London - Arabstoday
Following the success of last year’s conference, the British Council Developing Teachers’ Conference took place earlier this July. Teacher Development falls under the ‘Engaging Teachers’ strand of the British Council MENA ‘English for the Future’ work and aims, to help provide teachers with access to high quality resources and materials so that they can in turn help students realise their full potential. British Council Qatar invited Anne Wiseman as the plenary speaker and Noreen Caplen-Spence as the featured speaker, while both made presentations on writing-related topics. The other workshop presenters were a mix of British Council trainers and alumni from various British Council ‘Train the Trainer’ programmes. The workshops provided for a diverse range of topics from assessment, to building learning power and team-building. All handouts and presentations are available on the British Council teachingenglish.org.uk website for English teachers who were unable to attend the conference. Despite being near the end of the academic year, demand for continuing professional development is still high. As a result, Al Shamal Primary/Preparatory Boys’ School also hosted Noreen Caplen-Spence, where she delivered workshops for teachers from in and around the Shamal area.