My mind is opened to the world

I could never imagine how wonderful  my trip would be . I am discovering  other cultures. When I came to the USA I thought that I would meet some different people but it was hard to know exactly what kind. My first impression was that I was living in a film, it was no real, hard to believe, this  is funny. When I saw Arabians in the classroom I wonder how is difficult for  them to get along with north American people because they are very afraid of them. I just knew an Arabian from Jordan and he is amazing, loving and very respectful, so I am learning  a lot about his culture too. A lot of information. God, I love it!

Learning and teaching !

I forgot to say about my teacher Leah when I talked about respect in the classroom. Well, she`s a very good teacher, only compliments about her. The only problem is that she does not know about our reality in Brazil classrooms, for example, we cannot afford all the stuff used to teach and the number of students does not allow this kind of teaching Leah is learning. That`s true. Besides that we have serious problems with the bad behavior students, most of them are not interested in English classes and protest against it, most of them. It is a very hard work. Leah`s classes is all we dream about teaching but it is also far away from our reality. I hope someday it is going to change. I do my best to teach English in Brazil and I will use everything I`m learning here but in a different way, the way that is possible. During this time I`m taking classes with Leah I have been thinking about my own classes as a teacher, so I`m getting some good ideas!

Books and TULP ideas

The meeting with our mentor Natalia Ward was on the library, and we talked about some good books and websites for student interests. Here are some : http://academic.evergreen.edu/f/fordter/contentlit/readstrats.htm reading strategies.

http://www.storylineonline.net/  children`s books are read by actors.

http://store.scholastic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/landingpageview?storeid=storia/home

sign up and get 5 books free.

 

The next meeting is about TULP. It will be on Monday, 5:30 pm.

Working with a book called `CRAZY LIKE A FOX, a simile history`.

Pre-reading Activity Lesson Plan

 

Name: Shirlley Kelly Cordeiro.

 

Content Objectives: Students will be able to make comparisons in a funny way: doing similes  and understand the idea of the best way to get something.

Language Objective: Students will be able to re-tell the story using comparative forms: like, as.

Learning Strategy Objective: Students will create a list of the most used  similes  our they can invent.

Activate Background Knowledge: Show students some pictures of different kinds of behavior: sleep a lot or snoring, run fast, tiptoe behind somebody, get angry, swim across a river, climb into a cave.  Create a large possibilities using as and like:  Sleep like a stone, run as a bird; as loud as a plane, as quick as a fox. Show the differences between these two structures.

Introduce new vocabulary: snore, still, snug, log, chain saw, busy, shooting star, buck, zip, meadow, wink, sneak, tricky, lamb, roar, mean. Show pictures of the vocabulary words, say them without the picture and have the students do the motion for the word.

Picture Walk: go through the pages observing what is in the pictures aloud, and asking students questions as the story unfolds: Oh, look, here is a fox on a forest. What is going on? It is sleeping.  Look the rats. What`s the problem? They are worried. What`s the problem? The fox is snoring aloud. Why the fox is running so fast? Is it going to eat the sheep? Why the sheep is chasing after fox? Have you ever done or receive that from someone? Why the fox did it? What would you do at her place? Is that a smart way to calls somebody attention or do a plane? Did it work? Would you do the same?

Cherokees and their public school

I`m glad to have the opportunity to study  North  American  History. I`m learning a lot about Cherokee people, their lifestyle in the past and now. We visited a public school on their village last  weekend  so we could see some differences between theirs and ours. At first the structure is wonderful counting on huge  buildings with computers, gyms, all kind of stuff to help on learning process. The students can practice sports, set teams and have a lot of fun competitions. We can`t have it   because there is no appropriate squares or basic resources, so our students usually study only the theory of sports. That`s very sad. Second  aspect  about differences is the number of students per class: 20. We have about 45! Last I want to talk is the motivation on these schools. The best students are recognized by everybody and respected. In our culture, on public  schools,  the best students are usually rejected by the others and teachers can`t give special attention to them.

Going back to Cherokees history it has been a great opportunity to know about these people I Knew just a little bit watching the film Dancing with Wolves, with Kevin Costner, rs ( a wonderful film).  I couldn`t imagine that the Cherokee Indians could write using a feather pen made, it was amazing ! I remembered some tribes of our Indians  stuck on the past and living  as wild  nowadays or some  others who were socialized but they have no resources enough to live a good life even with the government help, so many of tribes  are very poor. Cherokees is a great example that Indians can be perfectly socialized in order to have dignity inside their own space and rules.
 

RESPECT

This is the first step on the relationships. Today I thought about those teachers that do not respect their students. My whole life I suffered a lot because of that, being bad treated for teachers who were supposed to be good professionals but they were monsters . The students have the right to say NO when are asked about something they don`t want to say or do in the classroom, it was remembered by Leah, my methodological teacher in this morning. I used it to show to some of my classmates, who are teachers studying with me, that they can not obligate me follow their particular rules, so I was the only one that did not participated in the singing and dancing exercise. They can not say bad things to me anymore when I say NO to them. Nowadays the respect has been changed in order to protect individuality but some people insist on breaking the official rules and act according to what they have in mind. Poor of students that are still suffering with teachers who they cannot say NO.

Studying again !

I`ve been learning and teaching English for years, it`s about 10. It is still a challenge for me and now I`m having my first directly contact with the North American culture in Tennessee. I had been waiting for this chance to come up here whole my life, since I was a little girl because of the films I watched on TV. Now I can talk with my students about my great experience and I can also explain everything that is on the texts I teach in class about American life style. My students from now on know what I am doing when I talk about the United States as well as I do. I love challenges!

 

Learning English as a Second Language

Learning English is not so difficult as my students from public school say. The problem is that they do not have a good reason for learning it. That`s true! The best thing about learning a language is the real possibility to communicate and stay in another country, but they cannot afford it. The only reason for studying English to them is the fact that they need it just to find a job. It is very sad because learning a language requires a lot of time and dedication and at the end of this process remains the students question: what I need it for ? When I`m going to use it ? Most of them will not even start college and some will not finish high school, so motivation is the first step for a teacher. But What can I say to them? At first I say that globalization is the opportunity for getting their lives better. I don`t know if it works.