Coping with Competences

British Council/LATE Summer School 2018

British Council/LATE Summer School for Teachers of English entitled “Coping with Competences” was held between the 15th August and 18th August 2018 in Priekuļi, Latvia.

Fifty-four teachers took part in the three day event held at Priekuļi Technical School. The event was funded by the British Council, and organised by the Latvian Association of Teachers of English.

The Latvian Ministry of Education is in the middle of a wholesale curriculum reform project, known as ‘The Project’. This summer school was designed to help teachers ‘cope’ with the new ideas behind the curriculum – the competences and transversal skills. The first two and a half days of the school consisted of workshops on a variety of topics. The remainder of the school was devoted to project work.

The topics covered in the workshops were: The Competency-Based Curriculum; Developing Self-Regulated Learners; Creativity For Everyone; Engaging With Motivational Activities; Assessment For Learning; the 4Cs of Competence-based Teaching; Writing; Time to Think; ICT in English Language Teaching.

Near the end of the summer school the participant teachers were asked to work in pairs to prepare lesson plans based on their chosen course books. You can download the lesson plans in .pdf format here.

You can download the Summer School Programme from here.