Practicum Week 5

This week was one of many learning experiences. I participated in two external seminars to improve both my content and pedagogical knowledge, and had my first observation by my NIE supervisor. In addition, I also participated in my first fieldtrip as a teacher-facilitator, as part of the College's "Learning Day" programme.

1) ACJC "Dialogic" Seminar

On Tuesday afternoon, my fellow History teachers and I went with a group of JC2s to ACJC to attend an International History seminar as part of their "Dialogic" series of talks. The talk was given by A/P Malcolm Murfett of the NUS History Department (a familiar face from my undergraduate days) and it was on the "special relationship" between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. A/P Murfett gave a thorough and entertaining talk on how this relationship impacted global affairs, especially the unfolding of the Cold War, and it was well-received by the many teachers and students from the various JCs who were present. I managed to glean a lot from this session, particularly since international history isn't really my forte, and now see the importance of keeping these talks open to teachers - very often, it is us, not the students, who need to continually deepen our understanding of historical issues, and large-scale sessions like this are a convenient way of sharing ideas and upgrading our content knowledge. There will be another "Dialogic" seminar, this time on Southeast Asia, sometime in early May, and I know I will definitely be going for that as well.

2) AJ Learning Day

This day began with a workshop on the "Skillful Teacher" for the staff. Prior to this session, my CT had informed Marcus and I to read up on Chapters 16 and 17 of the book and create a lesson plan that would be usable in the teaching of the upcoming Southeast Asian unit. We were supposed to present this lesson plan to our fellow History colleagues during this session, and modify it according to their feedback. During the workshop, we heard presentations on these chapters by senior teachers, and I thought this was very useful as one of them used her own teaching strategies as exemplars of what and what not to do in the classroom. Her honest yet light-hearted appraisal of her strategies over the years provided a really good basis for reflection, as some of her methods - sadly, the less successful ones - actually looked similar to what I had tried before. This helped me gain a greater insight into not just what I had done or been doing ineffectively, but also helped me understand why it was ineffective. Through my preparation for this workshop, my greatest takeaway was the understanding of the various levels of lesson objectives, beginning with coverage objectives (teacher-centric focus on just getting the content for the day covered); activity objectives (focus on what the students will do during the lesson); involvement thinking (focus on differentiated learning and designing specific activities to suit the different needs of students); and finally the "ideal" objectives - mastery and skills. I realised that much of my lesson planning had been revolving around only the first two levels of lesson objectives, and that I had often lost sight of the bigger picture in doing so. Attending this workshop thus motivated me to try and alter my frame of thinking, and to work from the broader mastery and skills objectives instead of just being focused on covering the tutorial material for the day in preparing for my lessons. I hope that, with practice, it will be easier for me to work from this frame of mind, and trust that doing so will make a genuine difference in the way I teach and my students learn.

Following this workshop, I then chaperoned a small group of students on "Artscapade", a fieldtrip to the Marina Bay area organised specially for the JC1s taking Arts subject combinations. Since I was not involved in the planning phase of this fieldtrip, I was paired with my CT and thus took on more of the role of observer rather than facilitator. In fact, the real facilitators were the JC2s - each group of JC1s had a JC2 student attached to them, and the latter was meant to facilitate the entire learning journey, with only minimal assistance from the teachers as and when it was required. While the hot weather did put a slight damper on our spirits (it also did not help that I was totally unfamiliar with the students in my group, having never taught them before), my group eventually warmed up, and I was happy to see them actively engaging in fieldwork methodology such as approaching people for interviews. I also felt that the JC2 student was extremely responsible and motivated as a leader, and this made me reflect on how, at the JC level, we are really preparing the students for more than just the 'A' Levels. Cliched as it sounds, we are preparing them for "real life", and I feel that going out on this enrichment fieldtrip helped them to break out of their shells and push themselves to work in teams, try new things, and even develop their leadership abilities. While the planning phase must have been very difficult for those teachers involved, I think that their hard work definitely paid off, and am quite looking forward to an opportunity to plan a fieldtrip myself, although I would prefer to do one that is specifically focused on History.

3) Formal Lesson Observation #1 with NIE supervisor

On Friday, my NIE supervisor came to observe my lesson for the first time. I must admit that I was very nervous about this, not least because it also happened to be the first time that I was trying out the strategy of source-based inquiry with my students, and really could not predict how things would turn out despite my good rapport with the class. In addition, the lesson was held in a different venue as I wanted the classroom layout to be more conducive for group work, but then during the lesson I felt a little disoriented by the size of the space and was unable to follow my usual routine of walking around to check their work in the comfortable manner I had gotten accustomed to. During the lesson, I think my nerves got the better of me and I wound up compromising on my questioning techniques in a bid to ensure that I would be able to finish all that I had planned within the 60-minute tutorial. I barely asked the students to give their responses or feedback, and when I did, I offered such little wait-time that I often wound up being the one to answer my own questions. My NIE supervisor summarised this teaching style as "doing all the thinking for my students", and I (sadly) agree. While the temptation to simply provide the answers for them is particularly high in a situation whereby the students are unfamiliar with the task requirements, I've come to realise that I am actually doing them a disservice in the long-run as they would become dependent on me for the "right answers" all the time and never push themselves towards independent inquiry, which ironically was supposed to be the rationale behind the source-work activity.

In addition, I felt that I might have pitched the lesson at a level that was lower than would have been appropriate - my NIE supervisor advised me that I should have asked the students to do a direct comparison across the three sources in their groups instead of assigning each group a different source to analyse. This would have better helped students to develop the key skill at the heart of the tutorial question, namely the ability to make comparisons across sources. Also, I could have cut out my short activity of getting them to identify the source provenance altogether, as that did not add any value to the lesson and was a basic requirement that I could have checked by simply going around to read the graphic organisers that they were supposed to have filled in before the lesson. This feedback made me realise that I should take more risks in my teaching and expect a high quality of work from my students, instead of giving them easy tasks that would not really stretch them or help them to develop higher-order thinking skills. This lesson was therefore a major learning experience for me, and has helped to shed light on some of my ineffective teaching practices. I hope to be able to learn from my mistakes and correct myself with more in-class practice, and to build on my existing strengths (e.g. good rapport and classroom management) to become an increasingly effective teacher over time.

4) Singapore History Association seminar

My CT, Marcus, and I were invited to a seminar for teachers organised by the Singapore History Association (it so happens that Marcus' and my CT is the president!) on Saturday morning. The speaker was Dr Chua Ai Lin, a professor from the NUS History department, and another familiar face for me as I had taken a couple of her modules during my time as an undergraduate. She spoke on possible approaches to the teaching and learning of secondary school History that teachers could adopt in the classroom, and these included strategies such as:

- Visits to museums, particularly the galleries at the National Museum
- Getting students to conduct oral history interviews
- Exposing them to relevant films
- Encouraging their participation in blogs and/or Facebook groups to do with Singapore history and heritage
- Drawing on materials from newspapers.nl.sg and the oral history archives

While this talk was catered more for the lower secondary level, as that is the time when Singapore history is a part of the syllabus,  I felt that many of Dr Chua's suggested methods would be applicable at the JC level as well, especially since many of us as teachers struggle to make the content relevant and engaging for the students. By emphasizing the personal element of History and the need to exercise empathy when trying to understand the actions of various individuals and/or groups in the past, as well as an awareness of the multiple interpretations of historical developments that exist, I believe that we can make this often dry subject come alive for our students. As of now, Marcus and I haven't really found ways to make these methods a mainstay of our lessons but I believe that as our familiarity with the content and basic requirements of teaching grows, we will be increasingly able to find ways to value-add to our lessons and stretch the students further in their appreciation of the discipline.