Meet The Speakers: Christina Chorianopoulou

15/02/2018 - 22:09

Room 317
11:45-12:25
40-minute workshop

Learner Voices: #ProjectFound

Christina Chorianopoulou

Could a project empower students to acquire sustainable learning habits? #ProjectFound is an ongoing attempt at bringing students' needs to the fore and helping them build upon learning. The workshop will take participants through the cooperative design, implementation and assessment of #ProjectFound, aiming to inspire teachers to listen closely to their students and welcome languaging, regardless of their teaching context.

Christina Chorianopoulou’s Bio

Freelance Teacher
TESOL Greece
Greece

Christina Chorianopoulou is an English and Greek language educator, passionate about project and game-based learning.With academic background in Pre-School & Primary Education and being multilingual, her focus is always on building safe learning environments. Reflection and community are her building blocks; she blogs at https://mymathima.wordpress.com and serves TESOL Greece as a Board Member and the Newsletter Editor.

Why have you chosen this topic for your presentation?

#ProjectFound has been running in Athens and around Greece since 2012; sharing both the accomplishments and struggles of learners and teachers could serve as an example of an effective project-based approach to language learning.

What do you want participants to take away from your presentation?

Participants will experience the multiple stages of a project based on students' needs; they will have a multitude of activities to use in classes and will hopefully be intrigued to attempt a project-based approach.

Summary of presentation

#ProjectFound was initiated in Athens in 2012 in an effort to motivate groups of adolescent learners from several different backgrounds to further pursue language learning.

Through both observation and use of authentic materials and by employing several writing strategies and dramatization techniques, learners explored language(s) and their role as part of our evolving, multicultural world.

The educator focus remained on cultivating learners’ language awareness while observing and reflecting upon a communicative approach to teaching and the idea of “languaging”: “Through the process of talking-it-through, of “languaging” – to another, with another, or with the self – we come to new understandings and new insights – it is a way in which we can learn and develop” (Swain, 2013).

Throughout the workshop, the participants will be taken through each step of its implementation through dramatizations, while receiving practical ideas on why and how to set the stage for languaging in our ever-growing multicultural teaching environments.

Participants will be prompted to form their learning hub, collaborate, explore and reflect on an idea and finally present their reflections and peer-assess the presentations of other participant hubs. Upon completion, participants will have a set of strategies to implement in their classes.