Seminar Day March 28

Festival of Best Practices

Dear colleagues,

Our upcoming Seminar Day (Tuesday, March 28) will be a “Festival of Best Practices”; the opportunity to share Best Practices in pedagogy and didactics and learn from each other. This means that the keynote speaker of the upcoming Seminar Day will be YOU!

As ‘masters of our teaching trade’, we all have tried and true classroom strategies. However, we do not often get to share these, nor do we often have the opportunity to visit other teachers’ classrooms and see the wonderful things they do with their students. So, let’s all collect our nicest activities and expert tricks and bring them to this Seminar Day to learn with and from each other. This will be a fitting conclusion to the previous Seminar Days which were focused on collaboration, leadership, and creating a feedback culture.

We would like to ask each of you to bring a Best Practice to the Seminar Day to showcase it and share it with colleagues. The set-up of the day will resemble a fair or festival in which you can both present your own Best Practice and get to know the interesting Best Practices of your colleagues.

Please bring one Best Practice that highlights one of the themes of the day. Below, we have provided some guidance on the topics that we are looking for.

 

Themes

1. Activating Students

For example, bring a practice/activity that fits into one of these topics:

An activity that…

• allows you to focus class time on activities and interaction instead of lecturing.
• ensures that students do the thinking, rather than you doing the thinking for them.
• offers students more autonomy and choice in how they reach the learning goals.
• tackles the issue of students who come to class unprepared.
• replaces giving instructions and corrective feedback by activities that require student input.
• is a best practice in contextual education.
• etc.

 

2. Building Community

For example, bring a practice/activity that fits into one of these topics:

An activity that…

• enables students to get to know each other and/or get to know you.
• helps students develop a sense of belonging.
• helps students feel seen, heard, and appreciated.
• treats students as equal partners in the educational process.
• shows that you have high expectations of all students.
• is a best practice of collaboration among teachers, CRs and TOs.
• etc.

 

3. Optimizing Feedback

For example, bring a practice/activity that fits into one of these topics:

An activity that…

• encourages students to actively engage with assessment criteria and feedback (feedback literacy).
• teaches students how to give and receive high quality peer feedback.
• uses formative feedback instead of summative feedback.
• helps students to make the most out of consultancy sessions.
• avoids individual feedback to individual students by giving feedback on class level.
• is a good example of a feedback culture among colleagues (teachers, CRs and TOs).
• etc.

 

Registration

Please sign up for the Seminar Day and indicate which theme fits best with the Best Practice that you want to share.