Professor de Inglês!

  4th grade I introduced the names of the sports in a previous class (the last 10 or 15 minutes), by playing hangman with them. So I used only cognates, not use any translation or explanation.  Then I prepared written material, with vocabulary and translation. The wordsearch was ok. It was easy for many students, but not so easy for a few of them, who do not yet know how to read lower case. This is one of the reasons that I always ask them to do written activities in pairs, so one can help each other (sometimes this help is like copying the other one’s answers). For exercise 2, they took more time to answer and they looked a little tired. Maybe I should have not done 19 items, but 12 or 14 max. For a 9 years old kid, it was too tiring. But I wanted to use the space I had on the paper, so I always use the max I can. Some students were really smart, and they knew that if they paid attention in a key letter, like the M in IGNROOMT, they would find MOTORING easily. But some of the...

  1st and 2nd grades I believe it is easier for very young kids to learn with concrete objects, anything that they could put their hands on. To help with pronunciation and to make it funnier and inspire them to listen to english songs, I also wanted to play this on the class about toys: So I searched for the same toys in that song lyrics. Some of them I had, some I borrowed from a friend. The robot I did not find, so I printed a picture and put some plastic around it, to protect the paper. I started the class trying to create some mystery about what I had inside my bag. When I said “toys”, in every class at least one kid already knew the word and said loudly: “brinquedo!” I showed one by one, asking everybody to repeat. I also asked the colors, and counted the ones with more than one. Some toys were too small, so I had to walk around the class, so everybody could see. Inevitably, all the time one kid stood up and came to my table to touch a toy. I had to say many times that first t...

I do not know anymore what to do with the 5th grade group. They do not listen to me, they talk all the time, I can not get one minute of their attention. When we started studying “days of the week”, I played a hangman game with them on the board. I usually ask them to write on the board, because they seem to like it. I wanted to make a conversation task, with one making questions to the others, but they are all the time distracted with cards, or telephones, or just talking. For three or four students, I know that my classes are too basic for them, because they know a lot of stuff in English. So what I have been doing with this group is just giving them the papers, asking them to make it in pairs, which is really weird for me, because I feel like I am only asking them to do something because I need to score them, not because of their pleasure of learning something new.  I mixed the days of the week and the school subjects topics by asking them to help me write their daily clas...

 1st and 2nd grades 1st grade After very many songs and activities with focus on numbers pronunciation, it was time for some writing practice. The previous pic shows the exercise I did with the 1st grade students. The other, with the 2nd grades. They were ok, with just small problems that, I believe, would be avoidable if I could get more of their attention while I am explaining. Sometimes I feel that the children are not interested in the classes anymore or that I do not know how to captivate their attention. I try to explain, but sometimes, it is so hard... So, when I feel that they are distracting, I just ask somebody to give their classmates the papers, seat in pairs and start doing it. Then, I go around the classes to give further explanations and to answer their questions. 2nd grade I felt enthusiastic when I showed the students we were going to have a writing activity and they became so happy, especially the 1st graders. I was so surprised about that - a student desirin...