HUPE Split Branch President

Tajana Bundara has been teaching English and German for two decades. Her teaching experience embraces different school types from high schools, elementary schools over to schools for foreign languages and language camps.

She strongly believes the basic qualities can be cultivated through effort and challenges should be embraced as the path to mastery. Her driving force is her passion for work and her motto – Change is the only constant in life.

 

Erasmus +; One project, a thousand possibilities

Erasmus+ program has been a part of our school lives for many years, but still lots of our colleagues have many unanswered questions about it. This workshop aims to give answers to such questions in order to educate, encourage, inspire and empower teachers to take part in Erasmus+ projects.
During the first part of the workshop you will see a short PowerPoint presentation tackling most common questions individuals have in respect of Erasmus+ projects in general, and more specific guidelines such as how to participate as a partner in a project or create a project of your own.
During the second part of the workshop the participants will have the opportunity to develop a project idea in small groups.
Lecturers: Ružica Kandić, prof.,univ.spec.oec. and Marijana Gudić, prof.

 

Creative writing workshop

How many times have you had such gifted students and wanted to give them more than regular lessons provide? This creative writing workshop will give you some ideas, that you can easily implement during your additional English lessons.
The workshop aims to give ideas how to engage your students in a creative writing process, which incorporates all their previous knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure and writing skills and takes them to the whole new level.
During the first part of the workshop the participants will have the opportunity to see the product of creative writing process made by the students and their mentor. They will be introduced with all the phases of the process from the beginning to its end.
During the second part of the workshop the participants will take part in creative writing exercises in small groups.

Lecturer: Ružica Kandić, prof., univ.spec.oec.

SPLIT BRANCH MEETING REPORT

The sixth HUPE Split Branch meeting was held at Osnovna škola don Lovre Katića in Solin on 3rd October 2019.

The agenda included:

1. Election of the Branch President
2. Tajana Bundara: Good Practice Example

Eight members attended the meeting and voted for Tajana Bundara as the new HUPE Split Branch President. She presented her work through a good practice example workshop. The topic of the workshop was ‘Fostering critical thinking through IT tools’.

In attempt to meet the demand for developing 21st century skills Tajana Bundara presented how to implement IT tools in fostering critical thinking skills. The topic of the lesson was Teenagers and Money and it referred to cultural differences. The central teaching strategy was debate with a debate-video-clip on thesis 'Should children be paid for the house chores?' as the debate-trigger-point. She underlined the importance of using online dictionaries, demonstrated how to use QR codes, implement mobile phones as a powerful classroom tool, conduct peer assessment and formative assessment. The final objective of the workshop was to inspire and motivate colleagues to open their minds to new teaching challenges and strategies.

Thank you all for coming and hope to see you at our next meeting!

If you are an English teacher and want to join HUPE Split, feel free to contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Tajana Bundara
HUPE Split Branch President

 

SPLIT BRANCH MEETING REPORT

2nd HUPE Split Meeting

Venue: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Split, Poljička cesta 35
Date: 23 January 2020
Time: 6.30 pm
Agenda: Present-day Challenges in ELT – Ana Bakašun
Number of participants: 7 

Summary:

People talk about ‘21st-century skills’ across disciplines, but what this term actually means is not always clear and implications it contains are often quite daunting for teachers whose learning histories are often at variance with their students’ learning experiences. Technological, social and cultural environments have changed rapidly during the last twenty-something years. Can we, the ‘old school’ teachers, still provide meaningful and relevant educational practices for today’s EFL students?

Overall impression:

Ana provided insightful information to this question, approaching it from the perspective and experience of a language instructor at the Department of English Language and Literature (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University in Split).

I believe we all enjoyed exchanging valuable and various teaching experiences, resulting in the unanimous educational imperative for fostering thinking skills.
Thank you all for your support, effort and enthusiastic engagement!
I look forward to seeing you all again soon.
If you are an English teacher and want to join HUPE Split, feel free to contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Tajana Bundara
HUPE Split Branch President

The second HUPE Karlovac Branch meeting in 2019/ 2020 took place on 19 February 2020 in an online format using CARENT Adobe Connect virtual room.

Our first speaker was the new HUPE KARLOVAC Branch president Marijana Smolčec who had a presentation on HUPE novelties and upcoming HUPE conference. She was later joined by HUPE President Anita Jokić who gave even more information and answered some questions. Both of them announced that the HUPE conference will again be held in Poreč, Valamar Hotels, from 24 – 26 April 2020.

Before the end of the 2^nd meeting Marijana Smolčec introduced the members to the Europeana website. She explained that Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help anyone find necessary information. Some of the most popular themes that can be found there are on art, music, fashion, World War I etc. She also announced a possible workshop on Teaching with Europeana and suggested members to explore ideas among many interesting e-scenarios written by European teachers.

In the end HUPE Branch president announced the 3rd meeting to be held on 14 March 2020 in Karlovac. The guest speaker and workshop leader will be Dora Božanić Malić.

Marijana Smolčec
Karlovac Branch President

The second HUPE Zagorje meeting this school year was held at Bedekovčina Secondary School on 14^th February 2020. 

There were three workshops held as well as the introduction to the 28^th HUPE Annual International Conference. The first one was a workshop held by Melinda Tupek, a great fellow teacher and enthusiast who works in OŠ Sesvetska Sopnica.  Melinda’s workshop titled (Old fashioned) Games in the ESL Classroom was great fun and all of the tired teachers attending it had a good time trying out the numerous games she provided for us. In this workshop Melinda presented an array of fun and interesting games that could be applied to any classroom at any level of students’ knowledge throughout the curriculum, no matter the subject or lesson. As we were having fun doing the activities and playing the games, so will our students when we try some of these great ideas.

 The second workshop was held by Barbara Hanjilec, from ŠUDIGO Zabok, an inspiring colleague with tones of experience and great ideas as always. Barbara’s workshop A Wee Talk on Northern Ireland was focused on culture and how to bring it closer to our students in the classroom. As we probably all focus too much on Great Britain, London, The USA, New York or similar more prominent elements of culture in our teaching, this workshop was an eye-opener and a much-needed inspiration to do something different in our classrooms. 

The third workshop was held by our branch president Gordana Bujanić Tretinjak, aka myself. The workshop titledWHYs and HOWs of Making Short Videos in the Classroom IATEFL focused on putting students’ mobiles to good use – how to teach them to make video materials that could be used in the classroom or for any learning goal you wish. All the weary and tired colleagues cheerfully took out their phones, and following the instructions, had fun in making their (sometimes first) short videos. Students are motivated to do such activities since they activate their creativity, their knowledge of digital tools and gadgets but also it sparks their interest in English and boosts self-confidence.

The last part of our meeting was dedicated to HUPE Conference News. The colleagues were informed on all the news about the Conference ahead of us. We discussed ideas about the HUPE Zagorje part in the From Us to You social event in the conference and had some great ideas from our members – join us at the Conference and find out! 

The energy at the meeting was great as always, so much so that when the meeting was over (on this Valentine’s Day mind you!), people were still chatting and drinking coffee, reluctant to leave.

HUPE Zagorje is thankful to our members and the speakers for coming. HUPE Zagorje will continue to inspire and hopefully become a bigger branch in the future.

If you wish to join us, contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Gordana Bujanić Tretinjak
HUPE Zagorje Branch President

The second HUPE Rijeka Branch meeting was held at the Trsat Branch of the Rijeka City Library on 25 January 2020. The agenda included:

1. Dora Božanić Malić: Most definitely not a Valentine’s Day lesson
2. Anita Jokić: HUPE news and updates(AOB)
3. Davor Pleše: Fun activities with pictures

The first workshop, titled Most definitely not a Valentine’s Day lesson, was held by Dora Božanić Malić. In a one-hour workshop, Dora offered various activities designed around the idea of introducing storytelling and spoken-word poetry to our classes. Building a lesson or two on a simple list of assorted nouns and verbs, for example, allows our students to be creative in speaking and writing, which is of utmost importance in language teaching. The ready-made materials and activities are adaptable to various levels but are mostly focused on higher levels of primary school and up. It should also be noted that Dora’s inspiring workshop was based on a pair of lesson plans already acknowledged by the Ministry of Science and Education in 2019. 

HUPE President Anita Jokić talked about the news and updates regarding the 28^th Annual International HUPE Conference and all the benefits that HUPE membership offers. She touched upon the proposed conference programme as well as each branch presenting its work and/or its members’ talents in April. All the members were kindly invited to contribute to HUPE with their suggestions and encouraged to deliver new sessions, either talks or workshops.

At the very end of the meeting, Davor Pleše ran a workshop called Fun activities with pictures. It was a great example of how adapting resources easily found online can yield stunning results. The aim of the workshop was to show that grammar and vocabulary do not need to be explicitly taught in everyday classes. Starting and ending lessons with pictures can oftentimes prove to be invaluable in eliciting descriptive speech, therefore making way for our students to further develop their public speaking skills. The variety of activities that are to be used with students of different age and level of proficiency kept the pace up throughout the workshop.

HUPE Rijeka expresses gratitude to the participants for making the meeting a pensive, involving, cohesive, and enjoyable experience. It is always lovely to see new ideas and presenters warmly welcomed and deservingly commended.

If you wish to join us, contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Dario Abram
HUPE Rijeka Branch President