for doing with children. The workshops gave me good ideas about how to teach English to young children."

"I enjoyed the creative way we learned the different activities, games and songs. It’s really great for us to go through the experience ourselves before doing it with the children."

"I liked how Fiona taught, the classes were great fun, the songs were really catchy. I liked everything about the workshop; it was fantastic!"

"I wish the workshops could have lasted longer because they were very useful and, most of all, great fun."

As you can imagine, it was a real boost to my confidence to read such encouraging comments on the evaluation sheets the students handed in.

It was really fantastic for me to realise that the students were so keen to learn what I had to teach them. The second years were asked to get into groups and plan an activity, like the ones I had done with them, for a class of five-year-olds. At the end of the fortnight of workshops, each group presented their activity and I was really amazed to see how well they did and how much of my advice they'd taken on board.

It was wonderful to be using the skills I'd learned in Spain and be able to pass them on to a new generation of teachers.