Being a teacher of English – or of anything, for that matter – offers enourmous scope for personal and professional development; and indeed, if we want to be as effective as we can, even obliges us to go on looking for ways of improving as long as we teach.
Keeping this in mind we proposed to the school to have a camping day where we would take the students out of school and have them speaking English in the situations that would come along.
So, on September 20th 17 students from 7th grade I, two teachers, a former exchange student , and the school’s manager went to Santa Teresa ;to the school’s Country house and had our camping. Two rules were established: 1. Let’s have fun and 2. No Portuguese allowed.
Each student as they were boarding the bus received 10 chips and an "S0S English". The chips were the number of times they could speak Portuguese, after that to recover the chips they would have to help in the household chores.
Some students lost all the chips, some didn’t lose any but all of them had lots of fun playing guitar, singing, playing cards, toasting marshmallows at the big fire they made at night, having cheese fondue etc....
For the teachers it was an enhancing experience. The students came back with their listening and understanding skills improved , motivation high and wanting to repeat the experience.
Next month we are planning on taking another Integral class.