Journals in writing development

It's been a challenge to me writing the daily journals required by professor Christina, as I don't have the habit of writing it's been difficult for me to organize ideas and write about something new everyday, this task helped me to think critically about my development as a teacher, I really need to increase the frequency of writing. The journals usually are about something we just had contact with, and it turns the task even more challenging, sometimes it forces us to look for more information about those topics, and improve more our knowledgment. I really intend to keep on making journals in order to develop my writing skills and be able to write good texts.

Grammar micro-teaching

          Teaching grammar is always a complex task, it does not mater if it is an easy topic or a complex set of rules.  As a teacher, every time I have to prepare a grammar class I try to be as meticulous as possible, I mean, there's no space for bad options here, the way we plan the class needs to attend perfectly the students necessities, all the steps of the class might by developed in a way the students feel involved on it and we, teachers, have to balance the grammar topic not to be too much explicit and also find a way to explain it which the students will be able to understand in a meaningful way.
          The micro-teaching we presented last week challenged us to develop a class using one grammar topic and use activities, methods and even approaches that we don't usually apply in our regular classes, I tried to use activities that are totally possible to be applied in my classrooms in Brazil, I had a great time preparing it and sharing with my friends my ideas for the class, showing them my progress and at the same time, also help them with my experience. This micro-teaching activity helped me a lot to find new ideas that I will certainly use to improve my classes.
         

Student centered classes

Something that has been always a concern for me about my classes is the fact that I constantly plan them in teacher centered model.  In the class we had today with Professor Gavin I started a reflection about my own work as a teacher and my planning, in my state there in Brazil, we teachers are way too much overloaded, I have close to 720 students, It creates a huge amount of work to be done daily, and it always made me choose I teacher-centered way to teach, I imagined that this way would be easier to deal and control the classes, but today I got a different point o view, Gavin made see a different perspective. A student centered class would save me much more energy and would gave me a much better result. I will start planing my classes that way ASAP.

Different ages in the same group

One of my great challenges in my classes is the differences of ages in my classes of the evening shift.  In a same class I have, for example, people from 17 years old and 62 years old in the same class.  This situations turns the lesson planing harder, I have to look for ways to engage all the students in the activity, taking in account that each age level has its own level of interest in a specific subject.
 This program helped me exchange experiences with my peers from other regions of Brazil, some of them have the same problem in their classes, so I could listen to them in order to learn what they use to make the planing and the class more successful. I will improve my classes with the suggestions I listened here and my students will certainly have more successs in learning English. Using diverse texts and activities and avoid use only one kind of subject can help me to motivate more these peculiar group.

Speaking Sample Class

Teaching speaking is undoubtedly my favorite ability to deal with in classroom, the level of motivation of the students in those classes is higher than in the other abilities, the activity of speaking micro-teaching motivated me so much.  Sharing my experiences in teaching  with my peers is always a great experience, and also an opportunity to check if I'm doing well or if I may improve something.
The group that I took part was formed by Brazilian and Iraqi teachers and as I'am from a different part of Brazil it was great for me to compare the way of teaching with my Brazilian friends, and observe the classes of the Iraqi group. I got amazed by most of the classes, the techniques applied were good and the way they organized and planed their classes were simply amazing and creative. I took notes of some good activities and I will use them in my classes for sure.
I'm a little bit anxious about our next micro-teaching in Grammar, but as soon as I prepare my plan I'll feel better and confident.  I really hope we have a great experience!

Fraternity and Sorority

Since I first stepped in University of Arkansas something called my attention, some beautiful houses around the campus with some inscriptions in Greek. At first I thoght it was some kind of foundation or institutions related to science or research, but I remembered some 80's and 90's movies that showed some houses like that, then the word fraternity came to my mind.  I always wanted to know more about those organizations, because all I know I'm sure is some kind of stereotype that I got from movies.

I an quick research on the web I learned that those fraternities are groups of studentes graduated and undergraduated that cooperate each other in order to achieve better academics results, and once you take part of a house you keep being a member for life. I learned also that they have a hard selection and a lot of pre-requestings are demanded.

In Brazil we do not have any kind of organization like that, I really would like to know more about it.

Scavenger hunt

We had another great example of interaction activity, this time it was a Scavenger hunt, the Brazilian and Mexican teachers gathered at the Fulbright Dinning Hall to find the group they belong, so after having lunch with our group we left the hall and follow the instructions to each of the demanding points indicated in the instructions given for us.  We had a good time trying to find the checkpoints to answer the questions, what I think was the great deal in this activity, is that we didn't even realized that the objective of the activity was introduce the Brazilian group to the Mexican teachers, at least that is the objective I analyzed it had, It worked very well, now the two groups are interacting very well, and we have more opportunity to learn from their different culture.
  This is an activity that I will definitely use with my students, we have a special celebration in Brazil, we call " Dia do Estudante" translated  "Students' day" , I think this date is a good opportunity to apply that to them.