Resumo submetido a 1ª Conferência para professores de Inglês do Município de João Pessoa

ADAPTING ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS IN ENGLISH CLASSES

Angélica Araújo de Melo MAIA (PIBID coordinator – Professor at DLEM/UFPB ); Ademar Dias SANTOS  (PIBID grantee/Letras Inglês/UFPB); Geísa Siqueira Barreto RIBEIRO  (PIBID supervisor – PMJP school teacher ); Rafael Cabral PAULINO (PIBID grantee/Letras Inglês/UFPB)

Programa Institucional de Bolsa de Iniciação à Docência- Letras Inglês – UFPB

One of the aims of the English Teacher Education PIBID subproject for elementary education at Universidade Federal da Paraíba is the production of adapted activities for special needs students. Thus, in the first semester of 2015, 7 teachers in initial education developed activities in the public school attended by the subproject in order to achieve better performance and participation of these students in English classes. There are  7 students with various disabilitie: 2 of them with Down syndrome, 2 with mental disabilities, one with mild emotional disorder, one with autism and one with hearing loss. Thus, this paper aims to discuss the importance of the adjustments made in the activities in order to facilitate the special needs students learning of English, and examine whether the proposed activities include what is suggested in the National Curriculum Parameters- Curricular Adaptations (BRASIL,1998). This research is underpinned by the National Curriculum Parameters - Curricular Adaptations - Strategies for the education of pupils with special needs, which states that the adjustment of the school curriculum, methodologies, activities and even how to contextualize the issues in the classroom are essential aspects when working with the contents that make the school curriculum of English. Carvalho (2012) also emphasizes the importance of curricular adaptations in response to the needs presented by each student. In terms of methodology, the research takes as corpus of analysis the activities and assessments proposed by PIBID teacher trainees/grantees who worked at the school in 2015. We will seek to identify those fragments in the activities that concern the aspects explained in the National Curriculum Parameters - Curricular Adaptations. From the fragments, we seek to interpret how adaptation is facilitating the English learning process for students with disabilities. It is hoped that this research contributes to the understanding of the current challenges of inclusion of students with special needs in regular elementary education, particularly with regards to the English language discipline, highlighting the importance of planning activities that address the needs of each of these students, opening possibilities for developing curricular actions that transform the way they are seen and treated within the classroom, as required by law.