STUDENTS 3rd and 4th

My practice of probation was very interesting. Taught to students of 3 and 4 years and the room contained only male students. But I had not difficulty in conduct this classes with students in 3 years, where he worked contents of the book assigned by the teacher and preparing our lessons. Not all classes were good, sometimes can not continue in this area due to the fact that the students were very excited, but it was very participatory. One lesson that I think it was successful was the activities we have prepared the blog talking about schools, it was very interesting because the students said they thought about their school and the school's blog was better than theirs.
We conclude by showing the blog and talk about the project that was done in partnership with a U.S. school. It was a very productive and interesting class.

Mayara de Melo 

MY EXPERIENCE TEACHING DEAF STUDENTS

Hey! I'd like to talk about my experience teaching deaf students. It was an amazing opportunity to develop and share knowledge with my students!
For me this experience was really productive, I could conduct the classes in my way and also learned a lot.
Of course that i had some frustrations along the way, but I'm sure that each challenge added more and more knowledge in my carreer as a teacher!


Natália

PRODOCÊNCIA

I simply have no words to describe how glad I was by the end of the teaching practice.  Teaching in PRODOCÊNCIA project was definitely a turning point in my life. I am saying so because of the invaluable experience the students and I shared – yes, I learnt loads with them.  For the first time in my life I put myself in the first-year undergraduates` shoes and... I suffered with them, I laughed with them, I freaked out with them, I studied with them, I talked non-stop with them, I had great fun with them. Next time somebody asks me “why do people do Languages at university?” (and let`s agree... they do this with such a wry smile upon their faces), I will surely refer to PRODOCÊNCIA students and say: WE DO LANGUAGES TO MAKE THE DIFFERENCE AND TO SAY NO TO ANY KIND OF LIMITATION OR FRUSTRATION. This is the bottom line.

Maria Mizakami

The stage needed to consolidate our learning training

The great pleasure of a teacher in training is able to perform in the classroom all the training and solitary thoughts they had duringtheir studies and preparing lessons. My stage was full of happiness, the first to be able to accomplish with a wonderful teacher and a fantastic partner. Spend several hours with two groups committed to their goals. Second was to get some positivefeedback. The best time was to prepare and present lessons withmaterials in the interest of students who attended classes with dedication in most classes.


Dirceu Carneiro de Araujo

The importance of teacher's input

        In the beginning of my practicum, students always complained about speaking English in classroom. But it was an English class! So, what to do to not scare them with the language?
       For language acquisition takes place, teacher has to provide comprehensible input in the target language (TL) (KRASHEN, 1981), and to do it, teacher has to be moderated and insistent.
       In my practicum, besides of the valorization of students' opinion, teacher's input was also vey important for learning takes place. So, some strategies and modes of teacher's talk was used to help students understand better the TL, such as yes-no questions, either-or question, repetition, translation and formulaic language.
       To help me to communicate with students, the use of the mother tongue and the codeswitching (change of turns in english and portuguese language) was made. In the end of my practicum I could notice that this simple modes of questions and speech help the students understand the content taught and made them feel more comfortable to join in the classroom interaction.


Dayane Novaes

The valorization of students' opinion

       In my practicum as a teacher-student, I and my partner always required students' opinion about the content that was going to be discussed. This valorization of students'opinion was the best way of making them interact in classroom because we gave chances for them to express what they know and feel about the content.
      Giving attention to students' talk stimulates them to keep on talking and participating of the class, what will promote language learning through the interaction, since students will have to read and acquire vocabulary to talk about it.
      Teacher's incentive, feedback and follow-up is also essential because students will feel safe about what they are saying and will continue interacting.
      So, bringing to them controversial and current issues will take their attention and interest.


Dayane Novaes

Listening Skill

I could not remember a good remarkable practice in the practicum of this year. The classes were based on grammar. However, something I tried was to increase the number of listenings per class. I believe I started that from the middle of the course because I believe in the idea that says "listening you improve by listening". Besides the book's listenings I used to bring listenings from other sources, about other subjects and some of them were longer and difficult.  Nonetheless, I could not talk to my students to ask them if they felt some improvement.

Juliana C. Andrade

Teaching Impressions

Teaching students at public school is not easy because of many reasons, but in my experience was the following: During the classes my partner and I had the habit of walking among the classroom offering help to students who had doubts, so, they began to trust us and to do all activities that we proposed. 

It improved also, when we started to explore subjects that made part of their lives, such as social networks. 

Then, I could notice that they became more interested and it increased their interaction during the class. 

By that, I could perceive that our close interaction with the students made them more likely to learn, however, it only worked when the subject of the class involved them somehow.

Darlene Vieira

Starting a Good Practicum

     As I started my practicum at a public school I felt totally lost, I did not know what to do in the classroom, how to act and react to the students behavior and I felt I was experiencing chaos. However, as time went by, I felt that my partner and I learned how to deal with our students. Although it took quite a while, we could share good moments with them.

    My impression is that our respectful relationship with them started when my partner and I were tired of their noise and talks and decided to buy them some GIANT lollipops to see if by asking them to lick it instead of talking they would respect us. As a result, they perceived that we were trying to built a nice relationship with them and did not want to fight with them.

    By this kind of joke, a friend relationship started between us and they started respecting us. I feel like if we had not done it our relation would be awful and we would just spent the classes arguing with them.

    Therefore, I could realize that to be involved with the students and to teach them a friendship was needed, otherwise we would not have had a good practicum.


Luana de Andrade

Hey guys!

Hello every one!
I wanna talk about one of the classes that I taught and had a good responses from the students.

The theme of the class was "Never say Never" from Justin Beber. Yes, Yes I know... But the proposition was that, that day was the spirit day of tacky, and our music theme was Never say Never.
I Worked with them their dreams that they consider impossible and the description of them selfs, using the present of the To Be verb and some characteristics wehad work during the previous classes.
They developed some plays and even a poem to talk about the them been real in their daly lifes.
It was incredible to them workin using English and performing new possibilities.

Megg

An interactive experience

          During the whole year I observed and taught public school students. I guess the didactic sequences were elaborated with close attention and they followed the program proposed by the PCN and PPP. The material presented was very interesting for them, once it was quite different from what they were used to. Not only simple activities focused on grammar, but songs, texts, inferences activities and so on.

         When the classrooms were complete, it was a little bit hard to make all students pay attention to us, after all, they are thirty five adolescents students!

         One day, an interesting fact happened. The classroom was only half students, maybe less. My partner and I introduced the subject, as use to day each class. We were worked on Camila and Josiane’s sequence, about animal fur. Then we notice the students showed themselves really concerned about the subject. More than this, they started asking us English language curiosities and try to solve any kind of doubt they had in English!

         That was the day that I felt how pleasant could be the experience of teaching. The experience of passing knowledge ahead.

Marcos A. de Oliveira

Every class should be like that!

Hello everyone...
Well, in one of my classes, Joseane and I decided to do a game with words relate to Carlos and Marcos´s unit. Then, we wrote the words in both languages: Portuguese and English and we cut it. They were supposed to guess the meaning in both languages. Everybody participated and enjoyed the classes, many of the words they got it. In the test many of the students did pretty well and I really think that they learned a lot with the game. It was a good experience to me as  student- teacher and work with another person made me learn a lot. Every class should be like that!

Camila Guarido

A satisfactory experience as a pre-service teacher

Hello, everyone!

I'm going to talk a little bit about a class that I considered a very good one.

In the third bimester we were talking about Food Incorporation, Healthy and Unhealthy Food and Eating Habits. In the end of the bimester we asked the students to produce posters, advising people to have a healthier life.

At first, I thought they wouldn't like the idea, because the posters had to be made using English only, or because they would think that producing posters is for children.

However, I proved to be wrong, as the students really enjoyed the idea. They were really engaged and very participative during the production.

They came up with great ideas and showed that they were aware of the vocabulary used in the previous classes. They were also able to write some sentences in English by themselves.

When the posters were done, each group had the opportunity to present them to the rest of the class. They explained the posters and exposed their own ideas about the theme.

After that, the posters were fixed to the school’s walls.

As a pre-service teacher, I believe that this experience was a really satisfactory one, as we could see that the students were really into the theme of the classes and that they have learnt much more than we thought they had.

I also believe that when we give the students the opportunity to produce and to express their own opinions they can learn much more and with a better quality.

TATIANE SANTOS

I wish every class was like this

The best experience I've had this year with my students was the day me and Camila  decided to give them a game. The game: using words that they've  learned on the unit about The Amazon forest and Youtube (by Carlos e Marcos), we divided the class in two groups. We printed the words: in English and the meaning in Portuguese, for example (mining - mineração), and every time one person of each group should go in front of the class and pick a piece of paper. Me or Camila would read it, sometimes the word in Portuguese, other times the word in English, and the person who answered first would score a point for their team.

EVERYBODY, for the first time were participating! It was amazing!  They were screaming, laughing, celebrating, enjoying and LEARNING! It was a great experience and I wish every class what that way... 

By Joseane David

A surprising result!

I am here to talk about an unexpected result, which was a great one. The main subject of the classes was about environment, including the Amazon rainforest and pollution. Working with this kind of content, and trying to bring it to the students' reality, there was proposed to the students to make a video in groups about our city. The videos had to comprise a problem that the city faces, and specific pieces of information that were obtained following certain questions. They were:

What is happening?
Where is it happening?
Since when is it happening?
Why is it happening?
Who is to blame?

Since the beggining of the proposal, the students did not demonstrate any interest in doing the activity, which was really unencouraging. However, the video was already set as part of their grades, and it had to happen. There were many complainings about the patterns, mainly about the language, because they could only use English. Fostering and supporting students to complete the task, the day of the videos' presentation was a big surprise. The students made a really good job! The videos were really well organized, and there were even some great performances. Concluding, the students manifested themselves able to realize the "challenge" with excellent results, and showed us their potential, which was underestimated at first.

Carlos F. Mendes

Good practices in English classes

Hi, everybody!

I'm here to share with you a little bit of my experience as a pre-service English teacher at a public school in Londrina-PR and also some good practices to the teaching of English.

During the two years that I spent as an English teacher at a public school, I faced various situations. Some were problematic and stressful; others were favorable and satisfactory. Focusing on these two last items, I will give two examples of successful initiatives that occurred during this time in my practicum.
(These assertions were made by the students themselves in the last day of class, when we all joined in a circle to discuss issues concerning the classes, the English language and the teacher-student relationship)

Successful practices pointed out by students:

1) It is better to have two or three teachers in the classroom because they are more likely to solve students' doubts quicker and more efficiently than a sole teacher would do;
2) The idea of exploring different themes during the year sounds interesting to students. Instead of working with language coming from a single topic throughout the year, they prefer the variety of issues - one for each bimester. They see the themes as relevants and practical to their daily lives. (Examples of the themes discussed this year: 1st bimester= Songs; 2nd bimester= Healthy and Unhealthy food habits; 3rd bimester= Consequences of Global Warming: Online News; 4th bimester= Risks of Smoking)
3) Not having a book to follow during the year is also positive in their opinion. Students enjoy receiving a handout each class and gluing them in their notebook. They think this way makes it easier to record the content and saves them from carrying the book all around, since the handouts are inside their notebook.

To my way of thinking, hearing students was crucial to close the year. One thing would be myself to present good practices. A totally different thing is to show students' point of view on the topic.

So just to mention it, I agree with their assertions and I also think these three aspects were positive during my teaching experience. However, from the perspective of a 8-classes-per-day-and-40-hours-of-working teacher, these ideas might not be successfully implemented, since the reality in the job market is entirely different from what we as pre-service teachers or students consider 'good practices'.

All in all, I truly believe that this experience was pleasant. It really made me broaden my horizons as a human being and as a professional. I also made me reconsider some views about the teaching at public schools. Although complicated, it can be efficient. Students proved that.

Thank you all and...enjoy your holidays!

By: Ludimila Cordeiro

A pre-service teacher experience

In one of my classes I noticed that using technology such as, videos and songs, students became more interested in paying attention to the classroom.  Using the board instead of correcting out loud was more profitable than repeating several times.  Many students prefer it when they have the grammar explanation instead of reading activities so they can study and use grammar points for mechanical exercises. Approaching students, being friends and honest was an attitude that made our interaction better as teacher-student. Being a pre-service teacher and sharing classes with another one has shown until nowadays that respect and patience is really important for a productive class and a good environment. 
Ana Carolina