Welcome back 🙂

We hope you all had a nice holiday, effective prep days and are ready for the upcoming academic year. We’d like to share this academic year’s first highlights:

Our new colleagues
This year six new instructors joined our family.
1. Aida Görgülü
2. Azer Doğan
3. Burcu Kaldırım
4. Leyla Yıldız Diker
5. Mohammad Khari
6. Sultan Düzenli

The orientation week started with a “welcome breakfast” and Nergis Uyan’s presentation.

Then, our new colleagues learned about the university and the system of the ScOLa through different activities such as participating in a scavenger hunt, joining sessions and microteaching.

 

They will continue getting support throughout the year in their induction programme but we know that you are all there whenever they need support or guidance.

Once again we would like to say WELCOME to them and wish them all the best in their new journey.

ScOLa Breakfast

We had a great start to the academic year with a breakfast where we had the opportunity to come together as a big family and catch up with each other. We hope to have other socializing opportunities throughout the year 🙂

You can find some photos from the event.

 

UGE Shakespearance Sessions

UGE started their Shaexperience Sessions in September. So far, two sessions have been delivered. You can find the details below:

UNDP Sustainable Development Goals: An Introduction by Saadet Tıkaç (14 Sep 2018)


APA citation Generators by Ali Nezami (18 Sep 2018)

Common Time Professional Development Sessions

Having received positive feedback from the majority of the instructors, we will continue having our developmental sessions with the help of our voluntary instructors who would like to share good practices with ScOLa. You can find the list of the sessions that are going to be held in the Fall Semester below:

 

 WEEKS  PRESENTERS  TITLE BRIEF INFORMATION
 1 & 2  Nazan Özçınar Sirel &
Ezgi Öner		 Increasing Creativity and Motivation with Project Work in A2 Classes  Project work at lower levels in English classrooms may be perceived as a waste of time for some teachers, but in the long run both teachers and students can recognise its essential value since project or task-based work is a great way to help learners make real-life connections. Therefore, profound learning may be much better in an educational environment where genuine student involvement, engagement and creativity are nourished. Assigning projects or tasks can be achieved in this environment and students will be able to meet more creative challenges with enthusiasm and enjoy a more memorable learning experience. We have tried to succeed this with our ‘choose not to choose’ method contributing to life-long learning.
3 & 4  Gülseren Eyüboğlu  Teaching Grammar  In this session, the participants wil have the opportunity to discuss different ways of teaching grammar briefly, and share ideas about what it means to teach grammar in a student-centered way.
 5&6  Şule Bakırcan Yalçın  MINDFULNESS IN THE
CLASSROOM: How it can help
students to be “present” in the lesson		 This session aims at providing a general insight into the term of “mindfulness” and its application to the academic environment. During the session, participants will have an opportunity to learn about practical mindfulness activities that can be used in the language classroom.
 9&10  Can Danışmant  Probing into the colors of communication Ever had your messages backfire against your intent or listened to the voice of a perceived villain? Clashes in communication may hinder individuals from getting the chance to harvest fruitful end-products in the medium of communication. What this session aims at is to provide insights in a reciprocal and reflective fashion while communicating and interacting with our colleagues, students and anyone else during our daily routine, paving the way towards conflict resolution.
 11&12  Zeliha Aydın & Nurkan Dikmen  Digging into the Differences: Reporting from the Differentiated Classroom  In this session, we would like to share our experience and practices while trying to implement Differentiated Instruction (DI) in our classrooms. The session will include some theoretical information on DI but will have a more practical focus involving some sample activities we used in our classrooms. We will also address the benefits and challenges of DI we experienced in our own practice. If you are willing to try a new approach, we hope to give you an overall view by sharing how we put the DI theory into practice.
 13&14  Ahmet Çelik  Participative Speaking Activities The main focus of the session will be on how to create a context and reason for students to feel the urge to speak through a both cooperative and competitive process. Moreover, how to train students to gain the ability to self-monitor and assess the process is another focus of the session to benefit from autonomous learning strategies. Finally, for teachers giving delayed feedback on speaking performance and its benefits will be put forward.

 

This week’s session will be held on 27.09.2018-Thursday at 9.00 in ScOLa-220.  Please send an e-mail to nazan.ozcinar@ozyegin.edu.tr by Wednesday if you’d like to attend the session so that they can make the necessary arrangements.

Nergis Uyan’s Welcome Meeting with the Students

ScOLa Director, Nergis Uyan, will have a Welcome Meeting with our students this week.  You can find the details below:

Level Date Time Venue
A2 28 Sept. – Friday 9.00-10.30 Reşat Aytaç Auditorium
B1 28 Sept. – Friday 10.40-12.30 Reşat Aytaç Auditorium
B2 26 Sept.-Wednesday 12.40-14.30 Reşat Aytaç Auditorium

ScOLa Study Center

This year we’ll continue providing support to our Prep students in the areas that they need additional individual support.  You can find this semester’s schedule below.

One addition to this year’s Study Center is that there will be Speaking Practice Slots when the students can have a chance to chat with our native speaker instructors. You can direct your students who seek that type of support to the available slots in the Study Center.

This is all for Week 1. Wish you all a fruitful new Academic Year.