SCHOOL VISITS - Oxente Guys

Last, but not least, we want to share with you our impressions during some school visits we have been to in Finland.
There is a link attached below that summarizes our ideas in a PPT format.
Enjoy the reading.

Oxente, Guys!
Gabriela Machado
Luis Melo
Marcelo Sales
Moysés Barbosa
Teresa Cristina

How to engage students?

As tapiocas

Anderlane Lima

Daniela Soprani

Ketlen Oliveira

Monique Viana

Vilma Raquel

                                           

Lack of interest, poor performance and indiscipline has become increasingly common in classrooms, it is not surprise that traditional teaching methods do not work, students can no longer engage with them. So, how to evoke in students the desire of learning? How to involve them in their own learning process?

We, as teachers, know our students, then, it will be a lit bit for us to find clever ways to engage our students, and we need to think about possibilities to face this challenge in creative and efficient way.

To exist an effective and lasting learning it is necessary that there are definite purpose and reflective self-activity of students. Thus, the real learning takes place when the student is interested and shown engaged in learning, that is, when it is motivated. It is the inner motivation of the student drives and vitalizes the act of studying and learning. Hence the importance of motivation in the teaching and learning.  

Encourages a sense of well-being and comfort in the classroom, greater engagement in activities and learning, there must be a quality relationship between students and teachers, who along with mutual respect becomes a key element in the development of self-motivation.

Human beings learn, as experience experiences and develop thinking. Thought it is the way of intelligence to express themselves, so it is in thought, who lives learning. Every change of thinking, the learner produces its own knowledge. In other way any student has a particular way of receiving informations, and each new experience he rearranges the mental structures to adapt again to the world. The develop of thought is the mixture, the interposition of the particular mental structures of individuals and the environment, so much richer and more diverse are the experiences, the greater the development of thought and better the quality of knowledge, learning.

• Organizational autonomy: when the teacher allows students to make decisions for themselves, within the terms and classroom rules;
• Autonomy practice: when the teacher gives students options and different ways to present their ideas (through different media, for example.);
• Cognitive autonomy: when the teacher allows the student to self evaluation in certain  situations from a pattern of self reference;
• Work with technology's: The students are in general interested in technology and when the teacher knows and works with it, it’s easier to get the students engaged in the learning process;
• Make learning groups, and help the students to support each other in a collaborative work.
• Encourage your students to find their learning goals;
• Getting out of classroom. Trying to use different environments;
• Always encourage your students to believe in themselves;
• Having fun classes.

Anyway, the teacher should always choose, in our view,  a variety of educational process or methods to promote the engagement of the students.

References:

http://blog.educacao.mg.gov.br/?p=12900

http://www.mestregr.com.br/blog/4-formas-inteligentes-de-envolver-os-alunos/

http://www.planetaeducacao.com.br/portal/artigo.asp?artigo=2798 (picture1)

http://info.geekie.com.br/volta-as-aulas-3-maneiras-de-usar-a-tecnologia-para-motivar-os-alunos-apos-as-ferias/ (picture 2)

                                         

 School Visiting Report

 Lyseon Lukio - Upper secondary school

    In a gray day in Hameenlinna we woke up early in a Monday morning, it was cold and there were few people in the streets, few talking, a silent day. A typical scenery in Autumn. We went walking to school, our expectations were to receive some lecture, talking to the teachers, visit some classes rooms, to get knowing the whole environment. It was what happened, in some scale. There, we were greeted by the principal and the counselling guidance teacher, by the way, the guidance teacher has a very important role in Finnish schools. He/she  is responsible for guiding the students in their competences and skills.  

    There were few students when we got there, few students in the halls, so we went to the conference room to listen the principal talking about the school’s history and its organization. It was good to listen that the school was the educational place to many important people in Finland, including Sibelius, a classical composer. The teachers have made effort to give importance and preserve the building’s history and memory. There were some posters on the walls with many schools projects, some of them are related to Sibelius.

    Despite the fact the school was an old building the way of teaching was more guided to the phenomenon based learning. The school in that moment was running projects in psychology field, we have discovered that visiting the classrooms, all of them were with the same theme. It is important to mention when we went out to the teachers room. The school was packed with living students moving around, alright, the old build school was pulsing with the young upper secondary students. They seemed to be curious about our visiting due their glacing, it was very warming and made us feel comfortable as teachers. Somehow it contracts to the outside bounding schools walls,  where the Finnish people are more introverted .

    As we got to the teachers rooms, there were some teachers, some of they were about 30’s or 40’s. Something came to our ears was that every teacher there speaks English! Good surprise, we were able to communicate without any problem. The teachers were open to talk and show some parts of their working routine.

    After some coffee and talking we were divided in groups to visit the classrooms. As we said, teachers were dealing with projects, and the students were presenting the results of their researches. They were working in groups of five, it is common to create teamwork in the educational institutions in Finland, in fact, it was our first task in the first day at HAMK. We were incentivized to mix with the students, talk to them, feel their feelings in being a student in that school, It was a good experience. It is worth to mention that the students and teachers were receptive.

    At the and, we went to the conference room, so we listened more about the school project in entrepreneurship and counselling guidance. Some students presented us with their experience in business area as they conduct their high school studies. It is interesting noticing that students do not study just subjects from the board curriculum, but in Lyseon Lukio case they have studied business and entrepreneurship. For a good surprise they managed winning a contest in business field. They were in three, each with their skills enriched by school, each in the process of building their desires as a future career. There were a magician, who probably, but not necessarily is going to work in the entertainment business, other a singer with strong voice and strong will and another a promised business woman. The idea of counselling guidance, possibility to mold the knowledge in the field where the students are interested in, good structure and environment, qualified teachers among a series of other things are meant to be a path of a reasonable education to be reach for us as teachers.

Demola

    Demola is an international organization that facilitates co-creation projects between university students and companies, either locally or internationally. For Demola groundbreaking innovation is created only when people with passion and talent are interconnected across nations, cultures, and fields of expertise. It means that innovation with true impact cannot be created in isolated and disconnected units. That is why we need a stronger ecosystem instead of bigger silos.

It was an interesting experience to know that company. Partnerships that are effective with them are very important for the multiplication of good ideas of students in the area of entrepreneurship. At Demola they are able to shorten borders giving the necessary support to young entrepreneurs to develop their projects and leadership.

    During the presentation of the Head of Demola Tampere, Ville Korpiluoto we had the opportunity to meet some of the work done by them, as well as what is needed to make the team. To know the forms of applications you can visit the company's website and choose the desired location.

Proakatemia

    Proakatemia is a good option for those ones who want to experience a different kind of education. There isn't teachers there, the students learn from the others students, in case the oldest ones, through the sharing of their own experiences, successes and failures as well. They have the opportunity to learn by living and practicing according to their kind of enterprises, they have the chance to travel abroad in order to improve and or purchase their skills and knowledge.

    We realized a space completely different from others educational centers here or in Brazil. The time spent at school is different too, the students are more autonomous, they can make their own schedules, so themselves can decide how many days and hours they will stay at school, and for our surprise, or not, they like to stay there as Alexandre, and student there, who presented the Proakatemia’s organization he told us that really like to stay there, and feels in the right direction. It's what all teachers hope to listen from a student.                        

Fonte: http://esseepankki.proakatemia.fi/

Hämeenlinna Yhteiskoulu - HYK

    The school was recently renovated, everything was working in according. The environment was crowded with kids from primary school, it is a school from 1st to 5th grades. As the principal said, every corner of the school should be useful for learning, thus even stairs could be transformed in a meeting point with an interactive board. It is not necessary to say he was correct in seeing the whole school as big classroom.

    After some words the teachers was divided in groups to cover a bigger area, we could see different practices performed in that day. In one of the classroom the student of 4th grade that was studying mathematics, by the way, the whole floor is used as classroom, so it caught our attention the fact they were spread through the room, some of them were studying in a group, there was one student studying by himself, others were listening to a lecture, another group studying science and there was a group of eight students with special needs studying the same topic as the rest, but there was a special mathematics teacher educator taking care of them. The whole classroom is meant to improve the students needs, space for meeting, collaborative or independent working, electronic resources, comfortable fornitures and no walls among the students.

    The Brazilian public schools reality is very different from this school in Finland. Most of Brazilians school don’t have this support, especially in technology. There are many students in the same classroom and most of the teachers do not have a study to lead with students with special needs, but we can try to adopt some educational strategies from Finnish schools to Brazilian schools. Of course this is a hard challenge but together we can make the difference. 

CARCARÁS GROUP MEMBERS:
Aline Ramos
Daniel Silva
Hermano Nunes
Izabelly Dutra
Odair José

VISITING SCHOOLS IN FINLAND

In our initial training at university we’ve studied many theories that aim to guide the pedagogical work of the teacher in the classroom, but not always these theories are lived and practiced in our post-university context. Finland is not in this failure picture and shows everyday practices in what their schools gether theory and practice in perfect harmony to contribute for the success in education of their students.
Visits to schools in Finland started in High School Hämeenlinna Lyseo, which follows the philosophy of Finnish education focused in interaction, creation, cooperation among students and emphasis on entrepreneurial vision of their learners. Those are some of the things we’ve experienced in the institution we mentioned before.

Considering the speech of the students, we could notice how comfortable and well they feel in the school environment. Those feelings are essential to the effectiveness of the learning and teaching process. In that good environment, moreover students have the support of the school staff, specially of teachers and counselor guide, the pupils can be encouraged to be proactive and self-confident to establish and reach their goals. Then, these qualities allow the effective development of their competences.

 

High School Hämeenlinna Lyseo

In this opportunity, we could also watch some classes and see, in practice, how is the question of phenomenon based learning and collaborative/group work. We perceived that the students, in fact, study the phenomenon focused on the class and work together to understand better and to expose the comprehension in a presentation to the class. It is interesting because the students choose many different resources to make their work.

Other interesting point is the use of technological resources, students are always interacting with their mobiles, computers and using a lot of different programs and apps.

During the observations in the schools, not only in Lyseo but also in Hyk Hameenlinna Yhteiskoulu Primary School, it was possible realize that the education is really effective in a collaborative work among teachers, principals and students. The learning process become attractive. One point very interesting  seen on the schools, was the way how the classrooms are organized, the pleasant environment makes that the process of  teaching- learning  be comfortable both for teachers and for students.

Hyk Hameenlinna Yhteiskoulu Primary School

In this context, the role of the teacher is related with mediation and the focus of the process of learning is not on the teacher, but on the students. The teacher is always helping and observing the students and their different competences through of their work.

Another opportunity to stimulate the interesting and motivation of the students is to encourage the interaction between local entrepreneurship and students, promoting the local development, moreover is an opportunity to practical learning experience, preparing the students to be aware and proactive in their reality, enhancing cultural practices. The students can innovate and rebuild handicraft activities, assigning value to these social, cultural and economic activities. Considering these possibilities, centers as “Sybellius center” has a great relevance, being a space that promote a relationship between the students and local entrepreneurship.

The connexion between students and entrepreneurial activities enables the application of knowledge and development of creativity, being a meaningful experience that it will be similar to the context of companies in which the future profissionais can work. Environments as Demola and Proakatemia promote a partnership work, giving tools to the students, even during the graduation, develop the qualities that they will need in their professional life.

Demola Tampere and Proakatemia

The experience of developing a project with partnership, and, then, to bring it into practice, aching goals, and producing results, reduces the distance between theory and practice. Moreover, the gains could also act as a positive feedback for the students, thus, evaluating all the project steps, it is possible to identify the strengths and needs of each team participant, enabling them to start a process of “self-development”, already improving their professional career.   

Considering the approached context, the school and university time needs to be connected with the student context as we could observe in those visits. The partnership between students themselves; and, schools, universities and entrepreneurship  centers, through projects give opportunities to the  students be proactive and develop their competences in a stimulating environment.  

By: Nego Group

According to the theme discussed in partnership with the Finnish teachers in our conference on special needs, teacher’s preparation should provide means to recognize the student’s needs and difficulties. Through the observation, family participation, direct contact with the student and centered approaches to the needs of each student are strategies to be designed.

Our reality in Brasil is affected with many cases of negligence to treat the ones with special needs, that is the case where the teacher, the subject teacher we mean, take ahead the situation and trying his best. Some features are in the teachers’ field to deal to some student with special needs. Firstly, we must to be awake of the existence of them and difficulties they have, it is not hard to some students being left aside just because their impairment to the class routines. Grouping all student as one same body it not the way.

One thing that was strange at first, but in a good mean, was  the fact the Finnish school system conside all students eligible to make part of the main stream education. It is maybe the master pillar of system in treating the theme of special needs, no one should the put apart, at least the ones without severe disabilities, who requires strong structures in facilities. Alright, we should copy.

Being evolved in the our educational environment represents many challenges to the teachers, if you think in problems to teach “normal” students, image to deal with the special ones. As proposed in our discussion and with common agreement, our system does not give proper attention to the students with special needs, thus is up to the teachers load the job in giving assistance as much as possible.

In very many cases, as our experience could say, the ones who is probably suffering most by the tact of being in some way different from the rest, sometimes, just to be euphemic, are the segregated from teamwork, from informal talking with colleagues and many social behaverings. Consequently, the teacher could put dead end and minimized the social impairment incentivizing teamwork and being flexible to a wider channels of expressing their thoughts like: drawing, painting, writing, orally, playing, any model of expression that could elicitate feedback. It could rise the motivational level, commitment and self-confidence as intended goals. Thus the “normal” ones and ones with special needs could be involved in dynamics cooperative working, fall walls between students. Further, came simple steps that could make difference, improve our empathy and lead our doing to be more humanistic.

In the process of teaching we can not see the human being as individuals with no singularities, no differents interests  and no variation in the way of learning, keeping it in mind comes the individualisation of process of teaching and learning, specially dealing with the special ones. Just to variety the tasks, try new things, testing, sees whats works better, sees what standardization come to be individualization. Of course, being the teacher is not just lecturing, here we should take advantages to methods and approaches which deals with students-centered standard, try to reach the bottom of “the cone of learning”  (Magrino, 2010), give special support and personal study-plan.   

We consider the above thoughts as near, touchable, hopely our doing arise others tools and procedures concerning to this so long black spot.    

During our studies we could summarize and  learning different forms of approach to be able to support students with special needs. We can mention:

• Shorten homework assignments
• Allow extra time for testing
• Allow students to do some work orally, painting, playing, drawing, etc.
• Oral setting of assignments and tests
• Speak clearly and use short sentences
• Encouragement
• Being supportive, make they feel important
• Give more attention
• Show his/hers achievements as form of motivation  
• Flexibility in approaching the to content
• Improve his/hers already skills
• Try to variety the taks
• Promote group work 

fonts:

http://thewriteway.com/2010/05/we-learn-90-percent-of-what-we-say-and-do/  

CARCARÁS GROUP MEMBERS:
Aline Ramos
Daniel Silva
Hermano Nunes
Izabelly Dutra
Odair José

How a teacher can support students with special educational needs?  

As tapiocas:

Anderlane Lima

Daniela Soprani

Ketlen da Silva

Monique Viana

Vilma Raquel

As teachers, we need to know our students, that’s why  it's so important to recognize if we have special need students in the classroom. Any student who demonstrates a significant discrepancy, between academic achievement and intellectual abilities in one or more aspects of the learning process, can be a special need student, and give him or her the support to build his/her knowledge is a challenge for us . First of all,  we need to know what kind of disability or special need the student has, after that we could give him/her the support, designing his/her individual study plan. The teachers should  prepare the special material for those students in advance, give the students the chance to participate of the learning process in his or her way, motivating them to participate in workgroups, adapting the classroom environment in order to create a safe and welcoming environment, for the special need student and all the others, being creative in class, using music and voice inflection, make activities concise, clear and short,  giving feedback as soon as possible, make every lesson as multi-sensory learning, allow the students to do some work orally, oral settings on assignments and tests, use a wide range of methods (pictures, drawings, examples, etc…) because students with learning disabilities might have difficulty in one area, while they might excel in another. Allow extra time for testing, and always encouragement.

Students with high ability are a challenge for teachers too, because they need special attention and need activities in higher level  and interesting tasks. Students with high abilities, however, may have some affective needs resulting from their capacity.

It’s important to emphasize that parents of special needs can also help implementing this principles, keeping a constant contact with the teachers, accompanying the development of child’s learning teaching process. We can’t forget that teachers, school and family should work in constant contact with the specialists, especially because they can guide us, how we could help the students find their way to learn and become part of the society. Finally, let’s remember that each student is unique in his or her way to learn, having disability, special need  or not. In this way, we teachers need to develop a proper way to deal and help the learning process of all the students, respecting them as an individuals but members of the society.  

References:

http://www.specialneeds.com/activities/general-special-needs/five-ways-help-students-special-needs

http://phdinspecialeducation.com/how-to-support-special-needs-students/

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2013/04/08/fp_armstrong.html

https://www.teachervision.com/special-education/new-teacher/48460.html

How can you recognise individual needs as a teacher?

Group: Oxent guys
Gabriela Felipe Machado
Luis Henrique Mendes de Melo

Marcelo de Sales Cavalcante
Moysés Barbosa da Silva
Teresa Cristina Pedrosa

Every family looks forward to seeing their kids smiling, stepping for the first time, speaking the first words and so on. When one of these signals is developed late, it is important to be taken into consideration. This analogy can also be seen in classroom: when a teacher does not get proper feedback from students - in terms of hearing what it is being said in classroom, having difficulties to see what is being written on the board or maybe in a textbook, connecting ideas, questioning, answering, writing words without misspelling them, pronouncing words accurately, being able to find the main ideas in one text or maybe in one paragraph, paraphrasing ideas, summarizing ideas, problems with socialization or even willing to be alone, etc.

On the one hand, it is a challenge inside a big classroom to identify students with special needs. Most of the time teachers are so busy with their work with students, lectures and evaluations that they cannot see if students need a different approach / special attention. We tend to think that when students fail in exams, than we (teachers) start considering that something might be wrong.

       The ones with mental and physical especial needs are quite easy to spot, but the real challenge is to recognize cognitive and learning needs with few time per week (1:30’)  with the students in class, especially as English teachers. What can be done, in case a student has a physical disability is to provide accessibility as well as adapt some activities or games which require from this particular student some quick movements; s/he can be, for instance, the referee or the counter, always changing the role according to the activity suggested.

It is important to note however, that in case a student lacks of attention or motivation it might be the first signal we teachers tend to be alert inside our classrooms. According to what we have read about it, we found that attention “refers to the idea that students have a finite amount of cognitive resources available at any given moment to devote to a particular stimuli from their sensory environment”. So when there is a lack of it, it is crucial for the teacher to insure that students understand how attention works and identify their particular profiles of attention strengths and weaknesses. Teachers also can use private ways of signaling students when they are turned out, for instance, a teacher raises her/his hands and so all students must proceed the same, giving a signal they are paying attention.

Another signal may be bad behavior in class, which can be explained by many different reasons and one in particular may be to hide some learning weakness. One student might not understand what is being lectured by the teacher and refuses to accept it and/or be afraid of jokes of the other students. It may also be seen as an extreme violent act or constant inquietude during classes, chit-chatting during the teacher’s presentation.

On the other hand, the Brazilian traditional way of teaching/lecturing, centered-based on teachers, may cover some of these individual needs and as we are teachers and part in this process, sometimes we tend not to see what is going on in our classes. Lack of time as well as planning are also factors that must be considered.

Fortunately, in case we improve planning, manage our time successfully and also prioritizing different learning styles, it is quite possible to reach a meaningful learning environment, accessing more easily students needs in order to include them all actively in the learning process.

References:

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/15-strategies-managing-attention-problems

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrUNBfyjlBk

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/ecd/early_intervention_guide_march2014.pdf