SECOND CLASS OBSERVATION

Since I arrived late that day, I did not take much note about it and I could register just that the chemistry exam finished at about 08:50 and almost all the students were still doing it. I could realize that in comparison to mathematics, in other exams, students behaved less anxiously and were more involved in the test; they usually make less noise and they do it properly. The Mentor teacher Leli explained to us that there are differences in students behavior in the days of exam according to the subject. The exam that most make them anxious is usually math and we could realize that indeed they act very differently at each day of test. After the exam finished, we went to the teachers’ room and Mentor teacher Leli started talking to us (me and four more students-teachers from Estágio II) about students’ behavior and how we should approach the methods with them. She told us that we better assess them just with written activities because participation and oral assessment are quite subjective since there is nothing to be proved in it while the written activities is something that is marked and then it can be evidenced.

She also told us that we are supposed to make the same final exam with the classmate that took the same grade and hence we should make the plans with contents in line with our classmates '. I asked her some questions about bringing to them tasks that I could stimulate them to create and speak sentences, she answered me that I could try it for I am here for experiment, but in support of what she already know about them with her own experience it would be really difficult, it can succeed or not, but chances are too rare. We started asking her the best methodologies we can use and she explained to us that we had better teach them in a more superficial and traditional way, not going too deep for they will find it odd or boring, so we better show things superficially and practically. 

She told us also that whenever we are going to teach them a grammar topic, we should at first explain the structure in Portuguese in order to make them visualize the syntax and grammar aspects that they do not know even in Portuguese. For example: as I asked her how I could teach them the "Relative pronouns", she told me that I should show them what is a "Relative pronouns" using first the Portuguese language in order to clarify their mind how "Relative pronouns" plays in the language, that they are necessary to reunite two pieces of information that talk about the same subject and so on; she also told me that we had better teach some of the easiest "Relative pronouns", not all of them such as "whose" for instance, and if by the way I show them the relative pronoun "whose" I should work on it on the very surface.