Professor de Inglês!

This is my second class about alphabet to 1st and 2nd grade students I already said that I do not like to teach alphabet to 1st grade students, as they are still being alphabetized in Portuguese and the pronunciations of vowels A, E and I can be very confused. But, as BNCC says we need to teach it in the 1st two months of the school year, I prepared my classes of this week to work like this: 1st part dedicated to alphabet and 2nd part dedicated to numbers (even tough numbers are not supposed to be taught now), both topics with song activities. I always entered the classroom, greeted everybody and explained that we were going to listen to two songs that day. When I taught the first group of the week, I did not know what to do so I asked them what song they wanted to listen to first: alphabet or numbers? They answered alphabet and I found that worked well, so, for the next groups, I did not ask. Maybe because the song is lullaby, they stayed very calm. We listened to that three times: on...

Today I restarted teaching the 1st and 2nd grades groups. I had only one class with them, more than a month ago, so I had already forgotten everybody's names and basically almost repeated the same class I had taught. I guided in a way that students had to repeat their names many times, so I could have time to memorize them, like: 1. I asked "What is your name?" and student answered; 2. I said to the others: "Let's everybody say 'Good afternoon' to ____"; 3. Everybody: "Good afternoon, ____". As they are still being alphabetized, I showed them the alphabet on the wall and said someone's name, asking "What is the first letter of the name Sara?". They answered and I added: "Let's do letter S with our hands" and showed them the sign for S in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). The purpose was not make them to communicate in Libras, also because there are no deaf students in the school a work, but I just wanted them to ...

Sharing an activity I did for the post graduation course I am attending, as these questions are related to my classes methodology: 1.  the demands of your teaching context (is it a private or public institutional; is it a regular school?) I teach 15 groups of kids at Cempa, a public school in Mariana-MG - 3 groups of 1st grade (most of the students are 6 years old); 4 groups of 2nd grade (most of kids 7 years old); 2 groups of 3rd grade (most of them 8 years old); 5 groups of 4th grade (most 9 years old); and 1 group of 5th grade (most are 10 years old). Those grades are considered Elementary school here in Brazil. 2. the children's needs (how old are your students? How do you deal with their needs?) I notice that for the 6 and 7 years old kids it is kind of difficult to stay seat a whole class. All the time they are coming to me to tell something that has nothing to do with the class or to show me that they are hurt or asking to go to the toilet or drink water. I think that actual...

For those days, I had already prepared a song activity. On Sunday I realized there was going to be an important date during the week, so plans changed. A friend had shared a nice International Women Day activity that I share with you below: I decided to start the class teaching the word WOMAN using a picture of a super hero most of them probably knew. I had the pic in my telephone and walked around the class showing it: Use this key word taught, it was easier to explain about the date and what they were going to do in the activity. On the other hand, with one of the groups (4th grade 4), I did not show the picture and they understood maybe faster than the others. The 4th grade 5 class was a disaster. It looked like they were testing me, telling jokes the whole class, walking around and asking to go to the toilet. We even did not have time to finish, while on the other group, we sang "happy birthday" to the ones who had their birthdays in January and February, completed the pa...

  As always, I taught the same class for both 4 th grade 4 and 4 th grade 5. As always, class goes better on the second group, and I wonder if it is because the others are still warming up as my class is the first one of the day, or if it is because I am testing my class plan, so I usually make some mistakes with the first group and correct them with the second. I am grateful that I am teaching more than one group of same age kids, so I can improve my class plan and check what works and what does not. With the first group, I started playing the song and asking them what they understood. As the sentences are really simple, I thought they would understand most of them, but I was wrong. Then, with the second, I wrote all the sentences of the song on the board out of order and asked them to translate to Portuguese. If they did not know before, I would help. The greetings song Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. Goodbye. S...

My decision to speak English full time while in classroom has to do with making them see and notice that I am using the language to communicate with them. But what kind of thoughts would they have when notice that is not every time that communication is being effective? If communication is important in real life, why not using English when I want to communicate with them, so all the time? This week my class with the 5 th grade group was frustrating. It happens right after the recreation and everybody gets in class with a lot of energy and still willing to play. When I got there, they were playing with some cards (Free Fire cards). I asked everybody to put them into bag and immediately I felt like I had to change what I had planned. The song I had prepared was too childish. So I decided to continue the numbers topic and gave to them a paper to fill and did not explain anything. I noticed that everybody assumed what they had to do, with no reading of the explanation, because some of t...

  February 17 th This class started with a plan fail, because the copies I had asked to have for the activity were not done, because they were moving the Xerox place to another room, so I had to have an idea during the class to solve the lack of reading/writing I had prepared. In this class I played a kids song called “Count with me”. I was a little afraid of using it, because maybe the 5 th grade kids could think it was too childish. But then I thought: Wait, if I am referring to them as kids and they are 9-10 years old, so they cannot think the song is not for them, because yes, it is. I started asking them “Do you like music?” and some understood and translated to the others. When I took my sound system from the bag I think I created on them too much expectation, because the sound system is medium and has colorful lights when turned on. Some of them told me they wanted to listen to “sertanejo” (Brazilian country music), but I said that was an English class, so the song must...

  February 10 th Today I was notified that I need to leave almost all my students to another teacher. In a decision that looks so arbitrary, Human Resources decided to move me to Adults Education and put Teacher Inês in my place, which is really weird (not her, but this decision), as she is up to retire. Possibly it will happen in a month. Now I will get half of expecting salary next month and will not have so many groups to put my ideas into practice. I will keep only three kids groups (two 4th and one 5th grades) and ten adults groups. February 21st Today there was a calling for English teachers. Mariana public schools do not have enough teachers, so I went there to check if I could take some groups to teach while I wait Inês to leave and leave my previous kids groups to me again. Again bureaucracy made things worst. I asked to return to my group of students I had last year in Mariana countryside, but the Education secretary told me there was no law that guarantees I can ta...