Teaching, Learning, Growing

File with:

1. The lesson plan;
2. The handouts to be used;
3. The link for the video.

Aula – Music and sexuality (files)

Music as a critical theme in the ESL classroom

=D

The reports to be presented in this post have a purpose: that of showing how different groups react to the same activity and whether there are any similarities in their behavior. The groups range from the 7^th grade to the 9^th grade of the second phase of Brazilian Ensino Fundamental.

Report #1 – 8^th grade A (7:00 a.m.)

The teacher enters the class. Only a few students are in class. The teacher announces she is going to hand back students’ final exam, and they will be doing an activity which will be the last mark of the term. She does the call roll as the other students get into the class. Then, she tells them that those who are up for “recuperação” will have it written on their tests. She gives out their exams. The students see their grades and start comparing. Two girls scream and hug each other, celebrating the good marks. The teacher tells them the dates for “recuperação” and to bring magazines, newspapers, glue, scissors and blank paper in the dates set. She also explains the activity of that class is no extra mark, so everybody must do it. She writes the questions on the board. Meanwhile, the students start to lose focus and talk about the World Cup out loud, what gets the teacher upset and makes her menace to expel from the class those who do not shut up. The class goes silent. She explains the exercise, which is a fill-in-the-blank type. The students do not seem to produce the required utterances suitably. She corrects, drills and tries again.

The teacher writes in a corner of the board what they have to bring for the “recuperação” class. She leaves the class for a while. The students start overtalking. A student talks to me through paper. I reply in English. Then, I lie by saying I am not Brazilian. The others see it and start to get curious. I come up with a little story. They seem to believe it. The teacher comes back and the girl with the paper asks her what I wrote. She translates. The other students finish copy and try to solve the exercise, while the teacher monitors them. Some minutes later, they get the exercise finished, and start asking questions about the “recuperação” class. The bell rings. The class is over. Students hand in the exercises.

Report #2 – 7^th grade B (7:50 a.m.)

The teacher enters the class. The setting of the desks is pretty untidy. She tells them to get in line. The students do not obey at first. She starts rearranging it by herself, but she soon stops it. It gets a little better, but the students do not seem willing to help her. She tells them the dates for “recuperação” and to bring magazines, newspapers, glue, scissors and blank paper in the dates set. She gives out their exams as she does the call roll. The students see their grades and start comparing. Then, she tells them that those who are up for “recuperação” will have it written on their tests. She explains the exercise they are going to is an already given one, and they have to redo it to hand in to her. Meanwhile, The teacher writes in a corner of the board what they have to bring for the “recuperação” class, as well as the dates set. The students start to lose focus. The teacher goes mad and quarrels with them. One student claims he had done the exam with a colleague, but forgot to write his name on it. The teacher quarrels with him.

Suddenly, the class goes silent. They start doing the exercise. Then, a students starts laughing nonstop. The teacher orders her to leave the class and go to the coordinator, so she leaves the class for a while. The class goes wild. A student comes to me and asks who I am. I tell the same story, but one student recognizes me from last year. The class loses focus for the third time. The teacher comes back and quarrels once again. The bell rings. The class is over. Students hand in the exercises.

Report #3 – 7^th grade A (8:40 a.m.)

The teacher enters the class. The setting of the desks is even untidier than the previous class. She tells them to get in line. The students do not obey. She gives out their exams as she does the call roll. The students see their grades and start comparing. One of the students tears his exam off and makes a paper ball out of it. Then, she tells them that those who are up for “recuperação” will have it written on their tests. She explains the exercise they are going to is an already given one, and they have to redo it to hand in to her. She writes the questions on the board again, since there are some students who did not copy the questions when she gave it for the first time, but did copy the text needed.

Suddenly, all the class’ attention lies upon me. They ask the teacher who I am and why I am there. She plays my game and tells students I am not Brazilian and I am there to observe classes to fulfill a requirement from the university. Students start to interview me. One student tries to use English to talk to me, what I found very cute of him. The interview as a whole was about my likes and dislikes. They asked me if I liked things such as Justin Bieber, Restart and all those recent teenage fashion. They also asked me which team I was cheering for in the World Cup. I answered I was cheering for Brazil. The class goes wild. Then, teacher gets their attention back to the exercise. They do it in less than five minutes. A lady enters the room bringing the snack. They hand in the exercises and eat the snack. The bell rings. The class is over.

Hi, guys! Howdy?

Finally starting the blogs, after almost a month – and a fight with its features, which I am completely unused with – after its creation. Now I am going to update it everytime it is required by this subject’s professor.

About me: I am Pedro Machado, nice to meet you. I am 19 years old and a senior student of Modern Languages at Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil. This first post is the very first requirement by this subject, which is to tell my own experiences in Estágio 1 and 2, subject I took in the junior year.I am going to start it by telling how it was at Estágio 1, then about Estágio 2 and then an overall comment on how I felt and acted as a student of both subjects.

Okay, so let us get it started.

In Estágio 1, I saw it as a critical, down-to-earth start to what it is to teach in public schools, which is the reality we are most likely to find out and act as teachers in a new future. We had to go to public schools, watch classes and make reports on them, as detailed as possible. It was an enriching experience since we could see what we have seen for years under a new perspective, which is that of the teacher. Besides, we used to meet every Wednesday to discuss around theoretical material about language teaching, besides having a look at the historical and political issues of the profession, such as laws and everything. The thing as a whole was a good proposal, but I did not take advantage of it as much as I should have, though it was nice.

As for Estágio 2, we could go to the teaching thing itself. We have had an overall look at some principles and techniques on language teaching which have been largely used over the last two centuries, besides seeing some aspects of second language acquisition and going a little deeper on reflections on language learning, such as refletcions on language learning in high schools. Again we had to write reports on classes we had to observe, but the context was different. We had to observe language classes at Centro de Línguas, in which we could see clearly how classes on language skills work in practice and therefore see the theoretical thing in real life.