Workshops for Schools

Need workshops tailored to the needs of your students & teachers?

How about a fun, energetic, inspiring PD session that will leave your teachers excited about implementing new strategies in their classrooms immediately? First, read through the list of Signature Workshops: tried and tested group workshops that can be adapted for a wide range of audiences, including primary, secondary and tertiary schools and colleges, migrant, refugee and mainstream classrooms. These workshops have received very positive feedback when delivered at:

ACTA International TESOL Conference, Perth, AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Central TAFE, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
Curtin University, Perth, AUSTRALIA
Hamilton Senior High School, Hamilton Hill WA
Highgate Primary School, Perth AUSTRALIA
IEC Primary Teachers EAL/D TDS Conference, Perth, AUSTRALIA
Indonesia Australia Language Foundation, Jakarta, INDONESIA
Intensive English Centre Conference, Perth, AUSTRALIA
Joondalup Learning Community Conference, Perth, AUSTRALIA
Kiribati Institute of Technology, Tarawa, KIRIBATI
Ministry of Education Conference, Apia, SAMOA
Mt Lawley Senior High School EA Conference, Perth, AUSTRALIA
National University of Samoa, Apia, SAMOA
Polytechnic West Carlisle Campus, Perth, AUSTRALIA
Thornlie Intensive English Centre, Perth, AUSTRALIA
Vaiala Beach Primary School, Apia, SAMOA

If one of the Workshops below doesn't suit exactly what you're looking for, I can tailor a workshop to suit the specific needs of your organisation. Fill in the enquiry form below with the details of what you're looking for and I'll be touch within 48 hours.

Testimonials from the schools I've worked with...

"An invaluable bastion of dependability"

Having worked with Maria through more years, countries and projects than either us may wish to count publicly, I have come to see her as a solid and reliable professional to be counted on. Her ability and diligence are only matched by her energy and enthusiasm.

In every aspect of her wide-ranging training career she has proved an invaluable bastion of dependability.

Thomas Jones

International Business Development Specialist

"Widespread experience, passionate, enthusiastic 5 star treatment"

Maria is not only passionate and enthusiastic, but she is also extremely professional in all the work that she does. Maria has widespread experience in the education industry, which means she brings to the table a breadth of experience from all areas of doing business in this field. From English teaching, to teacher training, and project management, Maria’s wealth of knowledge lends her perfectly to this business she has now built with Creating Quality Learning Experiences.

You can be sure that you will given 5-star treatment no matter what service you choose to use while Maria is at the helm.

Simone Samuels, Academic Programs

Manager, IALF Jakarta, Indonesia

Signature Workshops

Use the + button to expand each workshop box and find out more about what happens in the workshops.

Any of the workshops below can be tailored to the needs of your school, students, staff or clients. Simply fill in the enquiry form below and let me know what your organisation needs.

GRAMMAR: Demystifying the English Language; punctuation, parts of speech, tenses and error correction techniques using narratives, expositions and essays.

If you work with ESL learners, your grammar is a bit rusty, or you have issues understanding or explaining why errors in spoken or written English are wrong and how to fix them, this workshop is for YOU.

Whether you’re a student, a parent, new to teaching English or have been in the classroom for years, you’ll know that helping learners understand English grammar isn’t easy just because your native language IS English.

You know that to really understand (or help your learners understand) why they’re making the errors, you need to have a base understanding of how the language works and how to explain or demonstrate it.

These workshops can be tailored to suit ESL students, teachers of English or high-school native English speakers; it is designed to help those who are struggling to understand, explain, or use basic English grammar, tenses and punctuation. Workshops are tailored specifically to the needs and learning styles of each new group attending, and use writing samples provided by the learners themselves.

1) Punctuation, parts of speech and error correction:

This workshop breaks down the English language into its component parts - punctuation, parts of speech, and tenses. It demonstrates how to find and categorise errors, and encourage learners to discover why they made the error and how to avoid making the same errors in the future. This workshop is pre-requisite learning to the Demonstrating the English Tenses workshop.

2) Demonstrating the English Tenses

This workshop shows the differences between the major English tenses and provides an easy way to (explain and) demonstrate to students why they may be confusing or using the incorrect tenses. It compares and contrasts the 9 main tenses in terms of form, function, usage, keywords and on timelines. It breaks the tenses into 3 groups vertically and horizontally to show how to easily explain and demonstrate the differences between different clusters of tenses, and includes large tense exploration charts which can be created and used for environmental print in classrooms.

3) Teacher Training Extensions

If you're a teacher of English, you'll know it’s not just about being able to correct your students' language, but giving them the tools to understand how to do it themselves. Right? In this workshop, you will learn how to:

When the above workshop is presented to teachers and parents, you will learn how to:
- Label errors effectively with a universal marking key so that the learner can learn from their errors.
- Focus on key target language when error correcting, and how to use errors to create mini-lessons, on demand, as the students are ready for them.
- Use a multi-layered, visual, practical, tic-tac-toe approach, so that regardless of the learner’s level of English, you have a fail safe system for demonstrating their language errors and the differences between the tenses.
EXTENSION: The Tenses of Narratives and Fairytales: Use your students’ stories, or the stories from your cultural backgrounds, to demonstrate how the tenses are used.

Background: A PD originally designed for lecturers at a vocational training college in the Pacific, who are ESL teachers with a NESB, this PD presents core English grammar concepts. Too often tenses are taught in relation to another similar tense that may be confused by ESL learners, and then in a completely different context when taught with the next tense. This PD shows the difference between ALL the tenses and provides an easy way to explain to students why they may be confusing or using the incorrect tenses.

This workshop has been successfully delivered in various schools and colleges in Perth and Brisbane, Australia, Tarawa, Kiribati, and Apia, Samoa.

Please contact me if you’d like to arrange for this workshop in your school or college.

LESSONS ON DEMAND: 25 no-preparation-needed activities to use on the fly, including how to exploit authentic resources.

This is a practical, hands on workshop that showcases 25 communicative activities which can be created and used on the spot, without any prior preparation.

Activities are designed to be used with a variety of subjects, levels and classroom types, including teens and children.

We will explore new ideas for innovative speaking and listening activities: including those which can be used as activities for ‘Warmers’, ‘Setting up’, ‘Review’, ‘Think Quick’ and ‘Fluency’.

Participants will be involved in as many of the activities as possible, as if they are the students. The remainder will be explained briefly, in order to discuss all the activities (and how they can be adapted) before the session is concluded.

For a full day workshop, the following EXTENSION can be added:

Exploiting Authentic Resources: Create hours of lessons with easy to find authentic resources, doing little to no preparation before class.

ADAPTING ACTIVITIES: Enhancing student engagement by adapting worksheets into student centred activities that promote critical thinking and enhance problem solving skills.

In this workshop you will be evaluating and adapting classroom activities to enhance student engagement and communicative practice.

This is a practical workshop that demonstrates how to adapt regular classroom activities into activities that will engage, inspire and motivate learners to learn, practice and use their new knowledge in a team environment. It demonstrates and engages teachers in activities which help them to:

1) Identify communicative activities: what makes a good one, why we need to promote oral language as much as possible, authentic ways of recycling and practising target language.

2) Evaluate and adapt activities: to promote contextualised speaking and listening practice. Discussion around the 8 characteristics of any listening and speaking activity, and how to adapt any activity by adjusting one or more of the characteristics.

3) Explore new ideas for innovative speaking and learning activities: including those which can be used as activities for ‘Warmers’, ‘Setting up’, ‘Review’, ‘Think Quick’ and ‘Fluency’.

4) Demonstrate then recreate the activities: by focusing on a piece of target language and adapting each of the above characteristics.

5) Evaluate the use of IT in the classroom for communicative purposes: is it aiding the learning process or replacing it?

Using IT in active vs passive learning ways.
Using IT to aid in the learning process, or using it as the mode of learning – helping the teacher or replacing the teacher.
Which requires more active, oral communication from the students?
Ways to use IT passively (which should be avoided).
Ways to use IT actively in the classroom.

LITERACY SUPPORT: Supporting EALD and ESL Learners with Language and Literacy Needs; suitable for teachers of children, teens and adults

Language and literacy issues go far deeper than the ability to read and write in English. Often students come to us from a variety of socio-cultural backgrounds with varying degrees of literacy across a range of different ‘languages’, including but not limited to English, the language of IT and the cultural ‘language’ in which our schools operate.

Put simply, we need to be able to assess and address literacy in a variety of 'languages' if we are to fully support our learners in our classrooms. Therefore this interactive workshop will explore the different ‘languages’ our students are required to be ‘literate’ in, and how we can address the skills and knowledge gaps.

The session will focus on first and second language acquisition and the factors that affect language and learning. It will also explore the importance of oral language to support the writing process. Website and resources to support EALD pedagogy will also be discussed, as will strategies to assist these students inside and outside of the classroom.

This workshop can be tailored for teaching assistants or teachers of students in K-Year 6, Years 7-12, VET, adult, refugee and/or migrant classes. Two hour, half day and full day versions of this workshop are also available.

LANGUAGE SKILLS FOR ADULT LEARNERS: Academic Reading and Writing Skills, Job seeking, English for the Workplace , Plagiarism.

These workshops can be tailored for non native speakers of English or those wishing to brush up on academic and professional English language skills.

English for Job-seeking and Interviews CVs, Selection Criteria
Business English Specific language skills for Business Environments
Academic Reading and Writing Skills Structuring and Delivering Reports, Essays & Presentations
Avoiding Plagiarism Summarising, paraphrasing and referencing
Negotiating and Problem Solving Persuasive reasoning and working with busy managers

Testimonials from workshop and short course attendees.

"Classes filled with fascinating world travel anecdotes, energy and positivity, never a dull moment"

I recall walking into the Certificate 3 course in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), nervous and yet eager to learn. Maria immediately made me feel at ease with her vibrant personality and her use of ice breakers that had us all feeling like a ‘group’ working towards a common goal from the get go.

Maria injected her brand of enthusiasm into each workshop always providing us with encouraging and constructive feedback in the practical assessment and popping in fascinating and entertaining anecdotes from her world travels designed to link our learning to real life situations.

I would absolutely recommend Maria as a trainer, there’s never a dull moment and her classes were filled with energy and positivity, leaving us feeling well prepared and excited for future teaching opportunities.

Perri Jones

Primary Teacher - Curtin University, Australia

"Impeccable approach ... an exceptionally high standard of work"

Maria is effervescent, passionate and energetic with the resilience to focus tirelessly until the job is done. She is a compassionate person who considers issues and challenges from a holistic perspective ensuring outcomes and decisions are inclusive of all stakeholders.

Maria’s impeccable approach and keen attention to detail culminates in an exceptionally high standard of work in terms of presentation and output.

Sonia Ferns

Manager Course Review - Curtin University, Australia

"She used dynamic, engaging teaching strategies... sessions were informative, hands on and fun"

Maria Doyle became my TESOL trainer in 2004. I decided to undertake my TESOL training primarily because of Maria’s international experience, passion and dedication to the world of ESL students.

As a trainer she used dynamic, engaging teaching strategies to teach the content of the course. Her sessions were informative, hands on and fun.As a qualified primary school teacher myself, Maria introduced me to a communicative style of teaching that can be transferred to all aspects of the teaching profession; from young children, adolescents through to adult learners.

Maria’s teaching style was so impressive that I, along with a group of my colleagues and friends, employed her as a tutor in a language other than English using the same communicative, dynamic style.

Maria is a knowledgeable and committed educationalist whose experience and skills in the area of Teaching English as a Second Language spans across the globe. She connects with people of all ages, from many countries, from all socio economic backgrounds. She has developed a range of programs, resources and initiatives on an international scale as well as being involved in overseas volunteer programs to support a range of charities. I had the privilege to observe one of her teacher training courses in Kiribati and saw how she connected with the students and inspired them regardless of the cultural diversity.

I observed her natural ability to communicate and engage the trainee teachers, provide constructive feedback and develop their confidence to become competent teachers within their community. Maria’s skills, experience, commitment and passion are an asset to the international education profession.

Di Ursell

EAL/D Specialist Teacher and Curriculum Leader

Looking to book a signature workshop, or a fully customised workshop for your school or college?

Happy to oblige! Answer the following questions if you can, and I'll be in touch shortly. My work takes me all around the Asia Pacific region so there's a fair chance I'll be near your city soon!

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Is there a signature workshop of mine that is similar to what you're after? If so, which one?
If not, what specifically do you need covered?

Founder and Director
SELECT Consultants Pty Ltd trading as Create Real Change™
ABN: 46 161 932 305