• How has your experience in the classroom helped you as book author/content editor?
• Why should teachers try their hand in publishing/materials design?
• What advice would you give to starting teachers who are thinking of specializing in materials design?

Our guest, Flavia Miguel, English teacher at local and state schools, content editor and materials writer, shares some of her seasoned experience about materials writing with our audience in this episode. 

She can be reached at fmiguel1000@gmail.com

                                                                                        What I love about teaching is that I’m the first one to learn.

English and Portuguese consultant for Altitude Career Coaching, our guest Andrea Mataruna reminds us of the joy of planning and preparing materials for our classes and the benefits they bring to our personal growth. 

In this episode, we talk about the connection between Professional Development, Professional Learning, Self assessment and Self Regulation and provides practical tips on how teachers can make the right choices to grow professionally while investing in their mental and emotional health. 

Her post on Communication skills can be found here

https://altitudecareercoaching.com/communication-checkup/

She can be found online at 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreamataruna/

https://www.facebook.com/aplusenglishpage

Instagram: @aplusenglishpage

Our Advisory Board member Eduardo Mazzeu gives us his top tips for dealing with listening activities. This was part of the BT Rio Night Live event, broadcast on Instagram on March 29th, 2020.

Our guest this episode is Tamires Gama, an online English teacher with over four years of experience under her belt and owner of SIMPLIFICA. She talks a little more about her presentation in our online event held on July 4 and 5, 2020 called Overcoming Challenges in Education and gives some incredible insights on the following topics:

The impact technical and pedagogical issues have on online learning;

Tips and best practices for online instruction

Moments in which things go wrong in online teaching. 

What is prosodic training in language teaching and why is it important? Our guest and teacher trainer Aline Coutinho goes into more detail about the role of the awareness prosody plays in relaying information and conveying meaning. She also explains how sensitizing learners can improve their listening skills. In addition, the episode covers the following topics:

Examples of melodic and rhythmic cues we don't usually notice;

Practical activities teachers can use to promote prosodic training

Ways to raise student awareness of the benefits prosodic training can bring to their listening skills

Advice for teachers to develop their own knowledge of English prosody

Aline can be found on Instagram at @movaaceleradora

Follow us on Instagram at @bt_riochapter, send us a message or suggest new topics for our podcast!

To motivate our students, all we need are games, right? Well, our advice is you grab a cup of coffee,  sit tight and listen in to our guest Bruno Albuquerque as he makes the connection (or lack thereof) between games, gamifying a lesson and motivating students in the language classroom. Our talk dealt with the following issues:

1. The 5 CORE Elements of games
2. The differences between games and gamification teachers should be aware of
3. The drawbacks to the use of rewards in (language) learning contexts
4. The strategies that can be used when students shun the use of games in the classroom
5. The intrinsic challenges in motivating others

Our guest can be reached on Instagram as @brunoalbuqrq. 

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at @bt_riochapter. 

Thanks for listening!

What makes a city multilingual, and not just a metropolis? ESOL teacher and researcher in Language Policies and Language attitudes, Dr. Isis Berger, tells us a bit about her experience living in a truly multilingual town for the last 18 years and how her professional and academic background in Rio de Janeiro prepared her for what she was to encounter in the city of Foz de Iguaçu, Brazil.

This episode continues our talk with plenary speaker John Corbett about his talk Conversational Stories in English. Here are the questions: 

1. What if the students, or the teachers, are overly concerned with how things are being said during a conversation?
2. At what point does Speaking turn into Conversation?
3. Why teach students how to backchannel?
4. You showed the results of corpus searches to show more frequent word use. What are some other ways to use corpus tools to promote Conversation in the classroom?
5. As a conversational ethnographer, what is your preferred story type?

Remember, if you missed the Overcoming Challenges in Education webinars, follow us on Instagram at @btrio_chapter for more details and lots of other useful info for teachers. See you!

This is the BT Rio Chapter Podcast episode 19! I’m your host Stephan Hughes and this cast is the third in our series called Overcoming Challenges in Education - Meeting with the speakers. This is a chance to talk a little more with the teachers who presented in our chapter event on July 4 and 5 of 2020, about their presentations and about other useful tips they can share with our listeners on teaching practice and, most importantly, on teacher development.

Our guest today is President of the BrazTESOL Intercultural Language Education SIG and the author, co-author and editor of numerous books, articles and chapters on language education, linguistics and literature.

Let’s welcome John Corbett!

We were really thrilled to have had you present at our event. What an insightful plenary on “Teaching Conversational Storytelling”. Would you say it’s still one of the pet peeves for many of us English teachers?

That’s wonderful! Now, we have a lot of questions lined up based on your talk, so in that light, we thought it might be a good idea to discuss them over two recordings. Is that okay with you?

1. If, according to Thornbury and Slade, we maintain and modify our social identities through conversation, why don't we have more of in the      classroom?
2. How can we help students benefit from small talk and recounting in the classroom?
3. In what ways can we aid lower level students to perform the other types of story - exemplum, anecdote and narrative?
4. How perceptible are the differences between each type of story?
5. What kind of feedback should be given for the two umbrella types of conversation, i.e. small talk and storytelling?

Well, we are definitely going to need to continue this riveting discussion in another recording. So, to all listeners, tune in for Episode 20 where we’ll continue our chat with one of the plenary speakers John Corbett. This is the BT Rio Chapter Podcast and I’m your host Stephan Hughes. Bye for now.

This is the BT Rio Chapter Podcast episode 18! 

I’m your host Stephan Hughes and this cast is the second of our series called Overcoming Challenges in Education - Meeting with the speakers. This is a chance to talk a little more with the teachers who presented in our chapter event on July 4 and 5 of 2020, about their presentations and about other useful tips they can share with our listeners on teaching practice and, most importantly, on teacher development.

Our guest today is an English teacher, speaker, academic consultant, teacher trainer and performing artist. She develops projects in teacher education such as T4TBHZ (Teachers For Teachers Belo Horizonte) and is a BRAZ-TESOL BH Chapter Board Member. She is a CPE and a Celta holder, has a degree in English Teaching and Literature (UFMG/University of Nottingham) and a post-graduate diploma in Education. She has worked with students of all ages and proficiency levels.

Let’s welcome Carol Romano!

The subject of the talk is NON-VIOLENT COMMUNICATION and the ELT Classroom and dealt with FIVE key questions: 

1. Reframe, express, pay attention to, mediate, counsel, empathise. What are some      other key action verbs/phrases in Non-violent communication?
2. How can NVC help teachers adopt active methodologies in their practice?
3. The shift to online or remote teaching has brought educators to defend that we should Maslow before Bloom. The Maslow hierarchy presents a hierarchy of human needs and Bloom defines learning in six stages. How can the four stages of NVC, Observation, Feelings, Needs and Requests, particularly the last two, help us do that?
4. The quote from Elisama Santos, Obedience kills responsibility, is deeply powerful. What are some practical ways to promote responsibility, and not obedience in our classes, face to face or online?
5. Your talk also looks extensively at the difference between emotions and feelings. Taking a communicative lesson with Presentation Practice and Production as a default, in what moments can awareness of this difference be helpful?

If you missed the Overcoming Challenges in Education webinars, follow us on Instagram at @btrio_chapter for more details and lots of other useful info for teachers. See you!

This is the BT Rio Chapter Podcast episode 17! I’m your host Stephan Hughes and this cast is the first of our series called Overcoming Challenges in Education - Meeting with the speakers. This is a chance to talk a little more with the teachers who presented in our chapter event on July 4 and 5 2020 about their presentations and about other useful tips they can share with our listeners on teaching practice and on teacher development.

Our guest today holds a degree in languages (English and Portuguese) and a post-graduation course in Portuguese as a foreign language from PUC. She has a large experience teaching young learners and private students for nearly 20 years. Teaching online since 2018, she has recently opened her own platform - Luciana Matos ELT. Let’s give it up for Luciana Matos! Welcome!

The interview focused on these FOUR main questions: 

1. This was your first time presenting a paper. What impact has it had on your professional development, in your opinion?
2 What were some of your biggest challenges using these online resources like Zoom, Canva and Moodle to teach online?
3. What alternative resources or tools do you go to when the ones you mentioned in your talk don't work?
4. How do you know students are learning through these resources?

She can be found on Instagram - @luciana_matos_elt, and her site is lucianamatos.com.br

Recorded on July 13th 2020.

This is the second of  the talks from our Instagram event called BT Rio Night Live held on March 29th, 2020. Second Vice-President Gabriel Lemos walks us through some practical and simple tips that can help teachers manage the online environment of synchronous teaching.

Host Stephan Hughes talks about four areas that he believes the Covid 19 quarantine has left us as a legacy in language 

!. The transition from offline to online  

2. The demands from students, parents, schools and communities at large 

3. The support network and its importance 

4. The learning curve for all involved.

What other lessons has this period of social distancing and school closure taught you? Share you story with us at @bt_riochapter on Instagram.