Working Writing in Class

I'm a teacher in a bilingual school, and one of my groups is in advanced level, with 3rd-year high school students who are about to start their vestibulares. This trimester we worked on a different kind of writing. It may be practiced by other people, but I'd like to share the succeeded experience with you.

Since we were discussing about the use of technology and electronics, I asked students to write an essay about "The Massive Use of Electronics". So, below you'll find the steps followed throughout this successful class.

1. Students were asked to bring their handwritings a week after the day I asked. It should be no more then a page long;

2. Students brought their texts. I asked them to form groups of three. Each student got an essay that wasn't his/hers, neither from someone in their groups. They had to read it and highlight with one color of pen whatever they considered wrong, confusing, awkward, etc. 

3. As soon as a student finish correcting, s/he should write his/her name on the bottom using the same highlighter color s/he used to correct it. After that, the essay should be transferred to the other member of the group, who should use a different highlighter color and do the same process. They did it until the three essays had been revised by the three members of the group.

P.S. They tried to ask the authors about some features they didn't understand, but I interrupted and asked them to focus on the correction. They got really apprehensive because they were afraid os misjudging friends' mistakes. I asked them to do it anyway.

4. After all essays were corrected, I collect them and asked students what difficulties they faced while correcting the texts. They pointed out: a) horrible handwriting; b) lack of cohesion and coherence; c) lack of connectives, time expressions; d) not clear intro, body, conclusion.

5. I told then that this process is exactly what's going to happen with their compositions in their vestibulares, so they should strive for clearness, objectiveness, cohesion, etc.

6. I gave the compositions back to their authors and I asked them to type it considering the correction IF they agreed with it. I reminded all students that the correction was made by their friends, and not necessarily the highlights should be considered. They should be analytical and attentive while rewriting it.

7. After the one-week deadline to hand the new essay in with the original attached, I collected and corrected them myself, giving them the feedback and the correspondent grade.

How Many Uses Can You Think of for a Paper Clip?

To be classified as a genius you must think about 200 possibilities of answer. And a study showed that 98% of kindergarten children tested are genius at divergent thinking. What about you? How many answers could you think about? Why?

- By Bárbara Godoy -

In his book called “The school which I always dreamed of without imagining it could exist”, the pedagogue and educator Rubem Alves affirms that forgetting is to break free the ways of being that have been consolidated and that make us think things must be the way there are. No! Things do not have to continue to be the way they have always been.

And maybe many of the problems related to the education structures lie on our fear of forgetting and changing. Our actual educational system was designed during the Industrial Revolution and it was based on the Enlightenment ideals. More than two thousand years have passed and we still have almost the same kind of school, based in a close relationship with the industries needs. Our schools are producing workers since their creation.

In other words, our schools were constructed according to the model of the assembly lines. Rubem Alves defines the school as a factory organized for the production of bio-psychological unities carriers of knowledge and capabilities. The unities that at the end of the educational process are not in accordance with the model defined by the government are discarded – repeat a grade.

The problem of this selection is that brilliant people cannot develop their potentials. So, in this context, we could ask ourselves: what is intelligence? Maybe we may have different answers, but one of these considers the intelligence as the capacity that makes creativity possible. In summary, intelligence is related to the divergent thinking.

A research with children showed that they are geniuses of the divergent thinking because they can give different answers to the same situation. On the other hand, the exactly experiences were proposed again to the same children when they were older and the result was scary: they were not classified as genius anymore. That way we can conclude that the influences children receive during their educational process repress this fantastic capacity of seeing different possible ways, and instead they see only what is straight ahead.

Rubem Alves affirms that intelligence develops when the body faces practical needs. It means that intelligence is extremely practical and it serves life. If the school stimulated the students to learn what is closely related to their present experiences, would’t we have much more inventors?

With this scenario, maybe the solution is to forget. And, just then, think about new alternatives, like Escola da Ponte in Portugal. In this school there are no grades, no classes, and no classrooms. Learning works like that: children make small groups with common interests and then meet with a teacher. Together, the group decides a working program of fifteen days, and the teacher orientates about what to search and the places to do so. At the end of the two-week period, the group joins again and evaluates what they have learned. If what was learned is appropriate, the members of the group look for new groups to study a different subject.

With this learning structure, the paradigm of the teacher as the producer of knowledge is broken; children help each other instead of competing; it ends with the disinterest related to the school; and the established educational program is transformed into one that contains answers to the children’s questions.

The book starts with this quotation by T. S. Eliot:

“In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away”. 

And we end our reflection with this, because we are already practicing how to forget and in the end this quotation is just the start. 

“We must be the change we want to see in the world” - Gandhi.

Bárbara Godoy
Senior Student at Colégio Piracicabano

"ENCHER LINGUIÇA" in English

Do you have any idea of how to say "encher linguiça" in English? 

Well, it's a very common practice among many people, especially students. Whenever they don't know what to say in a presentation or even what to write in a composition, they tend to PAD OUT!

And that's why I researched about it. Correcting my students' oral presentations, I concluded some of them, mostly the ones who didn't get prepared for the activity, padded out, over and over...as if I wouldn't get it...(Oh Lord!)

Teachers complain students often pad their compositions out, and students are used to say a teacher they don't like much likes padding classes out. Both do it in order to gain some extra time or fill this time, usually with unnecessary information. They do so just because they intend to show they know a lot about the content. But they don't, indeed.

Aren't politicians a good example 

of people who like to pad out?

Source: English Experts

Plant and Animal Cells

Have you ever wondered what an animal or plant cell look like? So here are some examples students from 7th grade B have done in our Environment classes.

In order to visualize the theory, students were invited to try reproducing one of the two studied cells by researching organelles' names in English. 

Nice job guys!

Plant Cells

Giovanna Bettiol

Leticia Rodrigues Oliveira

Isabella Brites

Leticia Marreto Martins

Raissa Buschini Prado

Animal Cells

Miguel Amaral Paixão

Murilo Pessoa Marcelino

Marcelo Santos

Gustavo Calllegari