The Simon Greenall - Hands Up Project Scholarship for IATEFL 2021
sahar IATEFL 3
The late lamented Simon Greenall, as well as being one of the authors of English for Palestine, was a huge supporter of ELT in general in Palestine, and in particular of The Hands Up Project. Indeed Greenall Florent Books and Simon's widow, Jill Florent continue to be one of our main sponsors to this day.So it feels very good to be able to announce that, in cooperation with IATEFL (International Association for Teachers of English as a foreign Language) we have set up a scholarship in Simon's name for a Palestinian teacher to present at next year's annual IATEFL conference, and at the Hands Up Project conference which will take place immediately afterwards.Full details of how to apply for this are available on the IATEFL site here and all applications must be made through IATEFL. Remember that the deadline is 16.00 (UK time) on Wednesday 29th July 2020 so you don't have a lot of time.To qualify you must:• be a resident of Palestine• be a practising teacher or teacher trainer in primary, secondary or tertiary education• have participated actively in Hands Up Project activities, e.g. through online interaction with a remote volunteer and/or involvement in the Remote Theatre Competition• have not presented at the IATEFL Annual Conference before• consider presenting at the Hands Up Conference immediately before or after the IATEFL ConferenceThe selection committee will be particularly interested in presentations that are focussed on practical classroom based activities, and which are strongly related to an area (or areas) of the Hands Up Project's work. You may know that three Hands up teachers from Palestine already had their proposals accepted to speak at IATEFL this year. When the conference was cancelled due to Corona, IATEFL agreed to transfer their presentations to next year's conference instead. So the lucky winner of this scholarship will be in very good company!Below you can see the abstracts (50-60 words) of their three presentations. These will be included in the conference programme for next year. I've included them here to provide an idea of the style that IATEFL are looking for in the abstracts, and to avoid any potential repetition of content.
Improving teenagers long-term attitudes towards English through online linkups (Amal Mukhairez - UNRWA Gaza) By connecting online to remote volunteers through the Hands Up Project, students in UNRWA schools in Gaza have been provided with motivating opportunities to activate the English they are learning in their regular classes. In this talk I’ll report on my research findings about how these online interactive activities can positively affect the students’ long-term attitudes towards studying English.
Deeper learning through remote team teaching (Samir Naim - UNRWA Gaza) Online speaking activities require teachers to listen to WHAT learners say, whilst simultaneously listening to HOW they say it. We overcome this challenge by having classroom teachers who support, reformulate, focus, exemplify etc, working in unison with remote volunteers who simply talk and listen. We’ll brainstorm effective activities, then try some out in a live-linked session with learners in Gaza.
Sharing our stories with the world through remote theatre (Haneen Jadalla - UNRWA Gaza) In our drama club in an UNRWA school in Gaza, learners develop their English fluency by writing stories, turning them into scripts, and then performing them live through Zoom to an audience in another country. In this workshop we’ll try out a part of this process and end by performing the stories through Zoom to their original authors in Gaza.The very best of luck to you all!