The seminar was opened by Ms Suo Ping and Mr Valerijus Gagas, who explained our objectives for the next few days. The seminar was intended to be a balance of academic instruction and team-building activities to foster an inclusive atmosphere. The academic side of things came first, focussing on the areas of 'scaffolding', 'using games and activities in the classroom', 'Bloom's taxonomy' and 'classroom management'.

We began with an introduction to the idea of 'scaffolding' with a short lecture given by Ms Kathleen Oleksiuk. This explained the concept of the gradual removal of learner support as their skills develop from novice to expert. Following this, in his lecture, Mr Anthony Smales focused on the breaking-down of material given in course-books into manageable, logically ordered components. The invited teachers were then given the chance to plan some 'scaffolded' material for themselves. For some of the teachers, the concept of 'scaffolding' was to be incorporated in their own demo lessons later in the week.

The invited teachers had told us, in their feedback from previous training sessions that they were interested in exploring and exchanging ideas for games and activities that would be suitable for use in classrooms with large numbers of Chinese students of various ages and levels of experience. To address this, the next lecture, Mr Valerijus Gagas, presented a range of games and activities targeted at primary and middle school students. Again, this instruction was essential, since some of the teachers were required to use the games ideas in their forthcoming demo lessons.

It seemed logical to follow-up the notion of scaffolding with the 'Blooms taxonomy' educational psychology theory, because it is closely related to the staged idea of 'scaffolding' and links well to the theme. In a nutshell, Bloom's taxonomy shows how a student can gradually move from simple repetitive practice, to comprehension, then demonstrating their ability to put new learning into practice, and eventually arriving at a level of expertise where they have become capable of self-reflection and critical analysis.

With the academic lectures now behind us, the next few days were largely given-over to demonstration lessons given by our teachers, using the principles outlined in the academic lectures. After each demo lesson, the rest of our teaching team were given the opportunity to provide constructive feedback.

Day 3 of the seminar was concluded with our performance of 'Happy New Year', sung in English and Chinese! As well as everything else we had been busy with this week, we had rehearsed for our performance several times. Eventually the moment came and it was the turn of the foreign teachers to take to the stage in full costume!

The final day of the end-of-term seminar began with some open discussions concerning JESIE's future development plans in which we invited feedback and input of creative ideas from our team of teachers. It was felt that this was a worthwhile and positive use of our time and the opportunity of having everyone in the same room together. Everyone was encouraged to take the opportunity to give their point of view and to have their voice heard.