They inspire group 62: interviews and personal profiles with students’ favorite people Laura Gabriela Silveira Pires Ana Carolina Signor Buscke
INTRODUCTION Our project called “They inspire us” was developed with a 6th-grade group at a state school located in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. The project is part of the course Estágio de Docência em Língua Inglesa I from the Literature and Language Teaching major at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). In this report, we will describe our experience during the 10 weeks of our practicum. Our group 62 was a heterogeneous 6th-grade group, in the sense that the students have different interests - some are interested in more childish subjects, while others are interested in more mature themes. We struggled to choose a topic that would please everyone since they seemed to be so different from each other. The group had 22 very talkative and energetic students aged 11 to 17. We created this project to make the students talk about a person they admire as well as characteristics they would like to develop as they grow older. It is hard for teenagers to talk about themselves, so we thought this would help them see themselves becoming someone better. We wanted the students to feel empowered to do better in their lives. In our observation hours, we realized the teachers always had cruel comments regarding the students, who end up feeling stupid. Thus, through interviews, we wanted our students to acknowledge their strengths and talents while talking about someone who inspires them. We wanted to give them enough input so they could use English to talk about someone they love. Our final product was a personal profile of the person they chose to interview, and for
this, we had to provide all the linguistic resources and other tools for them to perform
the activities successfully. Our project was structured according to the following table: 33
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Activities Week # 1 Introduction of the theme Week # 2 Introduction of the genre interview Week # 3 Introduction of the genre personal profiles Week # 4 Practicing interview and profiles Week # 5 Working with descriptions of people Week # 6 Reviewing profiles Week # 7 Talking about themselves Week # 8 1st draft of the profiles Week # 9 Revision for the final version Week # 10 Final production and feedback
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
Week 1 In our first class, we introduced ourselves and the project. For a start, we wanted to discuss with them what it meant to be an inspirational person. We then proposed a discussion with Kaol Porfirio’s series “Fight Like a Girl”.
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Image 1 - discussion activity with Kaol Porfírio’s illustrations1
However, this activity did not work well. The group was extremely agitated and we could not engage them in the discussion. We then realized the importance of a task to direct and focus the students in the class.
Week 2 In week 2, we introduced the genre interview with an activity involving headlines and its translations. These headlines exposed interviews that went wrong, and we would like to instigate the students’ understanding of what is appropriate to ask in an interview and what is not. In the sequence of the project, the students would have to choose the questions to ask the person of their choice.
35 1 Available on her website https://kaolporfirio.com.br/fight-like-a-girl/
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Image 2 - activity to introduce interviews using headlines of interviews gone wrong2
37 2 The headlines are available at https://www.huffpostbrasil.com/entry/uncomfortable-celebrity-
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Right in the first class, the students were anxious with the use of English and we felt the need to work with Portuguese alongside English. Besides, it was extremely important that the students clearly understood the directions of the activities, and the translation in Portuguese helped them. We also prepared an activity to work with the structure of interviews. On the board, we wrote the names of each section of the interview (1 - Name of the interviewed; 2 - Introduction; 3 - Questions; 4 - Answers; 5 - Photograph; 6 - Date). Then, the students had to match the numbers with the balloons in the handout.
Image 3 - activity on the structure of an interview using Daniel Radcliffe’s interview to
3 Sky Movie Magazine
38 3 Available at http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/15200000/Sky-Movies-Magazine-Interviews-
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This week worked much better than our first and we felt the students were engaging with the activities.
Week 3 For this class, we planned a task to work with inspirational people as well as to introduce personal profiles. We selected three people from the Time 100 of 2018 - Rihanna, Chadwick Boseman, and Oprah Winfrey. We also believed representativeness was important for the students.
Image 4 - Time 100 activity4
This activity aimed to work with question words and practice how to ask questions in English. We also provided the students with a flashcard for them to memorize the subject.
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4 Image available at https://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/5217602/rihanna Página http://ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL • Porto Alegre • v. 9• nº 2 • 2019
Image 5 - flashcards on question words
At the end of the class, the students played a memory game to exercise question words which were going to be used in the interviews and their translation to
Portuguese.
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Week 4 We then proceeded to exercise interviews, so we asked the students to answer questions about themselves and then interview one classmate using the same questions. It was important to do an activity that linked the questions with each category of the profile, so that was our objective with these activities. This activity worked as a first production of the final product, in which the students got familiar with the theme and the genres.
Image 7 - interview with themselves
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Image 8 - interview with the classmates
We also realized the students liked superheroes and we designed an activity to introduce verb to be with the theme of superheroes. We decided to make a competition and we divided the students into pairs. Each pair received a handout with the activity and the pair who had the most correct answers would get a box of Bis chocolate. This first part of the activity consisted of a pre-reading vocabulary activity that would be necessary for them to read the upcoming text.
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Image 9 - first part of the activity
The second part of the activity was a reading activity in which the students should complete each mini-biography with the name of the superhero it described.
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Image 10 - activity to introduce the verb to be
This activity worked very well and they were all engaged and felt motivated to complete the tasks.
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Week 5 For this week, the students should choose the person they were going to interview as well as the questions for the final product.
Image 11 - reviewing verb to be and adjectives
Since we were already halfway through the project, therefore, we decided to create a board game to review the linguistic aspects we had been studying so far (questions words and verb to be).
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Image 12 - board game
Week 6 In this week, we revised profiles using Iron Man and Captain America’s profile
provided by Google.
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Image 13 - profile activity with Iron Man’s profile (found on Google search)
This activity aimed to, again, work with the genre personal profiles and reviewing the verb to be.
Week 7 In week 7 we taught the simple present and we planned to play other two games with them. The first game was called Two Truths and a Lie. In this game, students had to write three sentences about themselves, two being true and one being a lie. In groups, they would have to guess.
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Image 14 - game Two Truths and a Lie
This first game did not work very well. Students did not fully understand the game and they were very agitated that day. The other game was called Find Someone Who. They should walk around the class and find classmates who did each of those things.
Image 15 - game Find Someone Who 48
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They were very energetic and loved being able to walk around the classroom to complete an activity.
Week 8 In week 8, we worked with the translation of the questions they had created for the interview.
Image 16 - activity linking the questions with the profile
Week 9 In our second-to-last class, students had an assessment for evaluation.
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Image 17 - part of the assessment
Then, students should write the second and final version of their profiles according to a model we created together with the questions they had chosen.
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Image 18 - model for the personal profile according to students’ questions
Week 10 In our final week, students had to work on their final versions and craft the poster with their profiles. We put the poster in the school’s hallway, so other students could see it as well.
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Image 19 - poster with students’ final production
We also had a moment for feedback and the students could express their likes and dislikes about the project, as well as any suggestions they had.
Conclusion This project has taught us how hard the work of a state school teacher actually is. It was an enriching experience to be able to work alongside another intern and we feel it greatly improved our class management. We believe many things worked because we kept the activities simple. Also, we honestly believe we have not chosen the most appropriate theme for the project with this specific group. Halfway through the project, we realized they were more interested in music and games. Regarding the final product, we also learned that it should have been done in class without the need for homework. From 22 students, only 9 ended up completing
the final product - which was a bit disappointing. However, throughout the classes, the
students were interested in the activities and they participated in class. In this state
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school, the 6th grade is the first time students have contact with the English language. This created a certain distance between the subject and their lives. In our activities, we tried to bring characters with whom the students would identify with (regarding ethnicity, gender, personality, and aspirations). Also, we would instigate discussion on why the characters/people portrayed in the activities were inspirational people. We believe it is most important that the students feel represented in the classroom and that they can relate the use of English with subjects they are interested in. Finally, we believe students were able to reflect upon the people who inspire them. Even those who did not finish the final product, they all had chosen someone to interview - parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, and teachers.
References KAOL PORFÍRIO. Fight like a girl series. Available at: https://kaolporfirio.com.br/fight- like-a-girl/. Access on April 20th 2019. RYAN BUXTON. HuffPost US. Inside The World Of Uncomfortable Celebrity Interviews. Available at: https://www.huffpostbrasil.com/entry/uncomfortable-celebrity- interviews_n_5613ec39e4b022a4ce5f8a22. Access on April 27th 2019. Sky Movies Magazine. Interview with Daniel Radcliffe. Available at: http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/15200000/Sky-Movies-Magazine- Interviews-Emma-Watson-Dan-Radcliffe-and-Rupert-Grint-harry-potter-15261826- 2423-1533.jpg. Access on May 1st 2019. HARLEY WEIR. 2018 Time 100. Rihanna by Adele. Available at: https://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/5217602/rihanna. Access on May 5th 2019.
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Laura Gabriela Silveira Pires Graduanda do curso Licenciatura em Letras - Português e Inglês na Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Foi bolsista/professora no programa Idiomas sem Fronteiras (IsF) por dois anos e atualmente é professora de inglês em curso livre de Porto Alegre e professora de literatura no
coletivo popular TransEnem.
Ana Carolina Signor Buske Graduanda do curso Licenciatura em Letras - Inglês da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. É bolsista de Iniciação Científica na área de Psicolinguística e pesquisa a aquisição fonético-fonológica em Língua Estrangeira à luz da Teoria da Complexidade.
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