Why does this blog exist?

 

I want to figure something out: Is it possible to make myself understood even if I speak English full time while teaching kids? I have seen so many people saying so, but I wanted to test it by myself, so I decided to make my students guinea pigs of my experiment, no matter how old they are. The beginning of the class in February 2022 was a good moment to start as most of the kids do not know me, so they could believe I really do not speak Portuguese.

Last year, as I was teaching online almost the whole year and was my first time teaching English in a public school, I was afraid of trying that. And as everybody – students, teachers, directors – were learning  how to deal with technology, was not an option not using Portuguese during class. Also, I only started the post graduation course in English Teaching to Kids on July, so little by little the texts I read, the videos I watched and the classes I attended made me more confident to try new things in the classroom and have a better relationship with my students. And as my students were used to hear me mixturing Portuguese with English, I decided not to change this dynamic in the end of the year. The groups I had were different, too. I taught from 1st to 9th grade. In 2022, I could chose and I choose from 1st to 5th grade only, for many reasons: I can have more than one group of the same grade, so I spend less time preparing classes; I can repeat the same class plan in more than one group and test what really works and what does not; the school, Cempa, is six minutes walking from my house.

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