Best Lesson...

The lesson which reaped the most satisfying results was probably the one whereby I used a game to teach the students vocabulary. In my practicum school, explicit teaching of vocabulary ( in the form of vocabulary lists) was made compulsory. However, my class was the weakest English class in the entire school and consisted of mainly international students. Many of them had problems with even expressing themselves in simple English and were actively using English-Chinese electronic dictionaries to understand my instructions. Thus, imagine my horror when I saw the vocabulary list on sentences related to a fire, which consisted of a whole chunk of difficult words all clumped together! Thus, I decided to chop up the list into two parts, teaching part one in lesson one and the remaining words in the second lesson. I shall focus on lesson one in this posting.

For lesson one, I played a short video clip from "Heroes" whereby the cheerleader enters the scene of a fire to save some people. I got the students to take note of the different things they saw from the outside of the scene and within the burning building itself. Then, I did a word splash and got them to come up with some words related to a fire. After that, I gave them the list and did a quick run-through. In my edited version of the vocabulary list, I divided the list of sentences according to their different perspectives-- what one would see from the outside and from the inside of a burning building would obviously be different. I did NOT provide detailed explanation of the phrases at this stage as it would be too dry. Also, understanding the lengthy explanations itself would constitute a problem for many of my students.

After giving the students some time to look through the list, I did a modified win-lose-or-draw game whereby I flashed pictures of the various scenes and got the students to identify the main sentence/phrase that best described the picture. The pictures were direct illustrations of the terms and were thus rather easy to identify. For example, one of the sentences was "Shrouded in a blanket, I crouched down to avoid the toxic smoke." Though the students may not understand the meaning of the word "shrouded", many of them at least were able to identify the blanket and the smoke, thus identifying the right sentence. This was a competitive group activity, and the students got quite excited and even the weaker ones tried to participate. The use of visuals also made it easier for the weak students to understand the meaning of the phrases. For additional incentive, groups which identified the relevant sentence/sentence were also given a bonus activity, whereby they had to attempt to define the difficult word in the sentence to earn extra points. Thus, the students also tried to infer and guess the meaning of the individual difficult words.

Finally, for the second part of the lesson, I made the groups produce a one-paragraph personal recount from various perspectives-- such as the perspective of a passer-by, a victim and a fireman etc. To make it easier, I gave them actual scenarios to work with. They had to select at least 2 RELEVANT sentences and phrases to use in their paragraphs according to their perspectives. I modelled an example using the perspective of the cheerleader they saw in the video clip before they started working on it.

On the whole, the work that I received was quite promising, as the students were able to select and use the phrases and sentences in the vocabulary list appropriately, thus demonstrating understanding of the terms. They also seemed to recall the definitions when I tested them during the next lesson, whereby I taught the second part of the vocabulary list through role-play etc.

--Mandy

Cat's very delayed response to her TP exp

1. Your overall response to the TP experience

In all honesty, this post took so long to come because I really don't know what to say about my TP experience. I cannot even tell a casual acquaintance simply if it was 'good' or 'bad'. It was tempting to skip this reflection completely (even at the expense of incurring some unpleasant consequences) because I did not want to confront the TP experience. I am afraid I am holding a can of worms and I am not sure I want to open it.

Let me comment generally on the school. Discipline and school culture wise, I got lucky, considering the repute of the schools in the region. The school has a very supportive discipline system in place and the principal takes it upon herself to come down very hard on wayward students. This puts in place a very rigorous school culture where both staff and students are expected to put in their 200% once they are in the school.

Doesn't it sound good? Yes. This attitude was one of the most attractive things about the school. I like the fact that teachers are explicitly accountable. In addition, nothing less than their best efforts was demanded of the students. It was great.

However, there is something wrong with the picture. There is something gnawing at me but up till now, I cannot pinpoint what it is that I am uncomfortable with. Hence, I report everyday for work, I put in my bestest efforts, I try to stay afloat and alive, and I don't think about how I really feel about the school.

I did/do not think about what "was not in my job scope" or how I expected the people to behave towards me. Therefore, I have no complaints about insane workload (because I don't know if they are REALLY EXTRA WORK) or unfriendly staff (it's expected)... etc. As far as I was concerned, I was there to learn. I was also the lowest rookie. So what can I really say? I accept everything that was thrown at me (yes, even the undiplomatic lecture I had) and I take down the good things I want to learn. If something was questionable or appears ineffective, I find ways not to do it in my classes and keep a lookout for opportunities to surface it to people who can do something about it.

So you ask me what is my overall response to my TP experience and my reply is that, "It was ok." What else can I say? It was not fantastically drop-jaw inspiring, neither was it drop-jaw I-Cannot-Believe-This-Is-What-I'm-In-For terrible. Boring, lor? I don't know, honestly. It is possible that I am being apathetic about the whole experience. Very tiring to be upset, right? :P


2. What are some learning points/ `growing’ points which you have taken away from all these encounters/ experiences, good and not so good?

Growing points. Learning points. Mmm.

I learnt that you are your own best bet, besides mr God. It was not that my CTs were unfriendly, critical, unhelpful people--no. They were actually quite good coaches and gave me room to explore and learn. They were encouraging but not overebearing... etc. etc.

I say that you are your own best bet because during this TP, I really feel that sometimes, no matter how much help you ask for or how much advice you listen to, at the end of the day You are still the Teacher, in charge of Your Lesson, with Your students. So often, at the end of the day, the most useful and helpful thing to do is just to sit down quietly and really listen to Yourself. What do you want to do? What are you really hoping to achieve with these kids? What do they really need to learn? Will all the fancy KWLPBLSCAMPERJigsawGroups really help them to learn what you want them to learn?

This TP has taught me to be more confident in my abilities as a teacher and orchestrator. I wrote lesson plans for every lesson that I taught for the whole 10 weeks. It was very gruelling, but it was very good. Lesson plans are not a chore when you are truly honest with yourself about what you want to do with the lesson. The fancy strategies and labels will only hinder and obscure your purpose if you don't know what you really want to do. It was very discouraging when you see/hear trainees throwing labels into their lesson plans and concocting up a storm because at the end of the day, have their students really gained anything? Have they gained anything for themselves as teachers?

Hai. Learning points. What have I learnt. Teaching is a tough profession. It demands so much from a person as a person. To run this race well, it is so important to surround yourself with like-minded and motivated runners. It is important to have a support circle of peers who will cheer and encourage you when you are not sure why you should not just throw in the towel already. It is important, lah :P, and I can only hope we will each find this circle of people to come alongside us as we run the tough first years ahead.

Cheers. :)

My best lesson- Lynette

I consider this lesson one of the better ones not because it was anything fancy or elaborate, but because it was a fruitful lesson which resulted in the students' learning. Although I did not really have to follow a very rigid scheme of work, everything had to be geared towards preparing students for the exams. This lesson was on writing an introduction of a narrative. After having read and marked the students' essays, it was clear that the students needed to adopt more varied approches to writing an introductory paragraph as many were still using the primary school cliche of "Ring, the telephone rang..."

These students are Secondary Two, Express stream. Mixed ability with about three relatively good writers and three international students who are very weak in the language. The students are well-behaved, they generally do whatever they are told, however they are not very expressive.

In this lesson, the students had to identify the different types of introductions for narrative essays (beginning the story with eg. speech and dialogue, action, flashback, a quotation/proverb, background information). The next objective was that that they had to write an introductory paragraph using an assigned type of introduction in groups of four. The entire class was given the same title.

Basically, I started the lesson with a few movie clips which featured different types of introductions and asked the class to comment on how the movie began and its effect on viewers. I then linked it to writing the introductions of their essays. I gave the class a handout which consisted of different introductory paragraphs and asked them to match which introduction corresponded with which type of introduction. Explicit explanation then followed. After that, students had to work in groups to write an introductory paragraph with the assigned type of introduction that had been covered earlier. As there were two groups working on each type of introduction, the sharing session was fruitful as the class could hear all the five types of introductions and could also compare their introduction with the other group that was assigned the same type. The work produced by each group was very commendable and they were visibly proud of their introductions in their presentations.

Personally, I learnt that many students actually appreciate the lesson when it is geared towards examination skills and knowledge. I tried fun games and activities in previous lessons but I realised that the more proficient students actually got bored in those lessons because they could have felt under-challenged, or perhaps they simply preferred something more exam-focused and less 'fluffy'. It helped me realise that I had to know and understand the different learning styles and preferences of the different classes. It was also important that I did not give the entire class exactly the same activity because most students tend to get restless after listening to presentations with similar content.

I was only assigned 1 EL class to teach during TP and I don’t know if it was a good or a bad thing that I had been assigned a banded class consisting of 3E1 and 3E2 – the 2 supposedly top classes in the Sec 3 Express cohort. On the whole, it meant that the pupils were better behaved and I did not have to deal with too many disciplinary problems but that having been said, I found that the students were too placid in class because they were simply uninterested in English classes. To be more specific, I think it was more to do with the fact that they did not like the way that English was ‘normally’ taught in schools – that which goes along the “CompoCompreCompoCompre” lines.
At my TP school, I had to follow a rather tight scheme of work and as my English periods were always scheduled for the periods right after recess, I never ever had the full 1 hour to carry out my lesson, which greatly limited my efforts to plan for and incorporate and “fun” activities to bait the students into not looking like they were attending the obligatory church service every Sunday.

I did however, have at least one success story. When we were done rushing through the syllabus, I had to prepare the students for the coming mid-year examinations and I decided to revise the skills of summary writing with them.
I did it in the form of a game. Basically, the students had to pair themselves up as A and B, and A would recount an interesting incident which happened to them. They were to make the recount as detailed as possible. B would listen and take note (mentally, not on paper). At the end of it, all the Bs would have to find another A (that is, someone who was not their partner. To facilitate movement, the Bs in each pair simply traded places with their next nearest pair of neighbours sitting next to them.) and retell the incident to their new partner as if they were they one who experienced the interesting incident.
1) They were to only pick out the main highlights of the incident and were also encouraged to
2) recount the incident in their own words.

The kids all had great fun during this activity and more importantly, I got them to realise and put into practice the skills and strategies of effective summary writing.
I thought that it was successful because
1: It was something new and unexpected for them and
2: It was heavily learner centred.

I find that it always helps to involve the students’ personal lives in their lessons. Of course, a lesson must not only be just fun and no learning point. At the end of the activity, I asked the students for their feedback and some of the Bs answered that they found it troublesome to have to remember the main highlights in the first recount they heard. I told them that it was precisely this skill they have to master to write a good summary and I saw more than a few faces light up in understanding. Too often, teachers just tell students, “pick out the main points, THE MAIN POINTS.” And the students would have no clue as to what constitutes a “main point”. I thought that through this game, the students came to understand how to distinguish between the important details and what they can leave out that will still make the recount understandable.

I guess one approach to garnering student interest and to facilitate understanding would be to make the activities actually relevant to the students, as well as to make them understand exactly how the activity would help them to develop skills which they can apply. With my students, I find that the attitude towards learning is always vastly more positive if they know that there is a practical reason for doing that they are doing in class. That being said, this bunch of kids ARE the supposedly best in the Sec 3 cohort and I do not as of yet, know if the same approach can be used with an NA class.


Sheena

Being Prepared in the Groovy Woods (that said, Cas is the scout... not me)

Q2)

I think it’s really quite difficult for EL teaching to take place with class sizes of >40. For that matter, anything > 25 is ridiculous. The situation, as many have described, can be dire. Let’s take the worst case scenario of >40 students, who are weak (probably ESL or EFL). It is practically impossible to have a homogenous group of students in any one class. As such, the engagement of learners will have to be done in such a way where all students are engaged and gain something out of lessons. Part of the motivation comes in the fact where students are constantly frustrated by their own lack of progress as well as other students who may function as distracters as well.

I have to say that I was extremely lucky at TP. I was only assigned 1 EL class, 2E1 – the “best” class in the stream. There was a resource package from which I had to teach from, and supplement with my own (or colleagues’) material, should I choose to. Motivating the students was not a problem. They knew clearly what was supposed to be covered as the resource package (which replaces a textbook) states clearly. The activities are scaffolded, i.e. the structure of a formal letter; practice writing the format of the letter; address format; salutation format, etc. So I really just needed to deliver a lesson. Scaffolding was well thought out in the design of the package and the activities are manageable for most students. Occasionally a question or two comes up, or I spot an error as I walk around the class to monitor the students’ work and clarify it with the class as a whole.

I find that students, when given advance notice of activities (through subtle means such as resource packages), put up no resistance when the lessons occur. They know that they need to do what they need to do and they just do it. Resistance is, after all, futile. But scaffolding and advance notice does help them prepare psychologically for the lessons and material contents / grammar which is going to be covered. At the same time, the more industrious ones would read ahead and can help clarify doubts of the rest of the class if they have understood concepts/definitions etc which are taught/going to be taught and this helps with lesson progression.

While not all schools have resource packages in lieu of textbooks, I guess the main learning point of the matter is to adequately prepare your students in advance of lesson in any way possible, and when the lesson is to occur, they know the mindset they are supposed to adopt (i.e. letter writing or free writing or reported speech etc) and learn or at least try to.

- ACLHL

Best Lesson -- catharine

About the Lesson:
The best lesson I conducted during Practicum was a vocabulary lesson. The vocabulary lesson was part of the descriptive writing unit that I was teaching. Prior to the vocab lesson, students have already been taught the structure and grammar features of descriptive writing. They have also done some brainstorming on the person they are going to write about. This lesson is a 2-period lesson (35min/period).

Brief Profile of Student:
Students are from a mid-range Sec 2 express class. They are generally quite weak in language, with the exception of a few students who consistently write well. As a whole, the students in this class tend to do better in Paper 1 than Paper 2.

Purpose of Lesson:
The objective was very simple. I wanted to introduce new, specific, descriptive vocabulary to the students to help them in their descriptive writing assignment.

The What and How:
Basically, the whole lesson was a vocabulary game. Students were divided into groups of 4. Everyone was present, so there were 10 groups. Each group had the following materials:
+ A pack of new vocabulary (printed on coloured paper and cut into individual strips of words)
+ Dictionary
+ Coloured plate
+ Makeshift whiteboard
+ Whiteboard marker

From the powerpoint, students would then choose their question and attempt to answer the question. They may use the dictionary to help them. [[Rem: Purpose was to get them to learn new vocabulary, so this creates incentive for the majority to keep flipping the dictionary.]]

I also had a cool 12-sided die that groups with the correct can roll to get points. The group with the highest points at the end wins, of course.

Best Practices: Successful Skills and Strategies
1. Lots of different stimulus (refer to list of things the groups got)
This worked because there were so many different things they could be doing, so everyone could play a part in the game and everyone can be engaged simultaneously.

2. Unpredictability
There were two ways to answer each question because each question was either a open-to-all, where all groups will answer and all groups with the correct answer will get the points, or a up-for-grabs, where groups have to compete to answer the question.

The die added extra unpredictability because students did not know how many points they will get, even if they got the answer right. Also, there was a [SWAP] option on the die, so groups would also aim swap with the leading group.

3. Inductive Teaching
By constantly checking the dictionary and trying to remember as many meanings as possible, students are indirectly learning many new vocabulary. For each question, I had accompanying visuals so students can see what each word actually refers to. I was extremely pleased to see ALL the groups furiously engaged, ha ha.

What They Learnt & How I Knew:
Lots of new vocabulary. I did a quick semantic map the next lesson and the students were able to throw out many words from the game. I was quite surprised, actually. I also knew they had retained at least some of the words because they used them in the descriptive assignment.

What I Learnt:
This lesson took tonnes of preparation and brain-cracking but I felt that it was worth it because there was so much learning during the lesson. I could have never made those students learn what they learnt in that lesson via teacher-talk or worksheets. From this lesson, I was really amazed at how much learning could take place with rigourus planning from the teacher. Some of the best practices that I took away from this lesson are:

+ Always have the element of unpredictability. This really ups the energy and engagement level.
+ Inductive approach. This has the potential to increase learning exponentially, depending on what we are teaching.
+ Scaffold their learning. Link new vocabullary to what they are familiar with. It was also important to tie the lesson back to the text-type and how it fits in with their writing assignment.

A good lesson - Charmaine

This was a lesson that I conducted with my top express class. In terms of language proficiency, this class had very varied abilities as 1/3 of it consisted of international students. The main aim of this lesson was to help my students acquire sensitivity to purpose and context, rather than simply memorizing relevant features of each text-type. This class had been accustomed to the “compo-compre” style of English teaching, and my attempts to incorporate higher-order thinking skills into lessons had been greeted with confusion when they weren’t directly related to grades and examinations. In this lesson, I made awareness of purpose and context a priority in assessment and helped students concretize this concept through a worksheet with guided questions, the provision of sample brochures, and a set of rubrics for assessing their own informative brochure that explicitly stated what it meant to have “an awareness of purpose and context”.

Prior Knowledge:

1. Students have basic knowledge of the features of the information brochure.
2. Students have looked at samples of informative brochures and identified the purpose, audience, and key features of the informative brochure in each sample.

General Objectives/ Learning Outcomes:

This lesson helps students consolidate their knowledge of the features of the informative brochure, and helps them begin the first stage of drafting their informative brochures (topic, purpose, audience). Thus, by the end of the lesson,
• Students should be aware of the functions of the key features of the informative brochure
• Students should demonstrate this awareness through their ability to select features of the informative brochure that match the purpose and audience of the brochures they will be creating.

Specific Instructional Objectives:

1. Students fill in a worksheet on the functions of the key features in the informative brochure.
2. In groups, students fill in a planning template for their informative brochure assignment.

Skills and strategies applied in this lesson:
• Scaffolding and process-writing – the class was accustomed to writing timed essays and handing them in at the end of the period. The process of drafting usually consisted a worksheet with a table or chart helping them plan their points. For this assignment, I emphasized the collaborative nature of planning by having them look at samples in groups and decide on what worked and what didn’t work for that particular brochure’s purpose and audience. Following this, students were to go home and fill in a planning template (worksheet) with the points they had brainstormed for their own brochure. During the next lesson which was reading period, I conferenced with groups of three students at a time to check on their progress and help them out with questions. This gave students an opportunity to clarify doubts about my expectations for the assignment. I always began these mini-conferences by directing students’ attention to the set of rubrics and asking them to rate their work first before I gave any comments. I did this so that students would recognize that they had the ability to do self-assessments without always relying on the teacher for the “right answer”.

What students learnt:
I could assess how well students understood how purpose and context affected content through the planning templates that were graded alongside their own informative brochures that they had researched, designed and created. I could match what students had told me about their target audience (e.g. young teenagers, trendy, love for music) with the design and content of their brochures (e.g. bright colours or all-black, information about handphones that can play music etc.) They also had the chance to apply their knowledge of the features of the brochure (e.g. bulleted points, subheadings), using them to organize information in their own brochures.

Best practices in teaching:
• Always give a set of rubrics for major assignments. I have found that even though this takes a bit of effort, it increases the quality of student work immensely as students know exactly what makes a good piece of work and can aim to produce it.
• This empowers students to do self-assessment as well because they can measure how well they are doing at every stage.
• Creating rubrics may seem difficult and daunting but I think it gets better with practice. It makes grading assignments MUCH MUCH easier, and you get an idea of how to refine your rubrics once you go through one round of marking.
• Include the planning process in assessment. This helps students know that every stage of planning is important – they won’t believe you saying it’s important unless it is assessed (I think this applies to most students in our Singaporean context).

Reading for Comprehension

The best lesson I conducted during Practicum was to teach reading for comprehension using an extract from Charlotte's Web, which is available in the Step Up textbook. 

The class was a tail-end Sec 1 Express class, where almost half of whom were foreigners. Competency in the English Language is low to average. Being in Sec 1 entailed that some if not most of them, were still primary-ish. They were loud and rowdy, which meant that discipline was an issue I had to deal with every lesson. 

I had only met the class in my third week of practicum given the initial problems with admin and what not. I could not allow myself to have fun with them from the get-go. I had to ensure that rules and regulations were set before the music and videos were played.

The best lesson I conducted was observed by my CT(HOD) and NIE Supervisor. The lesson objectives tapped on the students' interest in animal stories. They had to respond creatively and imaginatively, and also monitor and confirm their understanding using the DRTA method. 

The main activity involved:

·       Teacher using contextualization hand in hand with DRTA to boost their reading comprehension skills ·       Where the PPT provided images of spiders to elicit students’ written and vocal response. ·       The PPT had a breakdown of the passage that allowed students to predict, read and confirm. ·       The PPT also had activities that required students to discuss with a partner, checking with each other their predictions based on prior knowledge and the passage. The images helped alot to get the students to respond. Given that the students were easily amused and amazed by the pictures, it contributed to achieving a successful implementation of the DRTA method. Students were responding not only through gaps of disgust at the pictures, they were verbally explaining themselves.  The handout that I had prepared for them would have been the comprehension questions. It would have served a better assessment to check whether the students understood and comprehended the passage through the methods I had used during the lesson. However, given the profile of the class, the students would have required more than half an hour to complete the questions. The handout I gave them required them to take on the perspectives of WIlbur, the pig. For example: If your friend killed a fly or any other insect/animal, would you still be friends with him/her? Why?  The questions were simple and students were judiciously answering the questions.  Discipline was under control and any noise they made was productive as they could relate to the characters in the passage and were actively discussing their opinions with their peers. According to my CT and Supe, the students were clearly absorbed in my lesson as they were participating, responding to my questions and to the images. My Supe felt that I managed the class well despite their personalities but he addressed a need for me to be more specific in my lesson objectives. Both my CT and Supe agreed that I had been entertaining and competent as a teacher. I hope I continue to be so in my future lessons...

Best Lesson Conducted During Practicum (Lionel)

Oops, totally forgot about the posting till Aloysius reminded me about it just now.

This will be about my best lesson conducted.

A lot of it was influenced by the presence of:
(1) The Principal;
(2) HOD English; and
(3) My CT,
all of whom were sitting at the back of the classroom. My P makes it a practice to try to sit in as many trainees' lessons as possible, and I was one of the two unfortunate / fortunate in hindsight persons.

First I'll cut and paste from my lesson plan the basic background.

Understanding Goals Students will be able to understand: - The process of picking points out for a 160-word summary from a comprehension passage, including: o What to include, and o What to leave out; - What is required of a good summary answer through an exploration of the marking rubrics; and - How points for a summary can be linked into a coherent paragraph. Performances of Understanding Students will be able to: - Fill out key words, blanked out from the marking scheme, for: o Content o Use of own words o Use of English. - Assist the teacher in picking relevant points out from a comprehension passage; and - Link a given list of points up into a coherent paragraph (in pairs).

Profile/ Prior knowledge of students Students belong to the top band of PSLE graduands, and have no problems with basic expression in English. Some students do face problems expressing themselves in the correct tone and register, appropriate for examination conditions. The first 3 weeks of Term 2 were spent on report writing, and this is their second lesson on summary writing. The first lesson of summary writing was spent on activation of students’ schema, and involved a K-W-L activity on the topic of pet-rearing. This topical approach allowed students to ease into comprehension / summary passages of ‘O’-level difficulty.

Handouts consisted of a list of linking words, step-by-step guides to summary writing, and a 'model summary' prepared by the teacher, as well as marking rubrics for the O Levels.

Why I say this was good
Classroom management was never an issue at all, even though this was the most ill-reputed class in the entire school, and probably one of the most ADHD classes I've ever taught in my few attachments. The P (with a fierce reputation) sitting at the back put paid to all classroom management issues, and that paved the way for a very smooth lesson with students volunteering answers readily.

And therein the learning point or dilemma that came to my mind: All along I thought that a healthy sense of rapport with students was useful, and aided learning a lot. Now I'm starting to doubt that, and somehow I think it'd also be workable if a teacher is really really fierce, strict, no-nonsense, yet able to wield the attention of the students. With a silent classroom, and having them remember what they were taught, failing which they'd be in deep, shall we say, excrement. Fear though it is, doesn't that ultimately help them achieve the objective of getting good O level grades, which is what we're aiming for? So does it matter if they hate us in the end, as long as they get good grades?

Valuable lesson-specific sharing points
In terms of valuable sharing points, one thing that got rammed home in TP for me was the provision of materials for students to write/copy notes on, as well as a 'model' (preferably arrived at through teacher modelling). As it was a formal observation by the P, my CT was probably even more uptight than I was, and took the effort to go through the handouts and slides I prepared. I took the easy step of blanking out words from my powerpoint slides for the students to fill in as they went along, but he pointed out that filling in PPT slides is not that user-friendly, and hence I came up with new fresh handouts based on the powerpoint slides.

Likewise, for the model summary at the end of the lesson, it was an important handout to reinforce what they have learnt, and to provide a proper learning model for them when they revise for the exams. This would probably work well due to the nature of the school, where the students will start mugging seriously nearer the exams (and totally forget what happened in class in the meantime). Not so sure if the provision of such 'models' will be as beneficial to students who won't be bothered to look at the notes ever again -- so I guess something will need to be done with the model answer, as opposed to just distributing it and telling them to read it. (For subsequent lessons, I did give them model answers and ask them to pick out the points in the paragraph, and tell me what was good about it. Useful.)

What could have been done better
This came out of my debriefing by the HOD. He noticed that the students were getting restless by the time I started working on the 3rd paragraph of the passage during my modelling (of how to pick out points). He suggested that I could have varied it by getting students to carry on and then discussing the answers.

During the debrief with the P, he pointed out that I could have started with getting the boys to buy in the value of summary, something which he emphasised to the students before he left the class (he took 10min to tell them that summary is important in real life). True enough, I did that with the Report Writing unit, but neglected that for the summary.

Yep okie that's about what I have for now. Time to read your posts =p

Marc - It's like releasing a Best Of album after only one album

BEST LESSON or Sleeper Non-Single Hit in the LP


That said, I hope I'm no one-hit wonder.
Instead of the usual three-tiered, multi-skill multi-layer all-encompassing never-to-be-surpassed English Language lesson, I shall outline a simple lesson with just two objectives: (i) students are to infer the meaning of their given word, find their 'match' and subsequently construct a sentence - make babies get it get it? - together; (ii) students will be able to predict the passage they will read in the next session from the ratpack of sentences.


The rules are simple. The class gets a list of 20 sentences with a 'vocabulary' word and attempt to infer the meaning of this word. With the boys assigned the words and the girls the meanings of teeny weeny slips of paper, the Bs and Gs will seek each other for a correct R.

Students are up on their feet and so cannot daydream or blatantly sleep in class (as is the norm when I get the last period of the day). Students cannot passively listen to the teacher as they do in the Social Studies class just before mine. Students have to do something or risk embarrassment. Students cannot resort to the easy way of flipping their dictionary open or copy each other's answers. Done and dusted, issues solved. The chaos of movement in this instance can be tolerated, as students are most likely to be on task (again, the 'incentive' of embarrassment!)

Once students find their match, they can then construct a sentence together and share with the rest of the class. Discussion and sharing component fulfilled. Students love Mr. Lim, Mr. Lim errr, puts up with students. :)

P.S. Short and sweet, got power got point.


OFF THE AIR, ON THE RECORD

Just one issue not yet highlighted: an exam-centric approach, as my TP school has undertaken to moderate success, has moulded EL into more labour than art, more do than dare, more how to take the safe route than how to express yourself the way you want to (you're only as smart as what you write/say eh?). Towards the end of TP, I started letting go. Structure is good. Planning is mandatory. Yet, as much as I enjoy showing students new 'things' and asking them to pay attention to principles (P-E-E, audience, context, purpose etc), I feel like I'm bowing down to exam-centrism. Can we not move away from practicality and just try to develop students the best we can, albeit with a solid (substance) yet fluid structure? As my CT observes, there are neighbourhood schools which just try to 'expose' their kids to as much material as they can, rather than offer rigid guides which really offer little to both the weakest and the strongest students.

To come to think of it, you can't actually have 'fun' without there being some exchange of information (even if non-verbal), without there being some realisation of structure and subsequent conformity/exploitation?

Cheryl -- Issues encountered: Engagement of Learners

I shall try to go straight to the point...

By not engaging learners, I mean that the students are 

a) sleeping or looking really sleepy

b) talking nonsense

c) day-dreaming

d) doodling

e) finishing their work  TOO fast

f) playing with their cube (!!?!?)

How I tried to cope with this:

• I tried to divide the lesson into 10-min segments, so that they won't start to zone out. 
  
• I tried to cater to different learning styles (especially visual & kinesthetic) 
  
• I tried to use relevant and authentic materials and issues (e.g. Mas Selamat)
  
• Games (Students seem to thrive on competition) 
  
• I called on students to write their answers on the board. (this is really simple, but it really works because everyone is hoping that they're not going to be next haha)
  
• Q & A (To check for understanding, I tried to randomly call on students - I tried not to have a pattern though)
  
• Group Work (This is, by far, one of the best ways to prevent students from sleeping in class, and it also helps to make their group work activity more kinesthetic) 

What I learnt in the process of dealing with this issue:

• Appear a little unpredictable - You definitely need to have consistent discipline methods, classroom routines and such, but it helps being a little unpredictable in the way you teach - such as where you walk around/stand/sit, who you call upon in class, your words and sometimes even your mood. I noted that students mostly sat up and noticed when things were a little different...
  
• Acquire an appropriate sense of humour. (The strange thing is that for some classes, I can hardly predict what they find funny or unfunny)
• Be energized - My Sup's advice was that instead of waiting for students to ramble into class after their recess, and instead of wasting time waiting and scolding, I should just jump right into the lesson. Students do know which teacher tends to be late for class, and which teacher doesn't let off students who come in late, and they definitely respond to this in their actions. In the same way, when students realised that the teacher was jumping right into the lesson without waiting for them, they got into place hurriedly. Also, it helps showing constant action and energy because somehow... it rubs off them. If you're a sleepy teacher, you tend to get sleepy students. 
• Don't compromise learning objectives and don't water down the material - The problem of using videos and pictures and all that, is that students sometimes only remember that the lesson was about a funny video...instead of the larger learning point. Thus learning objectives have to be met, and they have to be reminded of these objectives throughout the lesson. 
• Material selection: Don't underestimate what they already are familiar with - Even if the material is very current and relevant to them, if they are too familiar with it, or if the topic is overly used, students still get bored. 

Suggestions for managing this in future:

• Find out what makes them sit up and notice. (This tends to vary from class to class.) 
  
• Find out what they already know. (Build up on what they already know, and don't go on and on about something that they are already familiar with.)
• Explain why they're doing the activity. (This is very important, as students often think that it was a fun activity, and that's about it.)
• Plan and be equipped with extra materials for brighter and faster students. (Don't underestimate how quick some students may be.) 
• Use readily available materials. (E.g. ST, Youtube, Magazines etc) - My Sup keeps telling me to be realistic because a full-time teacher does not have the luxury of time to laboriously create their own resources. 
• Don't repeat activities in a lesson. (E.g. If the activity involves unscrambling sentences, don't have them do so twice.)

EL Assessment - Emen, after much debate

For this blog entry, I wish to discuss some of my concerns with EL assessment at the secondary school level.

• Paper 1 Free Writing: Holistic or Arbitrary Marking?
  

1. Is holistic marking fair? As clearly delineated as the band descriptors are, there remains ample room for subjectivity and bias. After all, how many times has Ms Chan chimed that ours is a conservative society? How will you react to a Queer narrative, a liberal stream of expository consciousness, or a simple 'This is' to the question 'What is courage' ? Be it matters of form or content, Free Writing isn't free. There remains a template markers and writers adhere to. And while we convince ourselves that intellectual courage should be rewarded, we stop short of rewarding full marks because we say it is simply 'impossible'.
2. What exactly does holistic marking achieve? If full marks is 'impossible', or for that matter if marks above 18, 21, 24 are impossible, then surely holistic marking is unrealistic, or even unfair? What then does holistic marking achieve? Is holistic marking itself a holistic representation of the writer's ability. Or is it merely an idealistic/idllyic and hence unrealistic, unreliable approach to assessment? And to push the point, does this imply that Free Writing is itself an unrealistic/unfair means of assessment? Ultimately, we need to ask if we are assessing a candidate's ability to write and deliver something in a set period of time, or are we assessing a candidate's ability to use language in the written form to communicate an idea or ideas. Currently, I think the rubric favours the former. 'Meaning', in the context of the rubric, is ironically unclear. Do I understand what the candidate means because the content is strikingly unforgettable, or because the language is clear? The two may be mutually exclusive in some cases - think James Joyce versus Nora Roberts. And while language use may be clear, it need not utilise a variety of sentence types. But does that make it any more hazy or un-readable? We need to re-think what constitutes 'meaning'. This remains a big problem in the rubric.
3. Is Free Writing reflective of a candidate's mastery of the EL? Free Writing masquerades as creative writing; but the band descriptors are thoroughly invested in syntax and lexis (without using the terms). Minimal emphasis is on content/creativity. And if the emphasis is really on language, then shouldn't the rubric reflect text-type specific components? Instead of focusing on sentence structure/types and even vocabulary, shouldn't the rubric include components on an understanding / application of text types. Shouldn't we check if candidates have applied an appropriate text type to the set question; that the candidates have mobilised the specific linguistic features specific to their text type - this would encompasses tone, register, tense, voice etc. Surely this would be more meaningful?
   

• Paper 2 Comprehension: A Language Paper?

1. Candidates are allowed to lift indisciminately for short-answer questions - how does that demonstrate either (a) an enactment of the necessary reading skills or (b) the use of apporpriate language to phrase the answer?
2. In addition, what exactly is achieved by the vocab questions? Does it assess a candidate's range of vocab? Does it test a candidate's ability to infer meaning from the text? Is it a combination of both?
3. If this is a language paper, then why is there NO component allocated for language use besides the 10 miserly marks for summary writing? Surely, holistic marking for language is possible in this context?

Finally, I wish to gripe - is this a language course, or a skills course? Are we teaching grammar, tone, register etc, or are we teaching reading, writing, oral comm., speaking skills? And if the latter is the answer, then - to be brutal - what is stopping you from regressing into compre-compo-oral skills -compre-compo-oral skills?

To answer for our assessment methods, surely we must first answer this mama of all questions - what are we teaching in EL?

sylvia: post-TP reflections (2)

1. i felt that the best lesson in my TP experience was one i conducted on gender stereotypes from media representations. prior to this lesson, the students have had experience on analysing and critiquing advertisements - strategies employed by ads and how ads employ both visual and verbal grammar.

lesson objectives
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
1. Interpret and understand the concept of stereotypes.
2. Analyse advertisements for the various stereotypical messages they endorse.
3. Formulate and support their arguments by applying their knowledge and evaluating the effects of stereotyping.

class profile
my students are high-ability sec 3 students who are vocal and outspoken. some of them are restless kids who show signs of disinterest when the activity continues for more than 15 minutes. previously, when i screened selected advertisements, some of them gave unpredicted responses (paid attention to seemingly insignificant detail and created a joke out of it; repeatedly criticised the advert - when asked to explain why, they insisted on their opinion even though teacher tried to offer an alternative perspective.) most of my students are manageable kids though.

lesson description & skills and strategies used
the first activity of the lesson was a whole-class participation effort which required them to respond to what it means to "act like a man" and "be ladylike." i drew separate boxes for these respective phrases and added categories like 'associating appearances,' 'embodied values/qualities.' this helped to activate their prior knowledge regarding the literal and implied meanings of these terms.

i then introduced the concept of stereotypes by asking the class what the boxes (drawn on the board) symbolised (first try at inductive teaching, having been asked by my CT to implement it). in each class, 2-3 students could provide me the answer.

next, i screened a list of adjectives and asked my students to categorise these adjectives as 'masculine,' 'feminine' or 'neutral'. again, this called for class participation. students were engaged; i recall their overly enthusiastic responses.

i then asked the class how people learn of stereotypes; how are stereotypes perpetuated? this was the lead-in question to my next activity: to show them a variety of ads on PPT slides and to critique these ads for the stereotypical (implied) messages they endorse. guiding questions such as "what is the implied relationship between the man and the woman?" and "how is the woman portrayed?" are asked. i was encouraged by what i felt was 'productive' silence because this class is a talkative bunch whose responses you can never predict, and yet for this activity, they were all silently and intently gazing at the ads, and of course, giving sensible responses. there were some female students who felt indignant that the woman was portrayed in such an unflattering light in the ad, and i was glad they expressed this displeasure because it showed that they were engaged with the material i had used.

having been given some visual stimuli, they then had to read selected articles that i have chosen. each group received a different article related to the concept of stereotypes, and a graphic organiser that follows the structure for argumentative essays. the topic in question was: "gender stereotypes in media representations are true and valid." in groups, they will fill up the graphic organiser with topic sentences backed with substantiating elaboration, explanation and examples. the articles were meant as information to be used as optional examples to substantiate their thesis statements. this activity helps them to integrate and reinforce their understanding of gender stereotypes. i also wanted to incorporate a reading-and-writing activity to allow my students to express their ideas and opionions in concrete words, given that many of the LA classes tend to focus on speaking.

when my students presented their completed graphic organisers the next lesson, i was impressed by their ability to articulate sophisticated thoughts. i was also encouraged that a group managed to speak up for the usefulness of stereotyping while the majority of them decided that stereotypes are false and biased (the same girls who were aghast that women were portrayed in a negative way in those ads i picked).

i felt that this lesson was successful because it held the attention of my restless students, and also because i resisted against conducting a superficial, surface-level understanding of stereotyping. the articles were meant to allow the students to keep in touch with current affairs and literature involving the notion of stereotypes - what is learnt in class has real-world relevance.

ET's Best Lesson

“Monkey Bites Prime Minister at Rock Concert”

For EL, I taught a Sec2 Express class for 9 periods every week. As with most classes, there was a wide range of learning styles and language proficiencies. Several of my students were foreigners, hailing from Hong Kong and Korea, to name a few. Perhaps more significantly, half the class was more comfortable with MT as their first language, and this was evident in both their verbal and written communication.

On Tuesdays, I had this class for the last hour of the school day. Having spent a glorious time cooking up a storm in the kitchen, I would find the students in a heightened state of activity after their Home Economics lesson. This inevitably took much time out of my EL lesson to settle the kids down, and made it virtually impossible to get them to focus on a “heavy” lesson.

 

Thus the Creative Writing workshop was born! (Much thanks to Emen and his “Friday Freeze”.) Even though I only managed to conduct two session of this workshop, I found the students responded very positively to this free-form writing program, as they were given much liberties in terms of choice in form, structure, style and (to a certain extent) content of their writing.

 

The second and last Creative Writing lesson was conducted in the week where my students were learning about Newspaper reports. Prior knowledge for the lesson encompassed students having been introduced to the basic structure and various language features of a newspaper report. The main purpose of this creative writing lesson was to test if students could actually apply what they had learnt into an actual writing task.

 

Students were suitably tickled by the given headline, “Monkey Bites Prime Minister at Rock Concert.” To provide some background information and context to their writing, I showed students some YouTube videos of Linkin Park’s and Green Day’s live performances. 

Prior to viewing these videos, the students were tasked to consider the guiding questions printed on their worksheet, and make notes of details answering the 5WH (Who, What, When Where, Why & How) of their newspaper report.

 

After this, my students worked on their storyboards. In planning for their article, some opted to write out bullet points instead of sketching a storyboard. I was flexible about the mode of planning, but emphasized the need to PLAN before their embarked on writing the actual piece.

I think one of the major learning points form this lesson was that students learn much better when they have a vested interest in their writing. The topic of their newspaper report was one that tapped into their interest for music, and so students were already well versed in the vocabulary and descriptive detail required in reporting about a rock concert.

 

Further, students knew that the most interesting and creative pieces of work would be displayed on the noticeboard. While students protested the notion of having their personal pieces up for public scrutiny, they were quickly won over by my insistence that they should be proud of their work, and allow their peers to learn from and appreciate their writing. I think that gave them an actual audience in mind for their writing, and gave them that added motivation to work on a piece of writing worthy of the praise of their classmates.

Jiayin's EL Reading lesson

1. The best lesson you conducted during Practicum.

To be honest, I don’t have any lesson that I’m particularly proud of, but this was one of the few lessons which worked, so here goes.

This was a sec 2 NA class, and for this lesson, I taught reading and speaking. The lesson was conducted in a special room because there were 3 people observing me—the NIE sup, EL HOD and my CT—and the classroom, crammed with 44 tables, was simply too small to have enough space for 3 people to sit in. Prior to this I taught the class picture description, where I had the kids practice describing pictures in pairs and reviewing each other.

My learning objectives were simply for students to:

1) practice and pay attention to the common pronunciation mistakes made when reading aloud, 2) learn how to infer the meaning of difficult words by looking at the words around it, and then guess the meaning and pronunciation of the difficult word successfully

As a whole, the class is VERY vocal, and students have no problems expressing themselves verbally (their written work can give you a migraine or a stitch laughing, but that’s another matter). Students have really short attention spans and hate reading, so each activity has to be brief and exciting, otherwise students find it difficult to concentrate on what the task at hand and they’ll start gossiping. The gap in language abilities is really wide, about half the class has problems (usually a confidence issue) speaking out aloud in class because they are conscious of their language abilities, and to target this almost every lesson I picked students to read aloud short paragraphs for me, so that they would have more practice speaking aloud and gradually become more confident.

My lesson was really simple. I nearly killed the girls because many of them were late for my lesson, but I didn’t want to waste time screaming at them for another 5 minutes, so I just scolded them for 1 minute and then I began the lesson. I started with some ice-breakers by getting the entire class to read out some limericks and tongue twisters aloud, and I directed their attention to some of the plosives and consonant sounds which they tend to have problems enunciating. After that, I gave the students a passage to read silently in one minute, and after that I had students guess and shout out the meaning and pronunciation of the difficult words and analyse the emotions of the speakers in the passage (I told them to pay attention to PVP: Pace, Variation of tone, and Pronunciation, and reiterated this rule throughout the lesson).

The class were to then note these details on their own copies of the passage. I then modelled the reading aloud of the passage, and then asked the students to assess my reading based on the N level rubrics which I had flashed on the screen before I gave them the passage. (They thought I was too slow and boring, and my arguments to persuade them by referring to the text and its pauses otherwise left them unconvinced. Idiots.)

Anyway, after that students were supposed to read another passage, and annotate the passage by themselves. I then had 2 students of different language capacities read out the passage aloud, and the class had to assess the students in the same manner which they assessed me previously. They also had to suggest the kinds of improvements that their friends could make in their reading for the next time. After that, I summarised the lesson, and released the students for their next class.

The thing about teaching oral is that if it is not practiced consistently, students will forget the basic steps that they can use every time they have an oral exam, so I have tried to address this problem by including a small oral component in my lessons, so that all the students gradually get used to the idea of practising how to read a passage and speaking up aloud in class, and they can build up confidence in their English that way. At the end of my lesson I asked students for the main rule that they should use when reading a passage, and they all chorused “PVP!”, but it’s difficult to assess how much they retained unless I test them all individually.

So what makes this lesson one of my better lessons? The students actually paid attention and did their work with no complaints (and this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there were 4 teachers in the classroom, I’m sure). They were engaged and asked intelligent questions related to the topic (I had students asking me for English rules to pronouncing difficult words, and also for the rules to word stress), so that was good to know that at least some students were paying close attention to the lesson. :)

Hong Peng's 2nd TP Reflection

2. EL teaching or assessment issues encountered while on Teaching Practicum.

The students at my TP school are generally smart, although they probably score higher in subjects other than English language. The students in my two EL classes are of mixed-ability in terms of EL competency. While some are very proficient in the subject, most of the students tend to be weak. One way i tried to make EL learning more relevant and interesting for the students was by the use of video-clips, pictures and powerpoint presentations. I found out that while the use of multimedia resources worked well in getting the students interested, their interest level and attention span generally waned when the multimedia segment ended. Nonetheless, video-clips and the like seemed to be effective in providing scaffolding and activating students' schema for the lesson ahead.

One problem affecting the students' EL learning seems to be their own attitude, rather than aptitude. There were a number of Chinese scholars in one of my classes who just came to Singapore last year. Although their EL competency is very weak, some of them managed to show tremendous progress in the few months they have been in Singapore, by virtue of their positive learning attitude and diligence. On the other hand, many local students seem to lack interest in the language and also determination to work harder at the subject. Some more competent students are contented with their present level of proficiency while weaker students tend to feel that it is almost impossible to score well in EL, thus rather spending the time and effort in their other subjects (which they do well in). Hence, i feel that either complacency or indifference towards EL is one important factor impeding the students' learning of the language. To address the issue of the students' attitude, i tried to encourage them by telling them that language skills cannot be learnt overnight, and so long as they are willing to put in the effort in speaking, listening, reading and writing more in English, they will improve with time. In addition, i tried to contextualise topics or issues in the EL lessons in the real world, so that students would see a greater purpose beyond mere language learning in EL classes. For example, for one of their situational writing lessons, i showed them videos of chidren in poverty who live on the streets and how the privilege of being able to study in schools later changed their lives. The students then had to write a formal letter to a businessman to thank him for his sponsorship of an overseas community trip to the Philippines, as well as detail some educational facilities built and how the children's lives have improved drastically as a result of his donation. Besides pure language teaching and learning in the EL classroom, i feel that being able to understand and relate to the real world will be beneficial to the students.

Another problem i encountered during TP was that despite the EL principle of student interaction, at their age, some students tend to be easily distracted and do not discuss the tasks assigned while in groups, while others simply attempted the tasks on their own instead of working in pairs / groups as they seemed to find that more "efficient" in terms of finishing the work earlier. Hence, groupwork often became individual work for some and chit-chatting sessions for others. In response to this problem, i tried to make the groupwork activity more organised and group-oriented, such as having the groups to give a presentation (where every group member has to contribute) on their assigned tasks in class. Also, i will sometimes get a pair of students to share their answers or role-play (where appropriate) after pair discussions. Constant teacher monitoring around the classroom when students are engaged in their group discussions can sometimes help students to focus on the tasks at hand; it also provides a chance for the teacher to guide the weaker groups which may have problems in their discussion. However, i realised that groupwork should not be given just for the sake of having groupwork or student interaction, especially when it is not necessary and when individual work would be more productive and effective. Hence, groupwork can be balanced with individual work or teacher talk / modelling for greater variety and better effect, and in accordance to the demands and nature of the lessons, as well as the intended lesson objectives.

For the classes that i got for TP, i realised that while the less motivated students need more teacher guidance and teaching, the more motivated and competent students tend to benefit from more student-centred learning, as it really imbues them with a greater sense of ownership and initiative in their own learning. When group presentations were tasked, the latter students were able to produce very impressive results. More challenging tasks can then be assigned to the students to in order for them to learn more fruitfully. On the other hand, the less motivated students benefited more from teacher facilitation, although appropriately-pitched student-centred activities were able to engage them as well with promising results too.

On the whole, i feel that the principles of EL teaching and learning serve as useful guidelines in the planning or EL lessons. However, not all the principles are appropriate or can be implemented at the same time. Ultimately, the students' profile and background play a part in determining how EL lessons can best be conducted, so as to benefit the students and help them to maximise their own potential.

reflection on a lesson in practicum

Q1) The lesson that I conducted was on newspaper reports, they are to familiarise themselves with the format of how a newspaper report is usually presented, taking note of the tone and language features required in a newspaper report. They are given a worksheet to guide them with the features to look out for in a newspaper report and sample newspaper articles for reference. The lesson was conducted with Secondary Two Express students, a class of 40 boys who are fascinated with reading of the newspapers and have a good amount of general knowledge.
A video clip of a news broadcaster's report was also shown to the students as a starter to captivate their attention and the topic was on handphone technologies which is something they will be fascinated about. The use of multimedia was good as it appeals to more than one sense, visual and audio which caters to their multiple intelligences. The students were posed with some questions on identifying the gist of the verbal news report and there were a couple of volunteers. Some got the main idea, others concentrated too much on the insignificant details of the report.
By going over the worksheet and the slides which explain the different features of the newspaper report, students were able to follow closely to the lesson and because it was a 35min lesson and I decided to pack a couple of activities within it, the worksheet was mostly on fill in the blanks which I could see was something they enjoyed as they filled up the entire worksheet and majority got all the answers correct. I was quite sure that they have mastered the tone and format of the newspaper report as they could tell me at the end of the lesson these aspects of the newspaper report in the conclusion.
Something which enthuse the students was the rearrangement of the strips of the newspaper report in the correct order, the reward was also an enticement which probably motivated them and they were very excited when they thought they got the order right. I thought it was a good activity as it gets students thinking instead of being passive recipients of knowledge, the students were made to actively construct their own knowledge of newspaper reports and how the sequence of events in a newspaper could be presented, with the help of connectors which are sometimes provided, as well as the fact that there must be a logical train of thought such that the events do not seem to occur haphazardly.
I feel that this lesson was good because they were rather cooperative and they were engaged every single moment of the lesson and were clearly motivated. I feel that classroom management and rapport with the students are important elements to win half the battle, however, the other half of the battle depends on the type of activities planned out for the lesson, if students are more IT savvy and they enjoy solving problems and mind boggling activities, lessons planned in such a way would achieve the desirable outcomes expected from the students.

Meirlin's 2nd TP reflection

3. Dealing with errors in pupils’ written work.

I do not have a sample to show, but generally, the pupils in my Secondary 3 express class cannot write well. I am not even talking about having a thesis statement, following it through with one topic sentence and elaboration per paragraph. Majority of the written work that I have marked are disorganised, lack signposting and some do not even address the question. The written works are rife with spelling and grammatical errors. As I have mentioned in my previous post, the school is an Anglican Mission School and so most of them come from English-speaking background. They tend to be over confident in their Language ability, sometimes unjustifiably so. Even the best student in class has problems spelling simple words and maintaining grammatical consistency in his writing. I understand that this is often difficult; even I cannot confidently say that I can do that. Having said that they are proficient speakers of English, some of them write in the way they speak—although the standard is not as bad as writing in sms or msn language, the most common error that I get is their tendency to write in sentence fragments. They often write incomplete sentences with no regard for subject verb agreement. I cannot recall any examples now, but I remember discussing this problem with my CT. She told me that she also noticed that problem and that she had conducted a lesson on sentence fragments with them. However, she did not share what she did with me what she did.

Thus, what I did was to go into class one day and wrote the words ‘NOUN’, ‘VERB’, ‘PRONOUN’, ‘ADJECTIVE’—4 out of the 8 parts of speech. To my horror, they only could confidently define 1 of them ‘VERB’. This is a Secondary 3 express class, how are they going to take the ‘O’ levels next year? After some prompting, some of them could give me examples of each and I gave them the definition. After that, I got a chorus of “ohh...” SO, I asked, “Haven’t you learnt this before?” and the replies I got were: “forgot already” and its variations. I then singled out noun/pronoun and verb as I taught them the SVO sentence structure. As a follow up, I gave them a paragraph from a comprehension passage, with the punctuation omitted. Their tasks were then to insert appropriate punctuations, to make complete sentences. I’m sad to report that despite my explanations and going around the class to assist them, a lot of them still made errors. Subsequently, I took care to remind them every time I assign them written work.

During the mid-year examinations, I marked a few other classes, including the best class and I realised that this problem is not limited to my class! This was, in my opinion, extremely worrying. Building sentences is the foundation (pun intended) to constructing good paragraphs—how would they then become competent writers of expository pieces? Since my main CT (EL teacher of the aforementioned Sec 3 class) wasn’t much of a help, I went to talk to my other CT, who is the EL HOD. I told him about my concern and asked him whether we are neglecting this cumulative deficit the students, for lack of a better word, accumulate over the years, in our rush to complete the SOW and syllabuses. He concurred with me and provided an interesting insight on this issue. He said that it’s not so much the fact that teachers do not emphasise the importance of grammar and the teaching of grammatical rules and features of writing, but that the students accord importance to the need to memorise these rules unlike the memorising of mathematical formulae and physics/ chemistry formulae. I have never thought to compare grammar with mathematical formulae and that to me, was a food for thought. I’m sure EL teachers everywhere emphasise the importance of grammar as the building blocks of English Language. How then, could we get the students to realise the importance of remembering grammatical rules?

Miss Bah-Chang’s experience.... (this was what the kids at FTPSS called me)

first of all, apologies to Miss Chan that this is late, and thanks for the extension….am still marking exam scripts which I am giving back to the school tomorrow...and I know that I’m not alone here…(I mark at the rate of a snail...argh)

Workload:

16 periods a week (it was originally 20 periods until there was a timetable change)

Classes:

2 Sec 3 Express classes (core lit: Midsummer Night’s Dream, Mockingbird, Unseen)
(elective lit: Mockingbird, Unseen)
1 Sec 2 NA class (English)

STs are expected to participate or “help out” in MANY school activities, and depending on the department which organises the school event, teachers from that department are expected to contribute more in terms of organisation, planning and the carrying out of the duties, etc. Because of the NUMEROUS school activities in Term 1 and 2 (many of which took place on Saturday), many teachers lost quite a bit of teaching time and were forced to either rush their teaching or make students stay back after school (which I had to do, much to the students’ reluctance).

General experience

In general, I think I probably have the least to complain about (judging from preliminary gossip sessions with some friends), not just about CTs, workload, students, other teachers and the school, etc…

There were 5 NIE trainees, and 4 of us were seated in the upstairs staffroom away from the bulk of our CTs…In hindsight, I guess I made the correct political move to request to shift to the lower staffroom if there was space, because that way I got to know not just my main CT better, but also the other teachers in my department, and it REALLY helped that I got to learn a bit from everyone (even teachers from the other departments), and when I needed help for small things I could ask anyone who was available if my CT wasn’t around.

I remembered Ms Chan’s words about us being the smallest fry in the entire school so I did my best to be humble and cute and smile at everyone (from the canteen aunties, cleaning aunties, admin staff etc) so hopefully if I offended anyone they won’t be upset with me…especially since the NIE trainees sponsored curry puffs for everyone…*grin*

No complaints about the upper management at my school in general—the P, VP, SCM and (some) senior teachers have been pretty warm and motherly so far…the P likes to put her arm around people and calls everyone “dear”, which unnerves me a little, since I don’t know how to behave towards her—Polite? Friendly? Keep an emotional distance? How do you treat your boss man? One of the VPs is the DM, and I’m rather afraid of her but so far from my observations, I can foresee that I might either 1) need her help with disciplining the kids next time, or 2) argue with her over some of her discipline methods with the kids, so we’ll see what happens…I’ve been warned of politics by some of the older staff, so we’ll see if I get promoted after 3 years or remain at the bottommost rung while everyone around me moves upwards…*wry look*

In general both CTs admitted they don’t really follow the SOW, and for English what my CT would usually do was to decide what she wanted the class to cover that week, and then I’d just teach it that week over 3 lessons. I taught film review (for the kids’ entertainment), summary writing (for the CA), report writing and oral (for the exams) during TP, and I don’t think the kids saw the linkage between all these lessons because they were not linked by theme or text type or language skill or whatever…For them English meant the teacher walking in, telling them what she was covering today, and then they had to sit through and finish whatever assignment she gave them, and that was it. They had no interest and didn’t think they would learn anything really useful or fun in English, and that was that.

The EL teachers admitted that they didn’t really have the culture of sharing resources (which was really odd, since most of them were on good terms), and so most English teachers have to come up with their own materials to teach whatever they needed to teach. You can imagine the varieties of teaching standards the school had then…I was forced to adapt stuff from assessment books because the textbooks were useless (I finally got the Popular card! 10% discount! haha..) and then try to pitch my lesson at the correct level.

To be honest, I don’t think I did a good job teaching this class English, firstly because of their attitude towards English, and secondly because of the wide gap between the different learners which made it extremely difficult to pitch my lesson. Their language abilities are generally low, but even so, there are still students which complete some of my grammar and vocab worksheets really quickly and are bored stiff while the rest struggle with the work.

My earlier lessons with them were teacher talk, like when I did summary writing with them, I tried to make my powerpoints more interesting by adding pictures, and breaking it up into small paragraphs and getting students to read, but after my 4^th week the class was begging me to do more “fun” stuff. Up till the 6^th week, I had refrained from group work because I felt it was impossible to conduct group work in their classroom because of the space constraints and noise levels. It’s hazardous having 44 hyperactive sec 2 NA students do group work in classrooms built in the 1980s for 30-odd students, with their things all over the place, and their noise levels can escalate to potentially dangerous levels. There are times when I find myself yelling at them to shut up, and then I usually stand at the front, fold my arms and wait for silence while some of the “cool” girls yell at their classmates “Quiet!” and “Listen to the teacher la!” The students also have their fair share of family and school issues to deal with—bullying, ostracising, family breakups, financial difficulties, etc—and the hate between the cliques is really intense and stupid, so asking students to cooperate with their “enemies” can be a headache if I get the group dynamics wrong.

I changed my approach a little when I taught report writing and oral practice, and incorporated some class games and group work into my lessons. The students enjoyed the games (especially the kinaesthetic ones), but again, I’m not too sure what they took away from these lessons, especially when I tested them for oral and some of them didn’t even seem to have comprehended anything! This is especially scary when you factor in how I taught picture description and reading for 2 entire weeks—6 lessons!

I could go on about this and my insecurities forever, and later move onto my Lit CT and what I learnt from her, but I think I’ll just focus on my English lessons and reiterate the point I made in class, which is that I found myself teaching the students about behaviour and morals more than I actually taught English (maybe it’s my auntie side coming out). For this class, it was ALWAYS classroom management, and despite all the problems I had with this class, it’s the class that I care for and worry about the most. They’re absolute monkeys, and get into a million scrapes with the other teachers, their parents and with me, but I do enjoy their liveliness in class and they do have times when they make me laugh. Some of them entertain me outside of class, and I know of a few who try very hard but don’t see their efforts translate into good grades / acceptance from some of the (prejudiced older) teachers. I doubt I’ll have the chance to teach them again when I return to the school, but I’ll work on actually making English fun AND useful for them. Will let you all know if I succeed. :)