Workshops based on games

The 12 UEPG PIBIDEnglishers ran various workshops based on games at the Colégio Estadual Professor Júlio Teodorico. The workshops were held from the 14^th to 21st May in collaboration with Silvana Dück and Mara Lúcia Serpa, English teachers of the 8^th, 9^th graders and senior high school students from the morning and evening groups.

The workshops are part of the activities that PIBIDnglishers will develop until the end of the project in 2013. The decision to have activities based on games came from a questionnaire the students answered in 2011. “Real or virtual” games were mentioned as the number one free time activity by most of the students.

Thus, one of the aims of the workshops was to relate students´ interests and the learning of English. Students not only had the opportunity to learn about the origin of various games and pastime activities, their rules, but also play and have fun. Some of the games were not new to the students such as bingo, chess and peteca, while others were new, for example, lame chicken and the glove. One of the highlights of the workshops was the game created by Suelen Hneda, a game in which students had to use their logical skills. It was a very fun and challenging game.

PIBIDENglishers tried as much as possible to provide students with meaningful English learning opportunities. I can say the experience was quite positive to the future English teachers as they had research about games that could be used in EFL classes, develop materials for the games, plan and run the workshops and deal with unexpected situations.

I would like to thank the collaboration of the pedagogical and managing team for their support before, during and after the workshops. Special thanks for the teachers who kindly swap classes and schedules with the English teachers, the ladies who helped organize and clean the classes and for the managing team that allowed the use of the multimedia TV.

Thaisa de Andrade Jamoussi