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.

Multicultural classes

Since my first participation in PDPI in the winter of 2018, I`m feel myself a different professional, this program opened my mind about the possibilities of growing learning teaching techniques from different sources. I have learned so much while  at  University and now, here at University of Arkansas I have a second opportunity to develop myself. Today I  reflect about the cultural diversity we have in classroom and the great ability our professors have to handle it, having Brazilian teachers (from different regions. Believe me, it matters), Mexicans and Iraqi in the same classroom, debating about something complex like EFL is a challenge that I really would like to understand better, I hope in this short period we are staying here in Fayetteville I have the opportunity do observe this kind of class and learn from it as much as possible. Different styles of teaching, different realities bring us so much material to learn from.

Literature Circles in High Schools

The motivation of students in literature classes most of times is not as good as we teachers would like it to be, the habit of reading a book is not one of the preferences of our students nowadays.  Literature can be a good resource of vocabulary and a good opportunity to students to practice all the four abilities of language in interactions and conversations about the novel, history, tale or poem they are reading.  An interesting strategy to promote this interactions are the "Literature Circles", in this strategy the teacher selects  books to be suggested to the students, so they start to read it, but instead of just read and take notes or summarize it, the students are divided in groups of 6 or 7 students and each student has to performance a role in the production, the roles can be:

The Organizer- Is responsible to mediate the group in the discussion, the organizer must not let the discussion lose the focus or get a direction that is not related to the book, he also check if all the others students are really reading and reflecting about the history, registers the role that each student had performed.

The investigator - Is responsible for reading carefully the story and look for hints, clues and other details that can help the other students to understand better the story.

The summarizer- is responsible for summarize the story take in account all the information the group have discussed.

The researcher - Is responsible for contextualize the historical information, dates, social facts, political of the history making a bridge of the book with the reality at the time it was written or at the time the story is told.

The predictor -  Is the one who is going to create different possibilities for the next chapters of the history, according to what he has read.

The illustrator - Look for pictures, songs, draws, news etc. That can illustrate the story.

These are some examples of roles that the students can perform, after a week of reading they meet and discuss about the chapter they just read, then they change roles and pick a different responsibility. Literature circles are totally student centered, the teacher will just be a monitor to check if the strategy is being successful of if there is any students with problems to execute his role. At the end of the reading, all the groups will present their work to the class and the circle keep moving, this time the groups will change books and restart the process.
My students of high school simply love this activity, as they have autonomy to express their own perception about the history and are able to use creativity to add information to it.
I can alson mention that this activity can be set at the highest level of Bloom`s taxonomy, The students will create a real dossie about the book.

Discussion about controversial topics

I just arrived from the observation of a class at Spring international LC and as professor Leyah Bergman-Lanier said to us in a class some days ago, "I brought my suitcase a little bit heavier " from this class.  I`m the kind of professional that always get the good examples to add to what I call "my tools case", today I entered that classroom with no expectations, just following the suggestions the professors gave us, I had a great opportunity to know a new kind interaction activity (at least for me it`s something new) that Teacher Wendy Howard, I don`t know if I can say her name, but as it is a positive aspect of her class I don`t think it will be an issue. Anyway, she asked three of her students in a previous class to research for controversial themes that could provoke different opinions, today each of the students brought a different subjects, they were: "euthanasia", "Using or not an uniform at schools" and "Capital penalty for terrorists", each of those students became the leader of a group of discussion, where they had the leading questions already prepared, in the groups each student had the opportunity to express his own opinion about the text brought by their peers, after some time the leaders changed groups and restart the discussion in a different group.

 This activity gives opportunity to the students to develop a critical thinking and to face different ideas that maybe can open their minds to horizons they haven`t looked yet, also create an atmosphere to increase leadership abilities in those young people, beside that, they also can acquire new contextualized vocabulary. I hope I can have more observation classes like this!

Reflection about the role of a teacher

Today’s class with Professor Joe, we were motivated to make a self-reflection about our career as a teacher. Self-analysis is never something easy to be made, and compare your work to someone else’s is even more difficult, but I remembered a professor I had in the university that used to engage the students in the classes in a way that I never forgot, the literature classes were great, every class was a different challenging activity for us to demonstrate what we had read at home, at some point we had read the whole book and didn`t feel it was an appointment, I always got inspired by her and it made me feel really interested in reading even more, so I could contribute more in that classes. It’s hard to say if I am a better teacher than her, but I can say that I will always try to engage my students the way she used to do, maybe sometimes I may fail, but those failures will make me better even more. I really don’t know if She is a better teacher than me or the opposite, but I can assure that I have advantage because I had her as inspiration.

Adaptations Game

As I always say, everyday is a day to learn something new, today me and my fellows had the opportunity to take parte of an amazing game developed to ease the introduction of students in their first day at a class. The game was such a funny way to learn the different names in the group, not only the Brazilian teachers, but the Iraquian teachers and also the professors.  In that game each person had to find words and/or gestures that together formed his own name or at least resembled it, things funny like “Down and low to describe Danilo” or “ &, sell, one” to describe “Anselmo” create an amazing atmospheare, and what is better, the introductions were very effective, I could learn all the names of my group and I have to confess that sometimes when I call them I still remember the words and gestures used that day. I will for sure make somes adaptations and use it in my classes, that is a good way to push the students do search for new vocabulary and to interact in a productive way.