Practicum Week 6

This week went by rather uneventfully, with the exception of the lesson observation by my CT, HOD, and one of the vice-principals. This took place on Wednesday with my H1 class, and at the beginning, I was rather nervous about how things would go as this class tends to be weak in both content knowledge and skills mastery. I thus tried to ensure that the lesson would be pitched at a comfortable level and pace for them to follow, and used two "real-world" examples in an effort to deepen their understanding of certain concepts and writing skills - the first being a series of optical illusions, which I used as an illustration of the concept of misunderstandings and inaccurate perceptions, and the second being a mock essay question on Taylor Swift. This mock question, and more importantly, its accompanying argument, was intended to function as a sort of teacher-modelling for the class. I wanted them to be able to understand the elements and structure of an argument, and decided to use an example from popular culture as it would not only generate interest, but also prevent the problem of them simply copying down the argument word-for-word and not focusing on understanding how it was constructed, which I foresaw would be the case if I had used an example from the syllabus. At the end of the lesson, I felt quite positive about how things had gone, and was very grateful to my students for their cooperation and responsiveness. There were no classroom management issues (as is typical of students in AJC) and they were much more familiar with their content material than they had been in previous weeks, perhaps because this was their last tutorial on the origins of the Cold War. Their improved content mastery was a great help in enabling me to achieve what I had planned in the lesson, as this was a largely thinking skills-based tutorial, and I was fairly confident that my students had left with at least a better understanding of how to construct an argument, albeit in a group. The following critique with my observers was useful as always, and I was touched by their willingness to take time out of their schedules and talk me through every phase of my lesson, pointing out both the good and bad points of my lesson execution and asking for my personal assessment of how things went. One significant issue was the time I had allocated for the group work - as the H1 class has a 90-minute tutorial, I tend to take liberties with the amount of time given for student discussion, but my observers reminded me that this may not be a good thing as students will not be trained to think and speak up more quickly, particularly if they always feel that they will be given time extensions. This is something that I will definitely bear in mind for future classes, and I will be sure to state my expectations for group work (including the time allocated) clearly before the activity, and insist that students stick to it as far as possible.

As for the other aspects of my practicum life, such as CCA observations, staff meetings and the like, I felt that this week was rather routine. After 6 weeks of being posted to AJC, I can finally say that I have somewhat settled into "real" teaching life, in the sense that I have now fully internalised and keep to a schedule of lectures, tutorials, meetings, and CCA duties. I am actually grateful for this routine as it helps me maintain a sense of order in my week, and I no longer feel that sense of struggle to stay on top of my responsibilities, as I sometimes did in the weeks before.