FIRST CLASS OBSERVATION

The Mentor teacher Zuleide, known as Leli was very punctual, she entered the room at exactly 11:00 o'clock. She greeted all the students who were at first about three or five and were all seated separately and far from the center of the room. As she greeted them, I was searching for a suitable place to sit. Then, she asked all the students to come closer to the centre in front of her since they were seated all separately. As she started asking about their weekend,  some of the other students begun to enter the room. When most of them  had arrived, she introduced me to them by telling them playfully that she was already too old and for that reason she was about to be retiring and therefore I was going to be her substitute, I was going to be their new teacher. All of them looked at me and greeted me; one of the boys sent me a funny kiss that I got a little bit embarrassed, but I took it as if it was a teen's joke.

A very talkative and smart girl looked at me and said "Good luck! They say we're the best class they have here!" I can not deny that it has arisen some anxiety in me, for I was not sure if it was an irony or a fact. But anyway, I tried to remain optimistic and deep inside I was eager to know if they enjoy learning English. The Mentor teacher Leli started to write on the board some sentences using the verb tense "Past perfect". And after she finished it, she began to explain how we form it [the subject + verb (to have) in the past "had" + the main verb in the past participle].

She explained to them that in the case of the regular verbs, they just have to put the "ed" at the end while in the case of the irregular verbs as they have already received a chart with all of them and thus the students just need to search for it and check it in their chart. She also explained to them how and when to apply this verb tense by showing them that it is used to express an action that had happened in the past just before another action occurred, so the sentence should have more than just one period. She explained to them the affirmative and the negative form as well, by showing them the right place for the negation "not" and its contraction form "hadn't". Almost in the end of the class, the Mentor teacher Leli made a quick review about the "Tag questions" explaining to them that when the sentence is affirmative, the tag question should be in the negative and vice versa.

When the class finished, we talked a little bit about that class which she explained to me that they are not assiduous and that I would face problems such as having just few students or none in occasional days. She told me that they usually do not bring their books and that I should apply some written activities as a way to control their participation. I asked her about the possibility to stimulate them to learn how to speak the language with pair oral activities, she answered me that they were not used to it and that they would probably find that odd.

That made me rethink about what we have been learning throughout Estágio's subjects; like after she had described all that reality I thought that it would be a big challenge to apply everything we have been taught. I have been idealizing a way to stimulate them to pronounce the words properly and make sentences in English to use the language with the function of communication, however, I felt somehow challenged with that obstacle the Mentor teacher Leli has subtly warned me. But she told me that I'm free to use the approaches and methods I feel at ease since we are there to experiment.