In collaboration with Taishukan Shoten's monthly magazine "English Education," we held a seminar for teachers on Sunday, February 26, 2023, titled "English Literature Teaching x Teaching Materials Creation Help Workshop - Supporting the learning of diverse students with UD fonts," with the theme of teaching English literacy and creating teaching materials.
We have prepared an archive of the speaker's seminar part. *To watch, you will need to fill out a form.
This time, we will be bringing you seminar reports from each speaker. The Q&A session in the second part will be published in a small workshop feature in the July issue of Taishukan Shoten's monthly magazine "English Education." Please take a look.
On the day, many English teachers and those aspiring to become teachers came to the venue, making it a very engaging experience!
I learned a lot of useful information about teaching English letters.
I learned a lot and learned a lot of knowledge that I can use starting tomorrow. I'm looking forward to creating teaching materials starting tomorrow!
During the Q&A session, the three speakers answered our questions, and our worries were resolved! We will now give back to the children what we learned today!
After attending the seminar, I re-read the relevant parts of my previous English Education articles. My understanding has deepened!
Digest of the day
Part 1
Character instruction, basic concepts
Lecturer: Mr. Ryo Teshima (Musashi Junior and Senior High School)
Mr. Teshima has taught the basic concepts of English writing to a wide range of students, and he generously shared his experience, using a variety of approaches to teach English writing, which all the participants nodded in agreement to.
Creating teaching materials from a universal design perspective
Lecturer: Professor Yoshiko Sato (Reitaku University)
Teaching materials are essential for guiding diverse students. We were given detailed instructions on what to focus on when creating universal design teaching materials to make them easier to learn. The participants were taking endless notes!
Key points of UD fonts and communicative English learning materials
Lecturer: Hiromi Takada (Morisawa Inc.)
Takada, a member of the UD Digital Textbook development team, explained the Latin fonts used in the UD Digital Textbook, which were developed to make English education easier. He held a workshop on creating teaching materials using these Latin fonts, using the before-and-after sample materials, and worked with the participants to come up with solutions.
Part 2
Advice corner
The three speakers answered a variety of questions from the audience.
(This section is not available in the archived video.)
What participants learned
With the arrival of UD textbook fonts, I was happy that easy-to-read fonts were finally available, but at the same time, I realized that conventional fonts, which were not well-known and difficult for me to read, were creating a hurdle for students to overcome before they could even begin their learning tasks, and were causing unnecessary stress and burden.
The seminars and workshops given by the three instructors were all extremely helpful. Thank you very much. It made me feel sad to realize how much I was tormenting children during my time as a teacher. It was something that I would especially like young teachers to learn.
In the survey conducted after the seminar, all participants responded that they were "satisfied with the seminar" and "the seminar content was useful!"
We have prepared an archive of the speaker's seminar part. *To watch, you will need to fill out a form.
If you would like to create teaching materials using the exclusive Roman characters of the UD Digital Textbook Font introduced this time, we recommend MORISAWA BIZ+, which uses UD fonts optimally for Office apps!
Free teaching materials using the UD Digital Textbook Font's exclusive Roman characters are also being updated regularly. You can download them here.
The "FONT SWITCH PROJECT" will continue to plan events to help those who are working hard to ensure education that leaves no one behind, with the slogan "Turn on everyone's font sensibilities."
Follow the Morisawa FONT SWITCH PROJECT on social media and enjoy fonts even more!