Digital Portfolios Seminar to support children in need

Digital portfolios provide students with a nice way to show examples of their best work and the process of developing that work. In this event we will develop this issue and will also present some tools for creating digital portfolios.

All the proceeds will be used to organize a Christmas celebration for the children of El Paraíso, a community in Villa María del Triunfo and a community kitchen in AAHH Saúl Cantoral in San Juan de Lurigancho.

Please help us to help. #CTSonline #Christmasforchildren

Some mementos of our last Academic Event

On May 25th, Customized Training Services held our XIX Academic Event. We need to thank all those who made this possible: our participants, Macmillan, NUTESA and our two lecturers Ms. Liliana Burga and Ms Ellen Berry. Special thanks to RELO Andes for their FORUM magazines and for allowing the participation of their fellow Ms Ellen Berry. 

Pre-FCE Online Course

Official international Certificates are a very useful tool to study abroad or to demonstrate a specific Language level when applying for a job. In the job field some of the most commonly required Certificates are the ones issued by Cambridge Assessment English, particularly B2: First (previously known as FCE).

Over five million people in the world sit for Cambridge exams which measure basic skills when using a language: reading, listening, speaking and writing. First thing to do before becoming familiar with the exam structure is to reach the required level of proficiency in the language. That is why we have designed this Pre-FCE course where we will present and practice some of the most important language structures that are being assessed in the B2: First exam. Therefore, taking this course will allow participants to kill two birds with one stone: improve their Grammar proficiency and advance in their exam preparation. We can help you, contact us.

Thanks to all those who attended our XVIII CTS Academic event. Here you are some highlights of the day.

Tools for Formative Assessment

This session will have two parts: the First Part will be about strategies and tools for formative assessment and the second will help participants with the preparation of Rubrics. In both cases we will be taken into account the recent guidelines given by MINEDU.
 

XVI ACADEMIC FACEBOOK EVENT

Cambridge Exams are really important not only for our students but for us teachers of English as well since we cannot teach what we do not know. 

This is why we have chosen the topic of Communication Skills for Cambridge Exams emphasising the Communicative aims of some of the papers and not focusing in just one exam but on the different aims that B1 Preliminary and B2 First in particular have.

XIV CTS Academic Facebook Event

On February 17th we ran our XIV CTS Academic Facebook event on Back to School: What to do the First Day of Classes. Along the workshops we invited  some of the teachers to try some of the ideas presented in the event and share their experience with us.... and so they did. It is absolutely rewarding to know that CTS helps colleagues introduce variety in their teaching practice. 

You can see some of the highlights of the event below: 

And the teachers´contribution in our Facebook page: PeruCTS

Last year was full of change and presented many challenges and lessons for CTS. We ran our customary Facebook events devoting time to issues such as Neuroscience, Education and Soft Skills. We also held our First CTS ELT Academic Conference in late September and ran workshops in Trujillo and Cajamarca.

As we take this time to contemplate the previous year, we feel very proud for having the courage once again to face situations  that would demand a lot of energy and stamina not only from us but also from our students. We congratulate them on finding the time and making the effort to join us in our courses: Cambridge English First (FCE) preparation courses, TKT CLIL, TKT Young Learners, TKT Core, Grammar Games for the English Classroom-this year we ran three of these courses, Web 2.0 and ICT tools for ELT and our classic Improving Writing Skills. Thank you very much for your commitment, we all know how demanding our courses and workshops are.

For most people, the beginning of a new year is a natural time to make adjustments and set goals. However, any time is the time to start a self-improvement program.

This year CTS starts activities with our XIV Facebook Event: Welcome back: Get ready for 2018 ELT Challenges where we will try to support teachers with their lesson planning and methodology tips so  as to meet everyone´s expectations for the first days of school. We will also introduce some online courses besides our blended learning TKTs, CAE preparation courses and will visit the Provinces once again.

We look forward to seeing you and would love to help you fall deeply and passionately in love – with yourself and your work!.  

Grammar Games for the English Classroom

Our last Grammar Games Full-Day workshop will take place on November 26th. It is a real hands-on event as you can see in the following video.

There are still some seats available. Contact us at ctsperu@customizedtrainingperu.com

Due to the fact that Soft skills are skills that help success in all professional areas, in CTS we have devoted all our academic events to developing this theme, our Conference cannot be the exception.

There will be four presentations, all of them on different soft skills: Leadership, self-confidence, stress management, communication, etc. 

You are all welcome but hurry, we have sold half of the capacity of the premises already !!

It may seem so soon but it is time now of our XI Academic Facebook event based on the theme for this year: 21st Century skills in Education. This time it is the turn of Soft skills and another guest speaker Maggie Steingraeber from the American Embassy.
Please read below the summary of the presentations:

 Topic: Soft Skills in Education

Soft skills such as social ability, resilience, self-control and time management can be integrated within a course by means of project-based learning, group work and non-cognitive skills. This workshop will develop the why and the how of Soft skills and how to conciliate them with the cognitive skills we teach in the classroom.

Presenter:

Maria Luisa Mu is the Academic Director of CTS. She was the General Coordinator of the Language Department at USIL and is a certified teacher trainer with ample experience teaching Business in England, Spain, Chile and Peru where she participated in the organization of the English for Business Programme at ESAN and Universidad del Pacífico. She has also taught ESP at UNDP, FAO, OIT and UNESCO.

Maria Luisa is an educator who holds a Master in English Language Teaching from the University of Sheffield, England and has Post-Graduate Degrees (Diplomado de Segunda Especialidad) in Educational Management (PUCP), Information Technology (USIL), Curriculum Design for Distance Learning Courses (PUCP), Negotiation and Conflict Resolution (PUCP) and Teacher Training (UPCH).

She was the tutor of the blended-learning Master Degree course in TEFL from Universidad de Piura / FUNIBER and is currently one of their thesis advisors besides being a Speaking Examiner from Cambridge University from YLEs to CPE.

 

Topic: Cross-cultural communication

When people talk about 21^st century skills, the first thing that comes to most minds is technology. While digital literacy is important for success in the modern age, there is another essential skill that has emerged as a result of the globalized world: Cross-cultural communication. Through the advancements of communication technology, social media in particular, the world is a smaller place. You are just one click away from communicating with someone on the other side of the world! For this reason, language users must be equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary for effective communication with people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This presentation will address some key considerations for effective cross-cultural communication.

Presenter:

Maggie Steingraeber currently lives in Lima, Peru as an English Language Fellow, a US Department of State funded program. She works closely with the Peruvian Ministry of Education in the Department of Initial Teacher Training to reform the national curriculum and strengthen classroom methodology. Her passion for language and culture began with a high school exchange program that took her from the Midwestern state of Wisconsin to the foothills of the Andes in Mendoza, Argentina. She holds a BA in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin and a MA in TESOL from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She specializes in curriculum design and materials development as well as teacher training and educational technology. She has previously worked as a teacher and teacher trainer in the United States, China, India, Argentina, and Chile.

Happy with the beginning of our Grammar course last Saturday

TKT CLIL Preparation Course

 A CLIL Science lesson

 This is really awesome!!!

We (CTS) have received requests of people who want to do the TKT CLIL on Saturdays so here you are:

Whenever we start a new term I get really excited because we, the tutors at CTS, have more possibilities to meet new teachers and to work with the ones that have been with us for a while. We all share a common goal: to improve the level of our students by training and becoming better teachers.

This is the plan for the next term. We look forward to seeing you soon.

 

TACKLING TYPICAL GRAMMAR PROBLEMS

We  have now finished the third module of this course and the results could not have been more successful.

The purpose of the course is to help learners overcome some fossilized grammatical mistakes and/or raise awareness of some special cases that sometimes occur in even well-known structures.

Some sessions start with an activity based on a Use of English task and others go straight into understanding the structure and use of the Grammatical structure and then developing activities to put this knowledge into practice. The activities are not only sentences in a worksheet but also situations where students need to use what they have revised.

For instance, in the case of Reported Speech, students pretend they are at a party, they are given slips with some statements they need to say while mingling with the other guests while listening to some party music and then they have to report what they heard in the party.

To practise verbs and adjectives followed by prepositions we  use a game where students form groups and a member of the opposite group has to pick up cards with sentences where the preposition is missing. If they provide the right preposition,the score a point and can make their teams win.

Many people think learning Grammar is boring but in CTS we tried to make it useful and enjoyable and since the group was really small, we managed to make it really customized for participants´particular problems.

It feels good to hear from the participants that the course was good and useful and that they wanted more.

See you in the next course!!

We hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Christmas. We would like to remind you of our Third Summer Course for Top English Language Teachers 2016 which will take place from January 18th to 30th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 pm.

This year we also have guest tutors and since you know every year we develop different modules based on your requirements,  we are sure you will be happy with the modules we are offering for 2016. These are: 

• Creativity and Innovation in the Language Classroom
• Pronunciation and Grammar development from Pre-Intermediate to Advanced
• Teaching CLIL and Teaching Young Learners
• Using TICS and Socializing (Leadership and Team work) in the Classroom
• Improving the Four Skills using learning strategies

 Certification is for 200 hours and vacancies are limited.

 

View the previous Summer Courses.
 

 



Closing CTS Academic Year with our Fifth Facebook event

 

 

It is with great pleasure that Customized Training Services closed our academic events on December 5th not only with full attendance but also with a good response to our request of taking presents to provide a different Christmas for some of the kids at A.A. H.H Saul Cantoral. Thanks very much for that!!!!

 At the end of the V Facebook event,  the teachers who had done the Cambridge English First, TKT Young Learners, TKT CLIL and the CTS Course Teaching English Pronunciation received their Certificates. Some teachers even collected two Certificates having done the two TKTs or the Cambridge English First and a TKT showing that when there is a will there is a can. Some of them studied Saturdays and Sundays to be able to have a sound preparation for their exams and they certainly achieved their purpose.

We would like to thank our teachers of English not only for their effort but also for their inspiration. It really inspires us to see people who feel enthusiastic about their jobs, their lives and families. The good energy they transmit is contagious and oblige us to follow the example and get even more enthusiastic about what we do, thanks for having the faith to consider us as your trainers.

 We would also like to thank Ms. Maricarmen Rosas, Marketing Manager of NUTESA for all  their support at providing us with the premises, the coffee breaks, the presents and the publicity for our events. Thanks to her and to Marita Duarte from SM for her always being there to lend us a hand.

It is certainly inspiring to work with this kind of people who know where they are going, that happily make every effort to reach their goals and are determined to achieve what they want with drive and enthusiasm.

 

 

 

TKT Young Learners Preparation Course 2015-1

An enthusiastic group of students took the summer TKT YL preparation course with us (Customized Training Services) . Here are some of the highlights of the course.

Customized Training Services organizes a Facebook event to thank all its Facebook followers. This time, we ran a survey to find out what teachers would prefer to Exchange ideas about and the title of these workshops show the result of these surveys.

We look forward to helping you with ideas in the same way you helped us.

TKT Young Learners Preparation Course
Thank you guys!!! This course was SOLD OUT !!!!. We´ll let you know when we start the new one.

Many teachers who begin teaching find themselves busy trying to survive and cover the syllabus. Many times-especially when they teach children- they focus on the subject matter, the methods and keeping the children quiet.

Fortunately, teachers gradually understand the importance of observing what children do and talking to them to understand the children's amazing capacity for learning and their multiple abilities.

Doing the preparation course for TKT Young Learners will help teachers of children examine their own teaching and their beliefs. It provides insights into the special characteristics, abilities and attitudes children bring to the classroom and will definitely improve their teaching practice besides providing them with an international certificate from Cambridge University.

We look forward to joining you in this course!!!!