every teacher is a model. a supermodel.

Week 9: Poetry Theatre.

2009-09-15T05:28:00.000-07:00

[8^th September 2009 – 11^th September 2009]

UPSR week. Many classes were given a week rest, as the school did not want the Year 6 students to be disturbed by any means during the public BIG examination. Therefore, the only class that I had for this week was one-period lesson for 4 Ros class.

Being observed by two lecturers was no kidding. I had goose bumps in my tummy, what more crazy butterflies. However, that did not stop me from having fun with the children. As that was my first time trying a whole new approach to teaching literature, I thought that I did a great job! What I did was, I used a poem that can be dramatized. I let the students pick their props from the few materials I brought from home for their poetry theatre.

Despite the fact that the children should be able to appreciate aesthetic language in a Contemporary Literature lesson, I brought in a funny poem for their poetry theatre. I believe that one way we could make the students become more interested in literature, is by making it fun to learn and fun to experience. Hence, using a funny poem for my CL period was indeed a good choice.

How should I deal with children who really have no patience – who like to interrupt when I am in the middle of explaining my instructions? I had to be tough and firm. At first, I thought I should entertain all questions. But, NO. I would usually opt to stop them from talking or asking too much, and literally make them listen to my instructions either by clapping, or sometimes through a more conventional conservative approach: calling out loud for them to listen. Then, I would go about the instructions for the second time (or perhaps third) thoroughly, giving attention to little details that might be an issue for them. So far, that worked pretty well. Save time and of course, save my energy especially during Ramadhan.

All in all, for this short week, I have learned that I should never be afraid to try new things such as what I had done in the CL period. We will never know how much it will benefit, or perhaps, surprise us in many ways. In my case, I thought the Poetry Theatre was a successful experiment!

Week 8: Students' Attentiveness and Responsiveness.

2009-09-15T05:26:00.000-07:00

[1^st September 2009 – 4^th September 2009]

I may be good at setting up brilliant set inductions. I believe that a good start to a lesson is indeed a good indication of how the lesson will take place. However, I still have few issues with getting 4T (low-proficiency) students to response to me. And sometimes, their attentiveness really bugs me. They may be with me in the classroom, but their minds could be wandering elsewhere. The only way that I could think of that works fairly well so far, is by giving them a task sheet that acts as an indicator to their understanding. In other words, the task sheet acts as an assessment to the lesson.

Most of the time, students were attentive. However, there would be few students, particularly the back-benchers, who often seemed to wander elsewhere. I had to call them constantly to keep them with me. I wonder, were my instructions too complex for them? I tried many ways to explain my instructions, including breaking them down into small units of instructions.

I gave my instructions in simple sentences, and the only compound sentences are those with BUTs. Year 4T students kept giving me the blank look, as if they did not understand a thing that I told them. To my surprise, when I marked the task sheet I assigned them to complete, they did pretty well. Therefore, I could say that I achieved my lesson objective, without noticing it was happening.

Apart from that too, I did a lot of writing drills. Even though I wrote the right answers on the whiteboard for them to copy, I believe I was not doing injustice to them. I was actually helping them to familiarize the discourses and implicitly helped them to register the sentence patterns in their schemata. Of course, they need to copy down the sentences I wrote on the whiteboard.

Evaluating or assessing my students for each and every lesson is not really feasible in the Malaysian classroom. However, I try my best to monitor my students’ learning progress from time to time, regardless of their responsiveness or attentiveness during the lesson. What is more important for me now, is what the students are able to produce at the end of the day.

Week 6: Teacher's Expectation

2009-09-15T03:48:00.000-07:00

WEEK 6

10^th August 2009 – 15^th August 2009

Teaching literature to young children can be very challenging if your students have very limited pool of English words. Throughout the week, I was experimenting on few ways to teach literature to young children. I too, did some differentiation in my lesson plans, especially when trying to cater to student’s different levels of proficiency.

The differentiated lessons were based on a nursery rhyme and a pop song. I used the nursery rhyme “Ding Dong Bell” for the weaker class, as for the more-able class, I chose to use the pop song “I’m Yours – Jason Mraz”.

Even though the nursery rhyme “Ding Dong Bell” was rather easy than any other poems, my students still have trouble understanding the meaning of the words in the rhyme. It was a big mistake when I presumed that they could understand the poem without much support. I should have been more prepared in terms of giving them more visual support to get them understand the nursery rhyme. As for the other class in which the students were more able, I decided to group them for the activity stage. However, grouping them was so difficult that they took quite a while to get into groups. This was due to grouping them by using the shuffling system. They had to move around a lot from the original seating to the group seating. Perhaps I should have assigned them to a fixed location whenever they need to get into groups.

On another occasion, I started my lesson with a game. The game was indeed very effective to get the students’ attention and gain their curiosity about what they were going to learn next. Then, before I began reading the story aloud, I told the students that I did not bring my glasses and therefore needed their help to correct me if I made any reading mistakes. I did some reading mistakes on purpose, for example I changed the word “farmyard” to “garden”), just to ensure that the students were listening actively. Surprisingly, the students were very eager to fix the errors and clearly, my objective was achieved right there and then.

I learned that students really would perform based on the teacher’s expectation. However, as a teacher, I should know the limit to my expectations – if the expectation is too high, I may end up getting frustrated, but if the expectation is too low, I may end up violating to the children’s right to grow. Hence, it is very, very important to really know their capabilities and to focus on the little details in the classroom environment that may be perceived as not so important, in order to get the right idea of what they are capable of.

Some Help, Please.

2009-08-27T02:04:00.000-07:00

Picture taken from http://acda.org/files/help.jpg

Hello, everyone!

How are you? It's been a while, huh? I'm sorry for not keeping in touch..life has been very very busy (like what the seniors had been saying to us when we were there. Oh dear, I miss QUT).

I'm going to this straightforwardly. I have problem pitching my lesson to the students' proficiency level. But that was not a worry to me. What have been overwhelmingly tiring my tiny brain is -- planning an activity that is FUN, BENEFICIAL and EFFECTIVE for my students to learn something from me. I'm teaching 2 classes, and more than often, I have problems with the 2nd class, which the students' level of proficiency is lower. A 50-mins lesson is never enough to teach what is expected to be taught from the school's scheme of work.

Now that we're on school holidays (just for a week), I've been spending time doing a lot of thinking of how to plan an effective lesson, but still, I got stuck half way. I will be teaching a new unit -- Come Rain or Shine (this unit is all about weather) -- and I was thinking of focusing on adjectives, compound sentence (and/but) and the 4 seasons. Unfortunately, I only have 4 x 50mins periods to complete everything. By looking at the colourful pages in the textbook, there's no way I can finish all. So, I decided to create my own activities, but focusing on what's essential for them, as long as it is related to the weather.

Like all teachers, I want at least 30% of my students grasp at least 70% of what I teach. But most of the time, I get a blank look on their face and whenever I asked "Are you all following??" of course the answer would NEVER be "no."

I have no idea where to start, and I thought, maybe talking to all of you could spark an idea or two, as of how I can go about the unit.

Just talk to me. I can't work alone.

Many thanks in advanced, peepz. Put your 2-cents worth in the comments box.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

xoxo

Miss Izyan.

Week 5: Reward System

2009-08-09T06:49:00.000-07:00

3^rd August 2009 – 7^th August 2009

Reward system has long been said to work well to cater to students’ behaviour management, for some teachers who have problems getting students to perform the desired positive behaviour. Hence, I decided to introduce this system to both classes that I am teaching. Unbelievably surprising, the students were well-behave even on the very first day it was introduced. I find classroom management was super duper easy and pleasantly wonderful.

Apart from that, I find teaching was much less troublesome throughout this week. Perhaps, I have gained some confidence in myself, especially when it comes to teaching. Even though planning a lesson has become a routine to me, and it was rather enjoyable, sometimes I still lost my focus. I wanted to teach everything – of course, everything is so overrated. I needed to scale down my teaching to the students’ cognitive level. I still sometimes forgot that they were only 10-year-old students, that I wanted to teach them the beautiful concept of grammar. No matter how much I tried to teach grammar implicitly, I ended up going explicit about the whole grammar thing and often lost focus during my lesson.

Another thing that I believe I should highlight in this week’s reflection is: do not have more that ONE topic in an hour’s lesson. I tried to just go through silent letters on the surface and focus more on homophones the other day. Although the students obviously had fun singing the song (to accompany the lesson that day), I told myself not to believe that the students learned anything about homophones at all. This was due to some incident where there were still students who wanted to talk about silent letters in English language. They were excited to talk about silent letters, that I was left with so little time to go through homophones. I ended up not wrapping up the Unit: Living in Harmony due to time contraint. Again, time management became a problem to me.

Overall, the problems faced this week were not so alien to me, same ol’ same ol’. But I learned TWO things: 1) reward system works well in both my classes; and, 2) never ever ever EVER have more than one focus in a lesson – can be confusing to both teacher and students.

Week 4: Behaviour Management.

2009-08-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

20^th July 2009 – 24^th July 2009

Picture taken from http://www.northcoastjournal.com/020107/NEWS-clapping81.jpg

Utilizing visual aids to the maximum potential in a lesson is indeed a huge challenge for me. Although I enjoy preparing colourful and attractive visual aids (pictures, for instance), I believe there is still a need for me to polish my skills in delivering the lesson, especially when it requires me to utilize teaching aids appropriately, according to the level of students’ language proficiency.

Since I am teaching two classes of mixed abilities students, I believe I must make myself able to pitch my lesson activities at the right pace and level. I often ran out of ideas when it comes to planning the flow of activities for each of my lessons. I realized there was little discussion between my colleagues and I. Therefore, I must keep in mind that I should be more open to discussions and seek more opinions as well as ideas with and from my colleagues. Perhaps, they can make the bulb in my head lit during discussions. Well, two heads are better than one, they say. Besides, working collaboratively in preparing resources as well as cracking ideas for lesson plans can save a whole lot of time. I believe I should bulk up with more readings on how I can tweak around with the teaching and learning theories in the real classroom.

Apart from my problem in optimizing my resources throughout my lessons, I believe I have few issues regarding students’ behaviour management. Since the very beginning of my practicum, I have negotiated some class rules with my students and one of the rules is for them to respond to my signal whenever the class gets to noisy or I need them to pay attention to me.

My signal to them is: the rhythm clap. Students will respond to the clap by repeating it with mouth shut. As far as I am concern, my students agreed to the signal and responded well to it. The signal has made my life so much easier – rather than shouting out loud to get their attention, I just have to clap and all eyes are on me. However, this method was not favourable in my supervisor’s eyes. Clapping breaks the formality of the classroom and not suitable for “mature” students. She added, the clapping wasted so much time.

I wonder, if I use loud voice and call for attention, would they listen to me? I tested this method, and not surprising that the clapping worked so much better. I believe young children need some sort of enjoyable activity in order to win their interest and attention in the subject. Even we adults love activities that involve movements, what more children.

I shall clarify this to my supervisor, but if she could not agree, then I shall change the signal to a more “serious” signal, to preserve the “formality” of the lesson.

Overall, this week has been another week of my experimental stage of different methods to handle students’ behaviour. I look forward to test more teaching approach in the next phase.

Week 3: Clarity of Instructions.

2009-07-18T10:02:00.000-07:00

13^th July 2009 – 17^th July 2009

I believe that good instructions will lead to good teaching, and eventually will create meaningful learning. Although I noticed my weakness in giving clear instructions to students, I was still unable to identify the solution to my problem. I was not able to see what was the real problem until my supervisor came to observe me for the first time.

My supervisor brought to my attention that I was lacking in my understanding of the content of the lesson. I lost focus along the way and this had caused my instructions to be vague. She highlighted that I tend to jump from one point to another, making my lesson seem to be disjointed and pointless. During feedback session, she had suggested few ways of how I could improve on my instruction-giving skills and how I could make the lesson objectives more vivid to students. Hence, I took this opportunity of being constructively criticized by her to better my teaching skills.

First of all, I should always remind myself, I should have high expectations of my students, but at the same time, I should not be too ambitious. Meaning, I should create an activity that can challenge my students’ ability, but I must bear in mind that children can only take so much in a very limited time. Hence, I should narrow my lesson content to only one or two language focus. For instance, instead of laying 12 words at a time, I should only give 6 at most. I have learned that the quality of teaching and learning experience is much more beneficial to both students and teacher rather than the big quantity of language content taught at a time. Learning can only take place when students are given clear instructions, not to mention elaborate explanations.

Therefore, I shall keep my focus small, but think of activities that will challenge them cognitively. I must give clearer guide as to what I expect from them and I should also give more elaborate example to any task that I require my students to complete. I realize that I learn from my students as much as they learn from me too. Teaching and learning is obviously reciprocal.

Week 2: Time Management.

2009-07-10T15:46:00.000-07:00

6^th July 2009 – 10^th July 2009

Picture taken from http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/ena/lowres/enan41l.jpg

Getting to know a person is one thing. To create mutual understanding is another. I was glad I managed to establish class rules in both classes, which were assigned to me throughout my practicum. The rules seem to be functioning pretty well so far.

However, time management had suddenly taken over the limelight. Lesson plans, even the simple ones, were always too ambitions. Perhaps, I was too excited to teach and I wanted to test everything – how greedy and impatient of me! There were times when I managed to stick within the time frame, but I was not very happy with the outcome of the lesson. It was really difficult to tell if the students ever learned something or anything from me.

Due to poor time management, I could say almost 80 percent (%) of the time I went into a class not being able to wrap-up the lesson properly. I wonder if I should skip the greeting part when I first enter the classroom? The greeting “Good morning, Miss Izyan” by the class monitor and echoed by the rest of the class seemed to have taken more than 2 minutes. Maybe I should – time is gold.

The time management is too gigantic a problem has overshadowed other issues like classroom management and students’ disruptive behaviour management issues. Overall, another week has passed and I have ten more weeks left to build a solid foundation to my teaching career, which will commence as soon as January 2010.

Week 1: Lost.

2009-07-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

29th of June 2009 - 3rd July 2009.

Picture taken from http://s3.images.com/huge.6.34654.JPG

My first step as a student teacher teaching in Sekolah Kebangsaan Kampung Tunku (SKKT) was not as terrifying as I expected. In fact, I learned quite a lot within a week’s time. Maybe it was because this was my inaugural experience to teach in a school, meeting real students, in the real context, I was all hyped to experiment the theories in educational psychology that I have not only been taught, but also been forced to swallow and digest for the past few years or so.
My first week of practicum was filled with relief duties. Most of the time, we had to relief the preschoolers’ classes. Although we were supposed to familiarize ourselves with the school compound, the school community, the facilities as well as its custom and practice during the first week, we only managed to do a little bit of this and that, and yes, we still find ourselves “lost” in the system. As for myself, I managed to observe only ONE period of English lesson, which I personally think was insufficient to help us, practicum teachers, begin teaching next week.
Nevertheless, coming back to the relief duties I mentioned earlier, I had never thought relieving the preschoolers could bring so much meaningful pleasure – no doubt about that. I began to love this profession more when I realized that I could make a difference in a tiny innocent soul, which in years’ time will grow to be the soul of the next generation. Teaching, or should I say, managing the preschoolers made me realize the importance of these prominent issues: class routine and task rotation.
It was rather challenging when we do not know anything about a group of little monsters’ practice and routine during class hour. Managing them was so much harder when they were not familiar with us – the newbies. Tantrum throwing, off-task behaviour, and misdemeanor menace became a familiar scene in the classroom. These made me realize that before I begin to teach, the first thing first is to set the ground rules for my class – right at the moment I first enter the class. I must make them understand the importance of mutual understanding and win-win situation. Once I have established the ground rules, I believe that I will have automatically set a class routine – which I hope will remain throughout the term.
As for giving every child an opportunity to learn, task-rotation seemed very appealing, especially when it involves time management as well as differentiation in a lesson plan. In a preschool itself, students were grouped according to their ability. Therefore, it should not be a big a problem to ensure every single child receives the opportunity to learn when task-rotation is being carried out. Besides, by rotating tasks, a teacher could have much more time to give focus on weaker students, especially when they are in a smaller group. Hence, task-rotation system should be considered in my future lesson plans.
In a nutshell, I learned quite a lot, just from relief duties. I believe those inputs about children’s behaviour could be really helpful before I enter the Year 4 to teach Year.

Day 3.

2009-07-01T23:20:00.000-07:00

The only class I entered for relief today was 4C and 4D, for the subject Islamic Studies. However, I received the relief note rather late as I was left with only less than 10 minutes to get to the class and relief the class. But that did not stop me from carrying out my duty. I felt more confident this time as compared to the previous class that I that I entered last Monday.

I started off by telling them the super major rule whenever I were to enter the class -- they must promise to only talk when I ask them to do so. In a rather conventional way or another, they must raise their hand if they have something to say or ask or to answer my questions. Should they forget or refuse to comply to the rule, they shall not be entertained.

Picture taken from http://www.portobello.edin.sch.uk/Images/MathsImages/maths.jpg

Since it was only a 5-minute session, I only managed to introduce myself and allow the students to ask only THREE questions of which they would like to know about me. They definitely did not get a straight answer from me. The proficiency level of the class that I relieved today was not as advanced as the class I relieved on Monday, so I gave them clues and guide them along the way before they get to the final answer that they were looking for. There was Mathematical items involved in one of the questions asked to me. Glad I did what I did -- at least they saw the importance of learning and mastering Maths skills and I hope the event was meaningful to them as much as it was to me.

Day 2.

2009-06-30T17:50:00.000-07:00

Second day at SKKT was a little bit more challenging. My colleagues and I were assigned to "help" at the preschool. Two of us for each preschool class (Bestari & Intan). I was assigned to Preschool Bestari. Not knowing anything all about the preschoolers i.e. class timetable, students' cognitive level and physical ability, class routine, etc., my colleague and I faced some difficulties when it came to dealing with misbehaving children.

Picture taken from http://lemontreepre-school.com

We were only given instructions to look after the children while their class teacher was away. The class teacher left a task-sheet and her lesson plan to us. Unfortunately, we misinterpreted the lesson plan that we gave out the task-sheet at the beginning of the lesson when it was supposed to be given out after the children had finished their revision with the teachers, meaning, with US.

The classroom became more chaotic when the children had finished matching and coloring on the task-sheet as we had no other things to give out to keep them busy. However, we decided to let them read storybooks of their choice independently. We told them that the most quiet group will be rewarded extra points and will get the BIG star at the end of the day (this is the only practice that we managed to carry on from their teacher's class routine). It worked for a little while until they saw the other preschoolers (Preschool Intan) went out to the playground to play.

It was even worse when some of them started complaining that they were hungry. so, we called them to sit on the floor and my colleague took over the whole class and managed to carry out an interesting activity: making the sounds of different vehicles. Soon after that, we let them play at the playground with a condition: play nicely. Prior to that, they were told not to make any sound when walking to the playground. Since they were grouped according to four different colours: Red, Blue, Green & Yellow, we made them line up according to their respective group. We find it easier to manage when they move in groups.

There was a boy in group Red who could not stop making noise when I asked them to line up before letting them go to the playground. So I held the whole group back and asked did they know why I held them back. The noisy boy responded "Because I was making noise.."

That was when I put my knowledge in children psychology to test. I was pleased that he admitted his misbehaviour he apologized to the group. Seeing this, I let the group out to the playground. I was even happier when the same boy behaved so well before they were to return to the classroom for recess. He did not make any noise when lining up and therefore, I let the group lead the other groups to the classroom.

Day 1.

2009-06-29T17:07:00.000-07:00

There was not much to do on my first day at SK Kampung Tunku. As soon as we arrived at the school, we had to wait for instructions regarding our attendance as practicum teachers. Then, our cooperating teacher showed us how our desks and seats in the staff room -- for us to station ourselves throughout the practicum period.

We seemed to have come at a not-so-convenient time as the school timetable were just being reshuffled and there was a programme going on throughout the week (Program Keselamatan dan Kesedaran Pencegahan Jenayah). Nevertheless, as for a start, we were given a class each, to be relieved.

I was assigned to relief Year 4 Ros for the subject Living Skills (Kemahiran Hidup) Without wasting much time getting to know the students, I asked them where did their subject teacher stop at (based on their textbook). I realized I had started the lesson with the wrong foot when I straightaway gave them instructions to read a sentence each, one by one. I really had no idea how to teach KH as it was something relatively new to me, as a student teacher who is prepared only to teach the "content" of English Language, and some Maths and Science.

Picture taken from http://school.discoveryeducation.com

However, I managed to consolidate the situation by asking them questions like "Has any of you planted anything at home?" -- since the topic the we were working on was "Pertanian". Fortunately, I received pretty good response from the students. The lesson went on quite smoothly as I believe the students were learning something, although I totally depended on the textbook, and some planting knowledge that I learned from my grandmother.

Since it was my FIRST relief class, I should have developed a better "understanding" with the students prior to the lesson i.e. set the ground rules for each time I enter the classroom (e.g. raise hand to response/answer), etc.

All in all, what I got to do is to be more prepared next time. Relief classes are also classes that need to be given as much attention as other classes. That's all for now. Ta~

Welcome to my new blog.

2009-06-29T06:13:00.000-07:00

Salam & Greetings to all.

This is not my first time writing blogs. This is also not my first time writing craps. =)

This blog is dedicated to document (ceh, document tuu) my journey as an English teacher (to-be). So, for those who have been following my blog "Beyond the Celestial Gem", this is the other side of me, trying to be as reflective as I can -- with the hope to improve myself as an educator, a facilitator as well as an inspirer to young learners, who are still hopping here and there, looking for the thing that they find, MEANINGFUL. How meaningful, that depends on how well I can relate my teaching practice, as close as I can to their daily life.

I will try my best to write in this blog as constant and as frequent as I can, let say, every single day (could be part of my reflection-writing for each lesson every day). But that really depends on how well I manage my time. Happy reading, and I do hope all of you can gain something from my writing.

Cheers!