THIRD CLASS REPORT

 

I entered the class at exactly 11:00 AM and there was no student, there were just two begs. I seated in order to wait for them to arrive but it took more than fifteen minutes when I finally decided to look for them. As I heard lots of noises in the gymnasium for sports I deduced that they could be there playing soccer and then I went after them. I got to the gymnasium door and looked inside there to see if there was someone from my class when I saw a student which I waved calling him. He came to me and then I asked him "where are the students? Nobody is in class, what happened?", he said most of them has not come that day and then I called him to go to the classroom. He went to get his stuffs inside the gymnasium and then followed me to the classroom.

When I arrived, there was a student and then another third student got in. They seemed to be really agitated almost asking me to go home as I realized the time was already 11:28 AM. Thus, there was no time for warm up as I started to continue with the remaining useful sentences, then I began to show the basic instructions and commands making them infer avoiding any translation. It was successful, except for the girl who was acting as if she did not understand while the boy who is very good at English could understand everything and communicate as well, but with some limitations that I helped him to solve.   

I tried to help the girl as she started to get the meaning but she was so willing to go home that she told me: "Please teacher, I just need a certain quantity to pass the year, what are the subjects that will be on the exam?" I replied her that everything we have been working will be graded. A new student entered in the classroom, sat down, then got his beg and left as I told him that every day they are being assessed, he answered he needed to leave by reason of force majeure as we started to laugh a little. Everything went normally and I finished with the basic instructions as I realized that I had just ten minutes which they were already asking me to go home. Again I had to have flexibility to keep things going right.

I asked them to open their book to page number 116 which I wrote the number on the board. I just had time to elicit them about some basic strategies when we read a text, like getting the main idea about the text by analyzing the title which I made them infer the meaning of "water and sanitation for all" and I also told them to search for the cognate words which are the ones that are very similar to the Portuguese words. I asked them to look at the glossary to find the meaning of the most challenging words and some of them showed to be familiar with some of these strategies, and for homework, I asked them to read it again and make a list of the unknown words. Many things in class are so unpredictable that we have to be a fast thinker to make things fit in time and to fit with the irregularities that may come.  As this class was so hasty and quick and students were so tired and eager to go home, I did not apply all that I had in mind, so, I felt like running against the wind, things were not contributing that day. Nevertheless, I counted on the resources I had and on my motivation to teach what the opportunity allowed me to. In spite of applying great methods and having had engaged students in the class somehow, for the little time we had to talk about reading skills, in my idealistic perspective, things could have been better if the external occasions had conspired in my favor that day.