Hi, everyone. Before you start reading the texts below, make sure you’re comfy, seated and have your favorite tea ready. It’s tea time!
The last three episodes were amazing and the discussion involved AI, proper nourishment, use of realia and special announcements welcoming new partners. Because Chá Pedagógico is now sponsored by Ciranda Cultural and Macmillan. We welcomed them in a much anticipated live episode recorded at Companhia de Teatro Bilíngue’s new house, Casa B. The house was full of educators from several places such as São Paulo (of course), but two attendees really stood out when they said they’d come all the way from Cruzeiro-a city on the border with Rio de Janeiro-just to be with us. How awesome is that!
Now the moment you’ve been waiting for. It’s time to answer your questions.
My school and my students are using AI powered tools. What should I do?
For starters, don’t panic. We have to understand that AI is just another tech tool and it should be used as one. It’s important to know that you work at a school that’s committed to staying up-to-date with available technology and AI can really facilitate some of our work. For instance, if you need to gather the top five sources of information related to carbon footprint for your school’s science fair, an AI powered tool is perfect for that. This will still require you to click on the sources to get a deeper understanding of the topic, helping your students develop the coolest projects. And that’s the key to AI. You won’t delegate 100% of the activity to artificial intelligence, because if you do that, the machine will be learning and not you. Complete offloading of your duties will affect your higher order thinking skills, meaning that connecting the dots and coming to conclusions yourself will be directly hindered. Delegating the job of learning a language or, as many say, using an AI assistant to interact with you to practice the language is not very advisable either. Linguistic nuances such as intonation, figurative meaning, to name a few, may not be completely understood by the machine or maybe the feedback to you to reinforce their use will not come as you want. Educate yourself to set limits so that your students replicate that.
Watch the full episode here.
I work at a privileged private school. Should
I worry about my students’ nutrition?
Yes. You should. Good nutrition benefits our cognitive activity and malnutrition is commonly misunderstood as only occurring when people can’t afford certain types of foods. Well, sometimes families that are economically advantaged can afford them, but they don’t buy them and end up intaking ultraprocessed foods. Very briefly, ultraprocessed foods (UPF) are typically super rich in sodium and conservants, and they often try to imitate real, natural foods. Cheetos and cookies are common examples. Because of this, many economically advantaged families, due to their busy daily routines, end up giving their kids UPFs instead of a properly prepared meal. That’s when we need to worry. Because ultraprocessed foods contain what is called empty calories. In other words, they don’t provide enough energy. Our brain requires high levels of energy to keep our working memory and our attentional networks running smoothly. This means that if your students’ diet is based on UPFs, they won’t be able to supply the brain with enough nutrients to keep them focused on their studies, lessons, etc.
Watch the full episode here.
How can I convince my coordinator, principal and parents that authentic materials are just as important?
One of the reasons you can give them is that authentic materials, aka realia, expose students to language that may not be so common in everyday use. For example, if you use the world-famous book 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne you’ll find vocabulary and structures that, although not frequently used in spoken language, are still important for improving students’ repertoire. In fact, spoken discourse can serve as the gateway to a more non-colloquial language. If you start a lesson using the language used by Jules Verne, your students may struggle to follow it because it’s unfamiliar to them, they have no basis to be able to communicate using that kind of language. Use their own linguistic repertoire for spoken discourse to retrieve their knowledge and then introduce the constructions that are in the book. This way they will have something to relate to and this will make much more sense to them, besides that, this will give the students the opportunity to realize that the language they know and use is not just a random combination of words. Their background knowledge will be seen as something rich and valuable, and the new language will be more relatable to them.
Watch the full episode here.
