Workshops for teachers
As part of the training of teachers and assistants, we have invited Ms Gunvor Sønnesyn and Mr Morten A. Hem from Norway, co-authors and lecturers of the Grunnlaget conceptual teaching methodology. Gunvor and Morten will be training teachers and assistants from Czech schools, kindergartens and pre-school clubs for four days on how to promote practical understanding of basic concepts and how to use this understanding to teach reading, writing and arithmetic more easily and effectively.
TEACHER TRAINING
Our aim is to give teachers an additional tool to support children who have difficulties in learning; sometimes because they come to kindergarten or school from families where the development of language and analytical categories is not sufficiently supported, or even where a different mother tongue is spoken. At other times, children have difficulties caused by the on-line teaching in the last two years, because learning through a computer screen is very difficult.
Grunnlaget’s conceptual teaching method is primarily based on practical activities, and teachers who want to use it should take a course with a certified teacher, that Ms Gunvor and Mr Morten certainly are.
The course outline that Ms Gunvor prepared follows a four-day structure. First, it introduces the theoretical background of the Conceptual Teaching Model. Then, in the second part, it offers practical exercises and the necessary explanations and instructions for them.
The structure of the whole training is as follows:
At the beginning of the project there will be two four-day courses in CZ, which will be led by Pedverket. After that, Pedverket staff will work individually with the course graduates for the next six months and provide online consultations. Afterwards, there will be an online evaluation of all the work and each of the course graduates will write their own evaluation focusing on what they gained from the course, what worked well and what could be improved.
- Initial four-day course
- Six-month testing of the knowledge and skills acquired in the course (graduates report on their activities, Pedverket provides feedback and gives specific tasks to practice)
- One-day online evaluation
- Evaluation done by the participants in the form of a report
Thematic content of the four-day introductory course
Learning begins in the real world with the child’s experiences
- Teacher/adult awareness and understanding of “what is in the real world?” How can we analyze this and identify elements important to the child’s learning?
- How do we acquire language? Vocabulary includes understanding
- Some definitions: learning, knowledge – the result of learning, types of knowledge, concepts and their creation
- Context and summary – apply what we have learned (basic conceptual systems, concept of CTM learning model, research, analytic coding processes to facilitate thinking and flexibility, context and summary – theoretical “map” of the puzzle )
As the training will be bilingual with translation, the time span is longer than usual. However, we can promise you that you will take away a lot of new experiences, learning and inspiration.
In 2022, the project held a training for 40 teachers from the Liberec region. Teachers and assistants were able to draw directly on the experience of Norwegian lecturers and enrich their existing experience with a new method – the Grunnlaget method.
TRAINING OF TEACHERS AND EXPERTS
The project will also provide further training for educators, especially focused on working with PAS – not only in school, but also in leisure time. We want to educate the staff of professional organizations in Liberec Region in preventive psychotherapeutic work, to educate those who are interested in this topic and can use it further. In this way they can effectively deepen their expertise and subsequently apply the acquired knowledge in the field of mental health prevention.
In cooperation with the organization Velký vůz sever, z.ú. and the LIRA Centre, z.ú. and with the registered association Líp a spolu z.s. we want to organize several seminars during the project, in which we will focus especially on working with children with PAS.
The topics of the seminars will depend mainly on the needs of the teachers and organizations that send their teachers to such trainings. Given the focus of the project, the topics will be mainly related to:
- mental health care
- prevention of mental health problems
- perception of different child behaviour (not only PAS) linked to indicators that something is wrong