EXPERIENCE

- A teacher of English (1985-Present)

- Working as an assistant headmistress on Pupils’ Extra-Curricular Activities at school (1985-1992) helped me start effectively working at different kinds of projects.

- A participant in the summer school on project-making in the Pedagogical Institute of Brandenburg (Germany) within Council of Europe In-service Training Program for Educational Stuff. (July 2001)

- A participant of the biannual International BelNATE Conferences of teachers of English in Minsk Linguistic University. (1992 – Present)

- A participant and organizer of pupils’ exchange programs between pupils of Braslav Gymnasium and Vaxjo Katedral School (Sweden). (2000 – Present)

- A participant and interpreter at the International Conference “Water Resources of the Euroregion “Land of Lakes” organized by Belarusian Bureau of the Directorate of the Euroregion in Braslav. (August 2006)

- A participant of BEN summer school “Cross-border Cooperation to Support Environment and Sustainable Development in the Baltic Sea Region”.(Tartu, Estonia, August 2007)

- A participant and a winner of the contests “A Teacher of the Year” in Braslav region (Belarus, 2004) and Pskov (Russia, March 2009)

- A participant and reporter at the First Baltic School Conference on Education for Sustainable Development. (Riga, Stockholm School of Economics, Latvia, February 2013)

- An organizer and participant of meetings with the representatives of the American Embassy in Braslav gymnasium, the International workshops with American teachers and the teachers of Braslav region on teaching problems and American culture. (Braslav, May 2013 -Present)

- A participant at BSRESDN Program Partnership meeting. (Baltic Sea Region Network on Education for Sustainable Development –Uppsala University, Sweden, August 2014).

- A participant and presenter at the 6-th South Caucasus Regional ELT Conference “Reaching out for Success”. (Tskaltubo, Georgia, October 2014)

- A participant of the 10-week online teacher training course “Teaching English to Pre-teens and Teens” organized by U.S. Department of State, Office of English Language Programs and University of Oregon’s American English Institute, a Program of the Department of Linguistics. (January-March 2014)

- The leader of the regional group of teachers of English. A participant and presenter at workshops of school teachers and the teachers from neighbour regions of on teaching methods and project-based teaching. (2003-Present)

- A participant and an adult mentor of the Youth Leadership Program for Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova sponsored by the US State Department and organized by the World Learning Organization (January 2016, the USA – San Francisco, Kansas City, Washington D.C.)

- A participant of the Conference for the Alumni of on-line Programs for the English Language Teachers Organized by the US Embassy (September 2015)

- An interpreter at the Investment Forum meeting heads of diplomatic missions accredited in Latvia (September 2015)

- A participant of the Inquiry-based Approach Facilitator Training workshop on Education for Sustainable Development in Tallinn (April 2015)

- An expert of international educational network BSRESDN,a participant and a seminar-organizer at the International Media-Festival " Students are the Leaders of Change for Local Communities’ Sustainable Development “May 21, 2016).

- A translator of Active Methodology Toolkits 5 and 6 on Active Learning and Teaching by PERL organization, 2016 - 2017.

- A member of a Republican creative group of teachers of English. A workshop presenter at Minsk Academy Post-Graduate Courses on “International Cooperation of Braslav Gymnasium”, 2016-2019

- A participant of Annual Teachers Talk Shop Conference organized by the US Embassy, October 2017

- Passed TOEFL iBT certified exams in May 2015, 2017, 2018 (3 Certificates on successful completion)

• Organizer of “The English Club” at my school and involving my students into project activities, 2013- present.

PUBLICATIONS

My professional site «EnglishProjects»

• http://english-projects.000webhostapp.com

• Daronina M.M.// Using Methods of Project-Making – Minsk:”Narodnaya Asveta” (“People’s Education”) , 2004, №5 -Daronina M.M., Hadasevich G.S.// English Tests for Pupils of Forms 4-11– Minsk: OOO “Antrazen”, 2005
• Daronina M.M.// “International Face-to-face Projects”, “Friendship Goes On”, “Surprise for Swedish Students” – articles in the newspaper “Braslav Star”, 2005-present.
• Daronina M.M.// “Developing Intercultural Communication as a Source of Motivation and Inspiration in ESD Practices” - January 2014. http://braslav.wix.com/brasgymnasium#)
• Daronina M.M., Zakrevskaya Ch.Ch.// A Method of Projects in English Language Teaching –“Kiravanne u adukazii” (“Educational Administration’).-2008.-№ 3.
• Daronina M.M.// Transborder cooperation as a condition of organizing ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) practices in secondary schools (international youth project “Democracy)-a presentation at the First Baltic School Conference on Education for Sustainable Development in Riga (Latvia), February 2013. http://www.sseriga.edu/en/centres/centre-for-sustainable-business/education-for-sustainable-development/
• Daronina M.M. // My Participation in a 10-week online course at Oregon University. – An article on the website of Braskav Gymnasium.- March 2014. http://braslav.wix.com/brasgymnasium#)
• Images and Objects. Active Methodology Toolkit 5 on Responsible and Sustainable Living. What’s the Story?
• Sustainable Living, 2014, PERL, www.perlprojects.org. made a Russian translation of an edited volume from English into Russian, May 2016
• https://eng.hihm.no/project-sites/living-responsibly/publications/active-learning-methodologies
• -Daronina M.M.//Americans Are Again at Our Gymnasium!-an article in the newspaper “Braslav Star”, October 15, 2016.
• Daronina M.M.// An American-English Club in Our Gymnasium!-an article in the newspaper “Braslav Star”, March 4, 2017
• Daronina M.M.// A Map of International Projects of Braslav Gymnasium.- “ Nastaunitskaya Gazeta”(“Teachers’ Newspaper”) , Minsk, January 16, 2018, №6.

I would like to share with my colleagues the following topic of my presentation

“Project-based Activities as a Source of Motivation and Inspiration”

Abstract: I've been working as a teacher of English in Braslav Gymnasium for 20 years teaching students in Grades 5-11 (ages from 10 to 17) and I greatly enjoy doing my job! I have tried lots of techniques and methods in my teaching practice, but one of the best ways to engage my students into the creative work is by means of project work.

During the last few years we've done projects on different topics - about ideal schools and housing, travelling and science, environmental problems and favourite bands. This new form of work is a success resulting in my students' better communicative skills. My students have started creating their own tasks for the project lessons on home-reading, for example. They invent their own puzzles with the new words, draw pictures about the main events in the story, dramatize the episodes, etc. I act as a supervisor of their creative activities.

I started to implement project-based activities into organizing my students' research work supervising more than 30 students' research papers during my teaching practice in the gymnasium. The most interesting ones are: "What is Hidden in the Names of Music Groups?", "Shopping in America and Belarus. Is there shopping in Belarus?", "British and American Slang of Young People in Speech and Song Lyrics", "The Guinness Book of Records and the Record Book of Braslav Gymnasium", "Legends and Mysteries of the Tower of London and Nesvizh Castle", "Advantages and Disadvantages of Tourism Business in the National Parks "Braslav Lakes" (Belarus) and "The Lake District" (Great Britain). All those projects are done collaboratively by some students or even the whole group. Students choose the theme they want to explore, work at it till the end of the school year when they present their research to a committee of professionals. Students create a hypothesis, put a problem, find a solution and a practical application of their research. One example only: working on the theme "Heraldic Laws in the Symbols of Great Britain and Belarus. A New Coats of Arms of Our Gymnasium" my 16 year-old student made deep research into the heraldic laws and found out that the school's current coats of arms didn't correspond to them. She offered a new one using her new acquired knowledge.

I also apply project methods to organizing out-of-school activities with my students as I understand perfectly well that inspiration and motivation don't come from lessons only. A well-thought combination of lessons and out-of-school activities leads to success. So, I started coordinating and organizing exchange programs between my gymnasium and the schools of the Baltic Region (Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden). My students' participation in those international face-to-face projects was very useful. For my students who are not spoilt by numerous visits of foreigners because we live in a small provincial town far from big cities, such projects are a wonderful chance to see the world and practise the language. For me they are always a big challenge and test of my professional competences, creative, organizational and leadership skills.

Motivation and inspiration are necessary to make the process of learning-teaching enjoyable. Project-based activities are a proper tool for that. I want to introduce a system which encourages such activities at the lessons, in organizing students' research and in out-of-school life. The system proves to be effective as participation in these projects makes students action-doers, not passive on-lookers. Summary

In my talk I am planning to share my own practical experience on how to use different project-based activities a) at the English lessons b) in organizing students' research work c) in out-of-school life.

The main goal of the talk is to give a group of 25-30 teachers more ideas for motivating and inspiring their students through projects.

The session will begin with a presentation of some ideas on planning and organizing project-lessons. I want to show some video-clips of my project lessons and supply handouts.

Another aspect of my talk will be organizing students' research work. I'll show how I use the student-centered strategy "Discovery" in teaching them to do research, give handouts with the abstracts of the most successful students' papers and present some slides showing different stages of research work.

The third issue of the talk will be about applying project methods to organizing out-of-school activities. My presentation will show the system of project activities which works very well in my school. I'll demonstrate the map of our International projects on which our gymnasium looks like a huge spider spreading its threads into different countries, projects and events. I will also share a model of organizing international face-to-face students' exchange projects which I have worked out after 15 years of coordinating such programs in my school.

After my talk teachers will understand the ease and the great value in planning project work with their students.

My expectations as related to the Global Pedagogical Forum are:

- first of all, to get new ideas on the latest teaching methods in the fields of project-based and blended learning. These are the spheres I am writing my pedagogical thesis on and implementing elements of those interactive technologies into my lessons. My deep interest lies in evaluation, assessing and testing methods at the lessons as well. I have published three booklets for the Belarusian teachers and students with the tests for different levels and classes of English and want to renew the material in the booklets and get ideas for that;

- secondly, to learn new ways of implementing and using new information technologies at my lessons. I am keen on using SKYPE, Wikispaces at the lessons. All of my students have Facebook accounts where I have created groups for discussing our views on different topics of our lessons and life, sharing photos, videos, projects we have made. I would like to find out other practical ways of interacting with my students both at home and at the lessons;

- thirdly, to share my experience on project-based teaching with other international teachers and see if my methods are applicable for them, what they do in their classes to motivate their students;

- to discuss many questions that worry me in my teaching work with academicians and scientists who are professionals in this field. One of the problems I am thinking a lot is: how to teach our students skills of self-education and independent learning? Another problem for me is to teach them how to use their acquired knowledge;

- besides, my goal is to learn new ways of provoking my students into active learning. English lessons are different from other subjects because they are, in fact, public performances, which means that the personality of a teacher is of great importance. To master some new techniques of gaining the students' attention and holding it till the end of the lesson is also a goal of my great wish to be part of the event;

- getting to know the international community from all over the world, establish new contacts and bring new ideas and projects to my school and community which could change education process for the better and give positive results. I am sure, that working in such a great team of co-thinkers as teachers from all over the world will result into some very useful common projects which we can later implement. My dream is to organize a Pen-friendship Internet Club for my students and involve students from other countries. They could write to each other at the lessons on different topics we study at school. I am an ardent follower of the ideas of blended and project-based learning and, so this kind of combination of online internet correspondence and a traditional learning in class would be very productive for educational process. I have already implemented some of my ideas organizing internet correspondence between senior students of my school, Swedish and Lithuanian schools on the problems of democracy in our countries sharing our ideas on SKYPE, Wikispaces.

Participating in the Global pedagogical Forum is a great challenge for me. First of all, it is like a "professional bomb" which can explode with millions of new ideas, and I like learning and teaching new things. I am sure that the Forum will give huge opportunities for professional growth which I, a teacher of English in a small provincial town, need so badly.