Unpredictability

Something that I consider important for us teachers is that we need to be prepared for the student’s feedback. It doesn’t only matter how much we know about what we are teaching, but how we use this knowledge. The reaction of the students cannot be predicted, so it is of vital importance that we are prepared to the unpredictable.

Being a teacher for more than 10 years, I can surely say that some of my most productive classes were the ones that had not been prepared. By not prepared I don’t mean that I didn’t know at all what I was going to teach. I mean that my students and I didn’t follow what was scheduled according to the book. However, we were able to practice everything that was included in the syllabus in a more natural way.

Of course that focusing has always been a bit of a problem for me. The moment you have nothing to follow, you can get a little lost. But this was not a problem that could not be surpassed by any of us, neither the teacher nor the students. I have already been in some classes were the teachers were so stuck to the class plan that they had to look at their notes the whole time, and if any of the students got out of the main topic in the class, they would simply ignore the comment made by the student and keep on following their plan.

So, are you prepared for the unpredictable?
Leave a comment below.

Teachers helping each other

Hello again everybody,

For about a month I've been participating on a website of printables. And I'd really like to recommend it to you all. The idea of the site is: in order to download something, you have to upload something. It sounds like a lot of work at first, but it's not. After you get used to the way the site works, it's pretty easy to get some points and make downloads.

There is also a forum there where you can ask your questions and share some ideas.

Hope you all like it.

www.eslprintables.com

A little about Curitiba

I was wondering how to start and came up with the idea of showing you where I come from. But better than me to talk about my city, is this newspaper.

http://www.curitibainenglish.com.br/

It's for free and the quality of the material is amazing. So, if you are a teacher in Curitiba, it's a good idea to show your students more about the city. And if you're not, a great opportunity to show them the city with the best bus system!!

Have fun!!

Tongue twisters!!

 DOWNLOAD

A very interesting activity using tongue twisters. It helps the student with the pronunciation of various sounds of English.

Starting!!!

Good morning everybody!

I'd like to first introduce myself and say a little bit of what I'll be doing here in this blog.

My name's Ramon and I've been working as an English teacher for almost 6 years. I also work as a pedagogical coordinator since the beginning of 2009. I love teaching but as I work for small schools, sometimes I miss having other teachers to talk and discuss about things related to teaching and language in general.

So, that's my idea for the blog, a place where we can discuss various themes related to ELT and also, I'll be posting some worksheets and ideas for everybody to use in their class.


Hope we can all have fun!!


Regards,
Ramon