Practicum Week 4

Key takeaways from this week occurred during:

1) Project Work (PW) observation #2
During this lesson, held on Wednesday, the teacher reiterated her expectations of the Preliminary Ideas (PI) with the students. She showed the class a sample of a good PI and asked for their comments, probing them with deeper questions to help them achieve a more thorough level of understanding. During this time, she got her PW representative to act as a scribe (i.e. typing down the class' comments on a blank powerpoint slide) so that she would be left free to engage with the class. The class was informed that the scribed work would be shared with them after the lesson, and that they would thus have to speak up in order to create a bigger pool of resources for everyone to work with. I had never seen this method being enforced in class before, and thought it was a fairly effective way of engaging the students (particularly visual learners) through the use of ICT. It is definitely something that I would consider for my future lessons.

2) H1 History tutorial
I taught the class for the second time on Wednesday, and I was actually rather disappointed by their performance. Not only did almost half the class (8 out of 17) fail to prepare an essay outline for the tutorial, 3 students did not do their essay assignments. In addition, they were very slow in responding to a pop quiz I gave them at the start of the lesson, even though all that was required was basic factual recall. While I did not really reprimand them during the lesson, I did enforce my rule whereby students who do not adequately prepare for tutorials have to write the full essay and submit it next week. I do regret, however, not taking some time out after class to talk to those who did not do their work and find out the reason behind it - I realise on hindsight that some of them might have valid reasons, and that I should have checked before issuing the penalty. With respect to their performance on the pop quiz, I now feel that I need to pay more attention to their work attitude and check for understanding at regular intervals to ensure that they remain committed to the subject and do regular revision. After the lesson, I spoke to Marcus (who co-teaches the class with me) and we have both agreed to remain consistent and be more firm in our discipline, and to enforce practices that check for understanding, such as pop quizzes or even by collecting their essay outlines periodically for review.

3) JC2 General Paper (GP) observation
My Drama teacher-in-charge, Mr Bell, invited Marcus and I to observe a JC2 GP lesson that he was filming for the purposes of a nation-wide teachers' workshop on Thursday. The teacher that we were observing was Mr Herd, and his lesson was thoroughly entertaining. I could really feel the rapport he had with his students, and they were engaged in the activities which he conducted. This lesson reminded me that we can take our jobs seriously yet have fun in the classroom at the same time, and it was heartening to see someone express such enthusiasm and passion for his work even after so many years of service as a teacher.

4) H2 History tutorial
This tutorial, conducted on Thursday, was my most trying experience yet. It was my second formal lesson observation with my CT present, and it seemed like everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The lesson got off to a bad start when I discovered that one of my students had skipped class, and it was very embarrassing for me to interrogate the rest about his whereabouts with my CT present at the back of the classroom. In addition, several of my students were late, and one of them left to use the toilet for about 15 minutes, which was rather aggravating as I wanted to be able to deliver all my instructions for the hook activity at once. Another major issue was my students' energy level - it was an afternoon lesson (2.15 to 3.15pm) and they were all very lethargic, and I unfortunately made things worse by conducting a highly teacher-directed lesson. Breaking down the tutorial question took far longer than I'd anticipated, and I wound up running out of time to carry out my planned group work segment. Finally, it seemed like my students did not really understand where I was going with my essay breakdown - one of the more vocal ones spoke out on behalf of the rest to express his confusion, but I was not fully prepared to clarify his doubts. This resulted in a bit of "dead time" while I tried to come up with an answer on the spot, and I was too distracted to notice some minor classroom management issues that were going on, such as a couple of students leaving their desks to charge their handphones. 

On the bright side, however, this LO provided many learning points. I'm very grateful to have a CT who takes note of my blind spots and provides timely and constructive feedback. His feedback for this LO included suggestions on how I should have stopped the lesson flow once I sensed that student attention was waning, and incorporated some small interactive activities such as think-pair-share to break the monotony. He also urged me to brush up on my content knowledge and really think the tutorial questions through before going to class so that I would be able to anticipate student queries. This is definitely one area which I know I am still weak in, and this tutorial was yet another reminder that I really need to improve my knowledge of the subject. In addition, he provided some tips on how to handle classroom management situations such as the student who skipped class, and encouraged me to be more stringent in my discipline. These are all issues which I will take note of in future lessons, and I hope I will be able to keep improving with more experience.