Conference Organization

In 2023, preparation for the student conference at Jelgava Spidola State Gymnasium began as soon as the entry works for the higher-level exam were completed and uploaded at the beginning of March. For the conference, students were given the option to present either their oral research presentation or to print out their research poster and bring it to the conference. The students each had a specific role in the organization and/or implementation of the conference.

Each student had to write a 150-350 word abstract for the work that they would be presenting at the conference including their full bibliography. The abstracts were attached to the signup form created by students that required other basic information about their poster or their oral presentation.

Once all abstracts were submitted, students from one of the parell classes printed out all of the different spoken presentation topics and cut them into small slips that could be organized into sessions. Since there were 26 presentations submitted, the talks were organized into two sets of four parallel sessions with three presentations each, along with a plenary session of two research presentations. The students organized the sessions so that the topics went together thematically and logically, and groups of two students each were responsible for moderating one of the sessions on the day of the conference.

Once the schedule was complete, it was sent to all students who were taking part in the conference. The groups of two student moderators had two write up to one-minute words of introduction for each of their sessions and edit the titles of each presentation they would be introducing for grammar and style.

The next week, the other paralell class worked in groups of two to edit the abstracts that were submitted for grammar and style. They were also responsible for finding and arranging the stands that posters would be placed on, carrying out registration in the morning, creating the final version of the published schedule and a promotional poster, setting up the assembly hall and the classrooms where the sessions would take place, checking that all technology worked, hosting the plenary session, creating time cards for the moderators to use during the presentation sessions, downloading the presentations onto the computers, greeting and assisting guests, and solving other logistical issues before the conference.

As with last year, students from the 12th grade classes were invited to attend the conference to help them understand what the English II course entails and to help them decide whether they would like to do this course or a different higher-level course in 12th grade. Since this conference took place when Russian and German lessons would normally happen for the 12th grade in mixed groups, all 12th graders were invited to take part. Students from other schools in Jelgava were also invited to either attend as audience members or to present a presentation or a poster.

To help make this more of an “international” conference, each year a guest with a background in English teaching from another country is invited as a guest of honor to view the presentations and also give a few words of welcome at the beginning. In 2024, the guest of honor was Donka Robinson, a licensed Maryland state teacher.

During the conference the English II students were required to fill out a conference worksheet that recorded the topics of each presentation, as well as feedback. The students all were required to ask at least one question to any of the presenters throughout the day and record both their question and the answer, as well as an evaluation of whether it was a good answer, on the worksheet. Students who did not have a research poster were also required to go to at least six different posters and ask a question to the creator, recording the response on the worksheet.

After the conference, the were responsible responsible for cleaning up and resetting the third floor corridor, the classrooms, and the assembly hall to how it is supposed to be.

For this unit, students received a mark based on the quality of their abstracts and the completion of their conference worksheets on the day of the conference.