Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Google Art Project

"The Google Art Project allows visitors to take virtual tours of some of the world's most famous art museums, slecting works of art and navigating through interactive floor plans. The artwork view feature facilitates viewing featured works of art at high resolution, and using the custom viewer zooms in on paintings. Expanding the info panel allows visitors to read more about a work of art, or find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos. There is even a "Create an Artwork Collection" feature for saving specific views of any of the artworks and building your own collection." 


Can we say, AWESOME?!


http://www.googleartproject.com/

Language Teachers Collaborate Network

I also found this one (and another yet to come) in the WebWatch section of The Language Educator. 


"Language Teachers Collaborate is a wiki dedicated to language teachers collaborating and sharing their best ideas, information, resources, and advice."




They have already done much of the leg work in accumulating audio resources, books, and other documents for language teachers. This is a site you must check out!

http://languageteacherscollaborate.pbworks.com/w/page/32526867/FrontPage

Reading Packets for Native Speakers

I found this blog in the Web Watch section of The Language Educator. 


"Created by a middle school Spanish teacher who found she needed to develop a program for heritage speakers in her class, leemosjuntos is a blog with reading comprehension for more than 40 books, organized by series." 


http://leemosjuntos.wordpress.com/


Sunday, February 19, 2012

Little kids and Big Kids

Alright, Señorita Taylor asked me to do an update on some of the things I have been up to, so here goes!

I have been working at language school for the last 6 months as many of you already know. My students are typically between the ages of 14 and 40 (roughly speaking.) I loved working at the school with the exception of all the "required and unpaid meetings" that were called 10 minutes in advance requiring me to shower (because in Brazil if you leave your house without taking a shower, it's a sin) and run to grab a taxi (because during this time we didn't have a car... we do now!) and it was just to learn that they wanted us to sign our names on some form after each lesson, or something else that an email could have resolved.

Anyhow, due to these frustrations (and some other assuntos) I'm still not sure if I am going to continue working at the school, however, I am continuing my private lessons and am starting my classes at the university this week!

This whole teaching thing has been a constant challenge for me as I am famous for my lack of patience. I feel that this position is the best for me, as it forces me to overcome my irritation when people don't understand something, and try and find different ways to explain them so that they do understand. A great and important skill in life that I am currently cultivating.

My greatest challenge has recently been a young, bright, 7 year old boy. M is an incredible student and greets me each day with a beaming "GOOD MORNING TEACHER!" with his colored pencils and notebooks all in hand, ready to tackle the next lesson.

My first two weeks (4 lessons) with him went great! We learned greetings, we learned the names of food, colors, and how to use the verb "I like" making questions and all. We learned body parts and sung "Head Shoulders, Knees and Toes" I thought I was on a roll. I've never taught illiterate children before (here in Brazil children don't learn to read until they are pretty big... school days are 4 hours... and consequently not much gets done considering the majority of this is snack time, play time and settling down time) and I wasn't sure I was up to it, however, the first two weeks were so successful I thought I was the best!

Well, I should have learned better. I had two lessons that bombed. I was teaching clothes.

Let's just say he was irritable, not interested, tired, cranky, and just wanting to talk about food, colors and body parts again. I didn't know what to do, and I'm still unsure how our next lesson on Thursday will go, but I decided to try a new approach. We're going to try doing a letter of the alphabet each day, learning words, writing these words (which he is starting to do in school) and practicing things he is already comfortable with, colors, numbers, "I like" and trying to add new things each week such as "Where does the alligator live?" or something like that. I found a ton of printables on http://www.kidzone.ws/kindergarten/vowels/lettera.htm and http://www.tlsbooks.com/letterworksheets1.htm and I also use www.twistynoodle.com to print "A is for Alligator" coloring sheets with tracing spots to boot. (I am PDF-ing 4 that focus on one letter and then printing them 4-up on one sheet) I especially loved the Find the Words that Begin with the Letter coloring sheets. I sure hope that my little kid, M, enjoys this new approach. I think that this will at least give him the expectation of what will be coming up on the next lesson, since he already knows the alphabet!

And now to my big kids. I start Wednesday teaching at the largest local university. I'm terrified, but also super excited. It's been a crazy few weeks (especially since it is around Carnival, everyone is on vacation, working half days, etc....) so all of my due dates and appointments were obviously not met and this is forever frustrating to a girl who lives by her agenda. Note: I live in a cowboy town. Carnival is not a big deal. No parades, just some parties, dance clubs have costume parties, and pretty much everyone is happy for the 4 day weekend so they either 1) go to the family farm, the chácara, sitio or the fazenda depending on how big the land-area is or 2) they go somewhere else that is more interesting. They go to the beach, they go to a big city that has a mall, pretty much anywhere but staying here since the town is dead. I am, however, staying in town, working, playing with my pup and getting all my lesson plans for the next two weeks DONE so I can relax and concentrate on winning over more students!

All said and done, I have been spending a decent amount of time looking at various text books and I finally decided at one point, "Puxa (gosh...)" I'm just going to make my own. And so began, what I thought, was an easier option. Obviously I didn't prioritize and left everything for the last minute but I got it done. All 46 pages of it. All grammar topics (and a few modal verbs) in one workbook. With some texts, conversation topics, etc. This book is going to be the basis for my class and I think it is going to be super helpful because it is really basic and all the vocab (18 new words per lesson) have something to do with college, or are very commonly used words in English. I even have a TOEFL section! If you're interested in checking it out, let me know, I can send you a pdf. If you find any errors, PLEASE let me know as I am sure I am going to run into a bunch as I go along.

In addition to the stress of getting this book finished, printed and bound, I needed to recruit students for my class! My original week for doing PR was the first week of Feb, when classes started. However, since the director was on vacation, and the person responsible for approving all propaganda that has the name of the university on it was also on vacation, (read: nothing gets done in Brazil from Dec 1--Carnival) I had to wait until the week before I was supposed to start classes. UGH! Thankfully, they finally got my info on their website (LOOKIE HERE!), on their facebook and all over the bulletin boards at the university. I made tear-off flyers, which were a hit! Professors and students told me they loved the tear off part.. they had never seen a poster like that! Go figure...


So, after spending 12 hours, for three days in a row handing out pamphlets, yelling "INGLÊS NA ULBRA! AULAS COM UMA AMERICANA! MAIS INFORMAÇÕES AQUI!" (something which I have been told by a girlfriend of mine NOONE does and she laughed SO hard she almost peed her pants when I told her that I did this... and H just shook his head in shame!!) I have come to the conclusion that everyone at the uni now knows who I am. I walked around during lunch and dinner hours chatting with people while they ate, left pamphlets in classrooms during class changes, and held demonstrative classes to get to know prospective students and to get them to sign up.

Result: I now have 16 students signed up BEFORE the class even started! (A huge deal since Brazilians, like most Latin Americans, can't seem to plan something more than about 10 minutes in advance.) I even had people just come up to me and ask for the sign-up form, then handed me $100 reais pointblank and then said "Até quarta!" (Until Wednesday! -- days of the week in Portuguese are in numerical order, to see why click here.)

All of my heart work seems to be paying off. I hope that this week I have happy little kids and big happy big kids. Se deus quiser.... (The Brazilian way of saying Ojalá...using the future subjunctive. And yes, Portuguese even has a future subjunctive!)