photo

class on 4th october

hi

Omkar's ESE reflections

Omkar's ESE reflections

 

My appointment to ACJC as an ESE trainee has been particularly fruitful. Besides being an excellent premise for enlightenment, it offers an ideal opportunity for a fresher like me to soak in the different nuances of teaching and work life in Singapore.

 

During the two months of class room observation I became conversant with various methods of teaching for which I remain indebted to the 'Economics Department' of ACJC and particularly to Madam Rahimah (My mentor).

 

The students at ACJC were mostly proficient in their understanding of the subject I taught/observed(at least the H2s).They were mostly cooperative and the lessons went smooth with occasional confusions regarding my accent.

 

I was not asked to observe/teach EL classes and thus I am giving an account of my experiences/learning in general as well as areas to improve upon in the following paragraphs:

 

 

Holistic development of a child:

 

 

ü  Recognizing and rewarding hard work:

As every child is different so are their needs. Madam Rahimah personalizes her teaching for almost every child in her classes. A certain girl in 2EC206 was exempted from reprimanding (regarding the non-completion of a home-work) keeping in view of her genuine academic involvements outside that class. Another boy in 2EC302, who was dropping from H2 to H1, was given regular counsels. These enable a teacher to form a rapport with her pupils which make them a lot more receptive to her teaching.

ü  Being considerate:

Madam Rahimah on another occasion postponed an economic workshop keeping in view the possible overlap of preparation time between her class and a Physics SPA. A teacher's concern, thus, should not only be confined within her own lessons but also that of the others' as the ultimate intention of a teacher should be a pupil's holistic development.

ü  Questioning and responding:

Modern teaching is less about lecturing and increasingly more about asking the relevant questions which bring the pupils to think and finally form a deduction to which the teacher responds to further clarify student-understanding. Scaffolding only helps to bring the pupils to think in the right direction.

ü  Monitoring:

Monitoring of students' learning could be done through classroom recaps, asking students to share his/her explanation to the whole class or simply by asking a class to prepare an essay on a newly taught topic. These would help a teacher to know individual deficiencies in a class, giving him/her a platform to act accordingly.

ü  Enhancing soft skills:

Through PBL presentations or the everyday sharing of answers in front of the entire class, the art of public speaking could be inculcated in students.

 

 

 

 

Subject Mastery:

 

 

ü  Remaining updated (nationally and internationally):

Madam Rahimah ensures that she remains updated on each and every major proceeding in the world of economics both nationally and internationally. Her inputs during the PBL series deserve a special mention in this regard. A teacher should always be prepared to expand his/her own horizon of content and current affairs in order to stimulate thinking among his/her students.

ü  Using media (print and audio-visual) to apply theory in practice:

Selection of appropriate media presentations for specific student-needs is equally important. Madam Rahimah selects portions from The Strait Times, The Economist, you-tube and various other sources to arouse interest in the subject. This practical application of curriculum knowledge helps to bring out the potential best from students.

 

 

Creativity:

 

 

ü  Using online resources to help students build logical inferences of the real world:

Economic policies could seem vague and too textbook unless supported by real life instances. A classic example was one of Mr. Mashren's(the Level Head of Economics) classes where he brought out the possible solutions as well as their evaluations of the problem of giving 'unemployment benefits' by just showing a few BBC clippings in his class.

ü  PBL:

The Problem Based Learning series conducted by Madam Rahimah synthesized multiple aspects of student learning. From an exposure to real life economic problems to the thorough understanding of economic concepts required for analyzing the needs and prescribing policies, these lessons were both enjoyable and hugely beneficial for the pupils. A teacher should always look forward to advocate for creative methods like this to multiply student-learning.

ü  Group formation:

Forming groups and assigning them some work in the classes promotes not only exchange of key ideas but also a sense of team spirit. Mrs. Wai Hin, in one of her classes, split the class in four groups to encourage scholarly discussions among her students. A similar tactic was followed by Mr. Clifton when he divided one of his classes in four equal parts so that each group could respond on the four aspects of a single economic concept.

ü  Reflections after evaluation of answer scripts:

Failure is the pillar of success. Even if a student fails it could be reversed through well planned introspection and a little guidance, a sort, Madam Rahimah does after evaluation of term exam papers. Students benefit immensely through this as it helps them analyze and realize the reason(s) behind their failure.

 

ü  Using surveys:

Surveys could reinforce student's understanding and make him/her even more interested about the subject. A survey under Miss Marhaini and Mrs. Chan to a bakery, served this purpose.

ü  Use of acronyms:

Use of acronyms could prove to be very helpful in enhancing student memory. In some of Mr. Hashim's classes he used this technique and the students reciprocated gleefully.

 

 

Creating Positive environment:

 

 

ü  Reiteration of the purpose of a specific task:

Whether it is PBL or going on a survey, a teacher should always ensure that the purpose of any such exercise should be clarified to the pupils again and again. This helps in the better attainment of the desired goals.

ü  Respecting students' views:

It is imperative for a teacher to respect a student's view on a certain academic issue as it is conducive of an environment of healthy discussions within a class which has become instrumental for modern teaching.

ü  Letting students mark each others assignments:

Madam Rahimah uses this tactic to invite positive criticisms and thus alternative learning among her students.

ü  Technology:

Apart from the usual whiteboard, visualisers and power point slides have become essential for classroom teaching. Their audio-visual effects create a lasting impact of the demonstrated concept on the students. ACJC has an impressive repertoire of ICT(eg. "live lecture") tools and I am extremely fortunate to have experienced a slice of that.

 

 

 

 

Reflections - by Mei San

Dear all,

I taught General Paper for a year at Serangoon Junior College (SRJC) although my CS1 is Economics (JC) and my CS2 is English Language (Sec). It has been a good learning experience for me as I find that I learn most when I teach. I also realise that there is an application question in the Comprehension paper, which is entirely new to me.

I was assigned 1 GP class last year and 2 GP classes this year. Although discipline problem is generally not much of an issue in a JC, there were occasions when I had the same 2 to 3 students who fell asleep during my lessons. I was quite disturbed by this occurrence as I took it to mean that my lessons were not engaging enough.

We have a culture of sharing teaching materials and resources in SRJC and this is very useful for new teachers like me. Content packages are prepared by various teams and we stick to the same format so as not to confuse the students - overview and content notes on the topic, extra readings, essay outlines and comprehension passages. We also made it compulsory for our students to subscribe to "Broader Perspectives" in the hope that they will read this monthly magazine on their own to gain better general knowledge.

The Scheme of Work / Lesson Plans for GP lessons usually dictate that we introduce a topic by helping students do a mindmap. We encourage students to read their content packages before the class and the first lesson is usually spent eliciting responses from them just to ensure that they have done their readings. Subsequent lessons will be used to work through essay outlines and comprehension passages.

One new initiative of the department in Term 3 this year is the R2D2 (Read and Reflect; Discuss and Demonstrate) approach to teaching/learning. Every week, one teacher will be tasked to source for an article of interest for students to read. After this reading, they are supposed to reflect on some questions which serve as potential application questions in the Comprehension paper. Teachers are expected to discuss the issue in the article with the students and to demonstrate how the examples can be aptly applied to other colleges' preliminary exam questions as well as past GCE 'A' Level exams. This activity is beneficial for the students but we often find it a challenge to carry out this discussion because it has not been factored into our Scheme of Work.

To be a competent English Language/General Paper teacher, I believe that not only must lessons be engaging enough to sustain students' interest in the subject, but more importantly, we must also be able to strike a good balance between fun lessons (e.g. videos, role play, debates) and those which allow students a chance for time practice as well as to hone their exam skills. Based on the quality of teaching survey feedback from students, I would need to engage them more and come up with more interesting lesson plans because after a while, my lessons have become very predictable. I hope to achieve this objective for this QCE520 course.

Thanks.

Reflections by Vanessa Kwan

Hello everyone,

I started my contract teaching stint in Victoria JC at the end of July 2009. Over the one-year period that I was there, I was deployed to teach JC 1 Economics and did not teach English. I had the opportunity however to observe a few JC 1 GP lessons during the first semester this year and here are my takeaways from those lesson observations.

I had the privilege of observing a senior GP teacher who had been teaching for more than ten years. He would come up with various classroom activities or discussion styles such that students never knew what to expect each lesson. This can be intimidating if left to a stern teacher, however, this teacher that I observed managed to instil curiosity and excitement in the students. They were eager to attend classes weekly and were enthusiastic and ready to speak up in class. What I found was that the classroom environment during GP lessons is very encouraging for students to participate and share their thoughts / opinions on the issue at hand, and for peer learning to take place. GP can be intimidating for students who aren’t strong in their current affairs or ability to speak up. The teacher managed to eliminate any trace of that in class by using humour and approachability in his manner of speaking.

One weekly activity conducted was the sharing of articles by the students to encourage them to read up more about current affairs. Students would find an article that appealed to them and had educational value and they would share it with the class for about 5 minutes at the start of lesson. I found this activity useful as it got students reading and also got the quieter students to speak up more as well. Sometimes if the topic of discussion was relevant or pertinent, the discussion can extend beyond 5 minutes and become a classroom sharing. What I liked very much about this was that the pace of learning was set by students. They had the autonomy to self-direct their learning as well as learn from one another.


Some of the areas I feel that I need to work on to be a good EL teacher is proficiency & mastery in the language. I would also like to acquire the necessary skills to be able to engage students in effective discussion and for learning to take place through these discussions. I hope to work on being more flexible in teaching English and to be able to sustain the interests of students in the subject matter through various teaching methods.

Thank you.

Reflection

Dear All

I was posted to Yuhua Secondary in mid-Sep last year. This is a neighbourhood school where the kids usually do not speak English at home. Even, if they speak English, many are still not proficient in speaking and writing standard good English. The school is very old and does not have very good infrastructure. The library is very small and only a small number of students actually make use of the library resources for their own learning.

Last year, I had opportunities to observe English lessons. However, as it was during term 4 , the teachers were all going through examination papers and common tests. So I had no opportunities to observe how the English teachers actually taught their students.

Then, at the start of this year, I was assigned a 3NA class to teach. In the beginning, I faced difficulties in classroom management, conducting the English lessons and meeting the expectations of the English department in my school. Fortunately, I had two teachers who were in-charge of the other two 3NA classes. I worked together with them and the three of us actually shared resources among ourselves. From time to time, the three of us met and planned our lessons. In that way, we were able to save a lot of time and I definitely learned a lot from my peers.

Then, recently, I had opportunities to observe a few English lessons because of the hand-over of my class to another teacher. I particularly liked one of his lessons and wish to share with all of you. There was a news report some time back in which an ex-police officer boarded a tour bus in the Philippines and took hostage of 25 passengers. The hostage-taker was Rolando Mendoza who had hijacked the tour bus to get his job back.

The teacher actually showed videos of the hostage incident to the students and tried to get the students to critically question whether the Philippine police had actually done their best to rescue those who were held hostage. The students actually showed a lot of enthusiasm during the group

discussions and the lesson served as a hook to get the class to pay attention. The pupils also learnt the skills of writing an information report.

However, in my opinion, I feel that the teachers have problems getting the students to pay attention to all of their lessons. I have heard many students complaining that English lessons are

boring. As such, I am keen to know how lessons can be carried out to capture the attention of pupils. Besides, nowadays, we have foreign students in our classes and learning how to handle a diverse group of students is no doubt, a real challenge for teachers.

Warm regards

Ramya

Rene's ESE Reflection

Apologies as I do not have a microphone and thus was unable to record my ESE Reflection.

Here goes my reflection. I was attached to Bukit View Secondary School for a year and I had the opportunity to observe as well as teach students from the Normal (Technical), Normal (Academic) and Express level from Secondary One to Secondary Five. As such, I would say that, in a nutshell, I had been exposed to observing as well as teaching all levels across all streams in the school.

Although the school would be what one considers as a neighbourhood school, the environment was very encouraging. There are countless programs for the students to better themselves. For example, the students were given the opportunity to go through Adam Khoo’s workshops as well as various workshops that help them to hone their artistic as well as technology skills. Students are often encouraged to take on leadership positions and almost everyone would have the opportunity to take part in some competitions be it at a school, inter-school or national level.

Although my first CS is Elements of Business Skills, I was deployed to mostly EL lessons. As such, I had to work very closely with the other EL teachers. In fact, I have had the opportunity to set part of the final year examination paper for the Normal (Technical) Stream. I was also involved in formulating the assignments for the Secondary 4/5 students to aid them in honing their comprehension skills.

I shadowed 2 senior teachers very closely and have learnt a lot from them. Both of them had excellent classroom management techniques and they were able to control each class that was assigned to them. They were strict yet approachable and they were well-liked by the students (so much so that almost every year, they would win one of the Teacher of the Year award as voted by the students). They were able to hold the attention of their students, and thus were able to engage them and got them to participate in class successfully. I believe their sincerity and earnest desire to teach the students were very apparent and thus, the students opened up to them. This quality of theirs is something that I aspire towards.

With regards to areas that I feel that I need to work on to be a confident EL teacher, I guess it would pretty much be in the area of understanding the nuances of the English Language and learning how to incorporate them into teachable bite-size content for them to absorb. In terms of building rapport with the students, I believe I have successfully achieved that during my stint. However, I would like to improve on being slightly sterner and stricter with them as in hindsight, I believe that it is probably best to set a high standard in class and gradually slack on them rather than the other way round.

All in all, I am looking forward to teaching EL to students and helping them to become more articulate in expressing themselves.

Cheers,

Rene

My Reflections

I was posted to SAJC for my contract teaching last July shortly after my graduation from NUS. Over the period of about 13 months, i was deployed to the teaching for JC1 Economics. I had no experience in the teaching of English Language as my CS2 is EL at Secondary level.



SAJC is located within the Saint Andrew's Village (SAV) where all the four different Saint Andrew's schools from kindergarten to junior college are located in one compound in Potong Pasir. Therefore you will be able to see all the different SA uniforms around the Potong Pasir area. The JC compound is smaller than what i was expecting it to be but they have all the basic facilities required. For me, the most important device used for teaching in the school will be the Visualiser as it is really much more efficient than the usage of OHP during my college days.



The students in SAJC are relatively academically inclined as most of them entered the school with an average of 10 points. They have a very strong command of English and many of them came from English speaking family. the English standard of some students especially those from the arts faculty might even be higher than mine.



As i was posted to the economics department, i have little connection with the GP teachers. most of my interactions with them were in the canteen where the conversations were mostly non academic related. my impression of them is that they have very strong language ability especially in expressing their thoughts.



In order to be a confident EL teacher, i must first build a strong foundation in the command of English language. after that, i must learn to be able to express myself and elaborate my ideas better. for the students, i will need to be able to make the learning experience of EL as interesting as possible so that the students will be motivated to continue the learning process themselves.



Benjamin

Reflection

Greetings everyone!

I began contract teaching in July 2009 at Anderson Junior College (AJC) upon graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics, teaching Economics to JC students before being posted to North View Secondary School (NVSS) in March 2010 to teach Social Studies and English Language.

The School Environment

Over in AJC and NVSS, while facilities cannot be considered state-of-the-art, they are rather adequate. You will find your standard-issued white board and markers, along with the visualiser and the screen. Certainly, you can also connect your laptop to the projector using the cable provided if you so wish to do a slideshow or show your students a youtube video. However, there is one subtle difference between the two schools in terms of the ICT infrastructure – AJC apparently possesses some really high-tech futuristic-looking gadgets such as the interactive white board as well as this iPad-looking panel that connects wirelessly to your laptop and allows you to move forward and backward through the slides, and even write on them as you teach. (Pardon me, but I forgot the exact name of this incredible device.) So why do I consider this difference “subtle”? It is because apart from being demonstrated to us once, I have not actually seen any teacher using these marvelous gadgets. Perhaps you can label these technologies “white elephant”, or maybe they are just so sophisticated no teacher has yet to figure out how to integrate them into their lessons.

Moving away from the ICT infrastructure, the two schools are vastly different in terms of their students’ profile. In AJC, you will observe that the students tend to be less disruptive and better behaved. They are also motivated learners who are respectful of their teachers. These are students you never had to raise your voice at and you could trust them to get their work done. Hence, the classroom focus was how to better facilitate their learning through the use of ICT, group work and activities. To put teaching at AJC in a nutshell, it was about the creative use of pedagogies.

Things are very different in NVSS. I still remember my first English lesson with my Normal Technical class – I really had a “cultural shock”. I liken the situation to a fire-fighter trying to put out a bush fire with a bucket when there is an onslaught of strong winds. The major problem with bush fires is that the pockets of fire tend to rekindle when you move elsewhere. These students really put your classroom management to the test and I must admit that I was ill-equipped. At this point, it would be important for me to thank my wonderful colleagues at NVSS, who had given me their support and shared with me their invaluable experiences on managing the students. For instance, a colleague advised me to instruct the students to put their bags on the floor instead of allowing them to leave it on their desk or laps. This makes it harder for students to use their cell phones stealthily under the cover of their bags and become disengaged from the lesson. In other instances, I was advised to appear strict yet fair to the students, just like a “benevolent king” as my colleague had put it.

Moreover, in NVSS, you tend to hear more stories about students coming from families that are so-called “dysfunctional”. Disciplinary issues are also plentiful and students are less academically inclined. Hence, counseling, suspensions and absenteeism are pretty common. However, you will be pleased to learn that these students are not exactly malicious. They may act up in class or can even be rude to you, but they can also be really sweet out of class. It really makes me wonder if it is the classroom setting that really puts them off. Or maybe they are just not interested in the subjects taught?

EL lessons I have observed

To be honest, I have only had the chance to observe two EL lessons. However, I do have the opportunity to observe more teachers at work for the Economics subject thanks to the Structured Mentoring Programme over in AJC.

The lessons I learnt in AJC were very different from what I learnt in NVSS. In AJC, I was exposed to different philosophies on teaching. Some teachers believe in having more teacher-driven lessons, while others incorporate more collaborative learning in their lessons. My mentor in AJC belonged to the “teacher-driven lessons” camp, and as some students will later testify to me “that every moment is capitalised and no time is wasted during her lesson.” My mentor was very organized and structured in her presentation of the content, and that helped her students compartmentalise the various concepts taught and answer the questions. I also managed to pick up a few pedagogies from the other teachers, such as the “jigsaw” and the “four sages.” I believe that these pedagogies could also be adaptable to the teaching of the English language, such as getting students to work in groups and then later present to their peers their findings on a particular “word class” for instance.

It was an altogether different ball game in NVSS. I only had one day to observe a teacher’s lesson and the very next day I was teaching the classes assigned to me. I suppose the policy here in NVSS is that teachers learn on the job. However, I was told to set my expectations and lay down the ground rules right from the beginning. The problem is I did not know what to expect. As time goes by, I gradually learnt of some of the possible problems students at this age can create for a teacher. One key problem I noticed is the late submission of work. It usually took the students a week or two after the deadline to submit their work. There were even times I had to hunt down and persuade the students to do their work and turn it in just so I could give them a grade. On the retrospect, I think the late submission phenomenon might have been a result of me not making it clear from the beginning about the penalty of late submission. Had I had a system that states clearly to the students what the penalties for late submission are and adhere strictly to it, maybe the problem could be minimised. What I had done was to tell them simply to submit their assignments on time, which was probably vague to the students. Most students at this age still prefer to be given clear instructions on what to do; they still like to be held by their hands and led by their teachers. This is perhaps one of the areas I could improve on because I tend to forget to give students clear instructions such as asking them to take out their logbook to jot down certain important points. I am now so used to jotting down notes on my own that I forgot these students have yet to reach that level of maturity.

Change in perspective of literacy teaching and learning

I used to think that teaching is like doing a slideshow presentation – you simply get the content of the day ready and present it. However, after acquiring some first-hand experience, I am beginning to realize that teaching is more about management than about the imparting of knowledge. In fact, imparting knowledge is not even adequate; it is also about arousing the interest of your students in the subject. And hopefully, that will make them want to find out more on their own. The content and skills that we teach in school merely equip the students with the basic tools to go out there to gather, understand and critically analyse information. However, it is important to note that no teaching and learning can take place without proper classroom management.

Furthermore, it is increasingly difficult for teachers to sustain the attention of the students, especially when there are so many distractions out there. I think it is becoming the duty of the teachers to be creative in their teaching, to make their lessons interesting for their students so that meaning learning can occur.

Areas I wish to learn more

Firstly, I wish to learn how to integrate more collaborative learning into my lessons.

Secondly, I wish to learn how to explain complex grammar concepts to my students. In other words, explain grammar in a way that will make them understand instead of using technical terms.

Thirdly, I wish to learn how to make my lessons more interesting so that meaningful and effective learning can take place.



Cheers,
Kenneth

Reflection

The school that I was posted to for contract teaching was Yuhua Secondary School in Jurong West. My CS1 was Physics and CS2, English. I started teaching there since the start of this year and the whole experience I had there was nothing less than exciting. Although there were disappointing times, but it only served as a stepping stone to improve myself.

When I first stepped into the school, I was given two lower secondary NA classes to teach on my own, so that was quite a shock to me given that classes started the next day and I had no head or tail where and what to begin. After a few, nervous lessons, I managed to find some time to sit in another teacher's class. This teacher that I observed took a very serious and disciplinarian kind of approach which I believe resulted in students cursing and swearing at the back of the class because every lesson seemed like a scolding session to them. That experience made me think about how would be a better way to go about handling children from NA classes.

The school environment was pretty run down since it was an old school. The students mostly come from non-English speaking homes and some of them, from broken families. Therefore, teaching them required a lot more attention to their backgrounds and why they behaved the way to do.

The EL teachers were mostly very friendly and helpful, and would render any advice that would be necessary to teach the students.

After going through these months of teaching English, I have actually learned that trying to get students from non-English speaking homes was not as easy as how I pictured it to be when I was a student. I have come to realise that we really need to have different teaching approaches when trying to deliver education to different types of students even though its the same content.

I would probably need to be more proficient in English language, learn what are the different ways of delivering content and also classroom management techniques because using the best delivery methods would be futile if the class is unable to focus and pay attention.

-Bernard

Reflections

I was posted to Montfort Secondary School for my ESE and had the opportunity to continuously observe the same Secondary Two Express English class for all of the nine weeks, which I regard as fortunate as it allowed me to not only familiarize myself with the students, but also to develop some sort of bond with them. Eventually, the class turned out to be the group of students that I grew closest to at the end of the 9-week ESE.

In addition, I was given the chance to conduct a lesson on writing expositions with an animal theme. The title that was eventually chosen by my CT and I was “Man is a danger to sharks. Do you agree?”. My CT allowed me almost complete freedom in designing the lesson plan as well as conducting the actual lesson itself. The class, which had a reputation for being boisterous, was extremely cooperative and focused when the subject content was being introduced via PowerPoint slide presentations, YouTube videos as well as a few pages of handouts which I obtained from a library book on sharks.

My optimism however received a reality check when the students were required to submit their essay outlines. Most of the submitted work was quite simply, atrocious. This was again shown when they submitted their essays which were based on their lacklustre essay outlines. Only five out of the 39 students passed when the essays were finally marked.

This exercise made me aware all too painfully of the poor standard of English in that particular class, and the school in general. It dawned on me that the responsibility of the English teacher comprises not only in educating the students in terms of grammar but also the need to expose them to general knowledge to beef up the content that they would need for their essays.

I must admit though, that because the school was in a holding location (due to the original grounds undergoing renovation and upgrading) it probably affected their ability to pay attention. The classes were small and the buildings old and not as modern and conducive to learning as their classes in the original school building. The profiles of the students also contributed to the learning environment of the class. Since the school was a mission school, one of the school’s principles was to take in students with learning disorders or the fact that the school was willing to continue providing an education to students who may display frequent tendencies of misbehavior. As a result, lessons, especially English lessons, tend to be easily disrupted and as a result, the teachers had to consistently work hard, and fast, to ensure their English classes were not left behind with regards to the planned syllabus for that level.

At NIE, I hope to learn as much as I can with regards to the technical knowledge needed to teach the language like grammar and vocabulary. This can be useful not only when I am teaching the students the content of the lesson but it would also instill in them respect for the teacher if I am able to answer most of their questions easily, if the knowledge were to be at my fingertips. Finally, I would also like to learn a lot of class management techniques because I think it would be very much needed in English class which may have the tendency to spiral into a boring lesson particularly when the teacher needs to teach grammar to secondary school students.

Tutorial 1 - ESE Experience

ESE EXPERIENCE @ CHANGKAT CHANGI SECONDARY SCHOOL
 
I was posted at Changkat Changi Secondary School, located at Simei Estate, in the last week of July 2009 as an untrained contract teacher. My CS1 is Mathematics and my CS2 is English Language. When I was there, the school was in need of Mathematics teachers, hence, I was given little experience to teach English. The only experience I had was in the end of July 2009 when I first came in till the final year exams 2009 (about 4 months).
 
When I first received my posting, I had a nervous feeling about the school due to the negative comments and feedback I've heard about the school before. I've heard that students in the school are notorious and will challenge the teachers in the face. On my first week, I had a culture-shock and I could not understand that "such students existed". Basically, I came in with an idealistic mindset and students in Changkat were definitely not how I expected them to be.
 
School Environment
 
However, the school has a strong colleague/staff support, so much so that this neutralizes the emotions I had towards the students. As time goes by, I began to learn alot of valuable things in the school. Given the students' profile, the school focuses on the value, CARE. Care can be seen everywhere in the school from staff to staff, teachers to students, management to staff and students to teachers as well.

The school also has a good discipline department so, teachers do not have to worry about handling difficult students and late-comers single-handedly. There is also an NT department to focus on the NT classes.
 
The school is handicapped-friendly. Hence, there are ramps and an elevator to better navigate teachers, wheelchair-bound and handicapped students. Resources cannot be kept in the classrooms because they will get spoilt by the students. As such, teachers were seen carrying portable projectors, visualisers, laptops and many other resources to and fro classes. They do so by using trolleys.
 
The classrooms have very little windows and a large wall separating the front door and back door of the classroom to prevent any disruption/distraction from the outside to students in the classroom. Ventilation in the classroom is very poor but there are wall fans in every corner of the classroom. In some classrooms that are located in the far end and have little passers-by, CCTVs are installed in these classrooms. Classrooms are bare from in-built resources and have little holes or cupboards to prevent students from cheating or have any opportunities to cheat.

Tables and chairs are vandalised but to prevent them from getting vandalised further, some classes have their tables wrapped in wrapping papers or blank papers to showcase their art talent.
 
There were very friendly, kind and helpful cleaners all around the school. As such, the school is generally very clean. Bushes and gardens are well-maintained.

Student Profile
 
Students are not academically-inclined. Most of them come from a difficult family background. They are frank, hyper-active and attention-seeking. Students choose teachers to learn from and they do not like to study in class, rather meet teachers after school hours for one-to-one remedials or group-study and consultations with teachers. Similar to YISS, written by Jiet Sie, students in Changkat do not consider JC as their option. They get demoralised easily when they fail and tend to take the "flight" factor rather than the "fight" factor. Late-coming is common, especially in the tier-end classes of every stream.

The school constantly monitors late-comers every month and form-teachers have a set of procedures to follow to monitor late-comers. To increase the morale of the students, the school shows the recognition of excellence and success very openly to the students. Apart from that, the school often have inter-class competitions to create a sense of belonging to the school as well as to impart a sense of competitiveness amongst students to make them strive to be better.

English Teachers / 1 or 2 EL lessons I have observed that is good for provoked further thoughts
 
English teachers in Changkat are creative in carrying out English lessons. 

One of the teachers I know, used music to teach grammar (tenses). Students were told to identify the different parts of tenses in the lyrics of the song "Yesterday". From another teacher, drama was used to teach Narratives and oral communication. Most of the English teachers in the school shared with me that group work and videos were often used in their lessons.

In my own experience, I was given 2 classes to teach. One was a Sec1NA class and the other was a Sec2NT class. For the Sec1NA class, I was paired up with another contract teacher to teach but I was not given the full English timetable. In fact, I only had to come in once a week and most of the time when I come into lesson, the other teacher will already have something prepared for them. Since the both of us were new and had no experience, most of the time, we were told to give the students assignments to meet up to the English department's quota of assignments. However, there was one time when the both of us decided to try to use the movie, 'High School Musical' to teach Characters, Setting, Plot etc. The students seem to have a greater affinity to watching movies and videos because for the subsequent lessons, they kept asking,"What are we watching today?". This explains why most of the teachers like to use videos in their lessons as well.

For the Sec2NT class, I observed that the teacher did little teaching and gave the students plenty of worksheets. This, I observed, worked very well because the students are the hands-on type and they need to do something, rather than sit and listen. There's one thing to take note of, though. They were given work to be done individually because when they're in groups, they tend to talk endlessly about things unrelated to the lesson.
 
To encourage reading in the school, after every morning assembly during silent reading, there will be English teachers or students who will read out-loud on stage. The passages read will have a moral message behind them. School councillors were to stand in front of the classes in one straight line and read. Teachers were also told to bring a book to read and stand amongst the students at their respective classes.

Change in perspective of literacy teaching and learning

From what I remembered when I was in secondary school as a student, I had interesting and fun English lessons. I learnt to debate, act out skits, watched videos, did group work, write journals etc. As a student, I even had a chance to discuss world current issues with my English teachers and I learnt the different techniques to answer different types of comprehension questions. When I become a teacher, I had these thoughts in mind to share what I know with the students. However, later did I know that teaching English is not like teaching Mathematics where there are set of rules/steps to follow. It is not a routine subject where I can teach step by step technically. I realized that I will constantly need to be creative in teaching English to get the students to be engaged.
 
Yet, being creative in my lessons alone do not help because the students are not well-exposed to the world and their foundation of the language is very poor. When I was assessing the students' work, I realized that they were quick to jump to conclusions and claimed what they hear from their social circles is the truth. Some even wrote without paragraphs and full-stops while others wrote abbreviations or spellings they learnt in the cyber-world. They even give answers like "IDK" in close passages.

Areas I need to work on to be a confident EL teacher
 
I am interested to learn anything from the technicalities of sentence structures, upgrading my content knowledge as well as expanding my vocabulary because I am definitely not well-equipped in all aspects of the English Language. Last but not least, I would also like to learn how to be creative in various ways to get the students to be engaged during English lessons.
 
Written by,
Noorhuda Yahya

ese experience

Though provoking lessons.

I was posted to teach in Yusof Ishak Secondary School.

During my time there i was able to teach the express class english.

One of the lessons that really amazed me was the use of ipod touch's during lessons. 

YISS has been experimenting in incorporating the use of ipod touch's during english classes, thus the students had been provided the ipod touch's and during class were encouraged to use the dictionary, surf the web to find out information, and even use facebook to communicate in a class forum. I observed how well it engaged the students, and got them excited to learn independently.

Initially i thought the ipod touch's would distract the students into playing games, and constantly checking their facebook updates, however the students where very excited to do their weekly reflections on facebook. How it worked was that one student would have to post a thread, and the other students would have to comment. During these sessions the students would be diligently focused on answering the questions, checking the dictionary for spelling, and asking fellow students if their sentences were correctly conveyed. This experience made me realize how technology really engages students; the students "talk" more on facebook than when you want them to contribute

aloud in class. The students seem to feel safer "speaking" their thoughts virtually, and they take more initiative to do so virtually.

 

Profile of students and school

YISS students are not very academically inclined. I was surprised during my first week there as the students kept asking me which polytechnic I came from, and when they heard I had gone to JC they were very impressed. The students did not seem to consider JC as an option as most of the students would graduate to go on to polytechnic's or ITE. Going into JC was a great feat, and it was rare. I was particularly impressed that the school had a staff team to come up with a separate curriculum for the  Normal and Normal technology classes. They came up with various skills-based courses like hairdressing, make-up, sports, tourism, design, etc for the students to sign up for, and attend the classes. This was to help the students develop an area of interest, equip them, and motivate them to pursue that area instead of roaming the streets. I could really feel the care and concern the teachers had for their students when I heard the various activities the teachers had planned for them, and the hassle they had gone through to adjust the students' timetable to accommodate the courses. I saw how the teachers were being creative and flexible in fulfilling their commitment in equipping their students for their future. They were not rigid about forcing the students to study books, but recognized that each individual learnt differently and excelled in different things.

 

New perspectives

Something I learnt from teaching English, and having had to mark the students work, is that this generation of students seem to write their essays like they are blogging. They seem unfazed that an examiner is reading their work. They write about things which are very personal, and even sometimes giving too much inappropriate information. Also as I had to teach classes full of international students, I had to keep coming up with creative means to engage them, as I realized talking in class did not work as they could not comprehend me well.

 

What I hope to learn

I feel that I need to improve in the area of understanding the technicalities of the English language, to know how to explain to the students the problems in their expressions and sentence structure. Also to learn new ways to make learning English fun.

Cheers

Jiet Sie

Giles' ESE Reflection

Hi everyone! Well, first off, I must say that from a personal point of view, I'm glad we had an 'extended' ESE period of 2 months instead of the usual 1 month. A single month is barely enough time to get a feel of things in the school (this is particularly true for newbies like myself, I believe), let alone form proper bonds with your students and fellow teaching staff, for a truly Enhanced School Experience! Fortunately, I didn't have any holiday plans, so the ESE didn't disrupt anything for me. Many of my friends weren't so lucky :/

I was posted to Yio Chu Kang Secondary School (YCKSS), and I'll now attempt to share with all of you regarding some of my experiences there! :)

School Environment

One really unique thing about YCKSS is that unlike virtually any other secondary school, it utilises a homeroom system! Some key benefits of this would be (feel free to disagree with my reasoning):

1. Students are generally not as noisy during change-of-period.

In other schools that I've been to so far, change-of-period can usually be heard from the neighbouring HDB blocks! I believe the reduced noise levels at YCKSS can be attributed to the fact that the students expend some of their energy moving from classroom to classroom throughout the day, and also don't have to stay couped up in their classrooms for long periods of time!

2. Vandalism/spoilage levels in the homerooms are almost non-existent.

Despite the fact that each homeroom is equipped with a projector, visualiser, speakers, an interactive whiteboard and a full set of IT controls (this is very impressive, by the way), there have been no reported cases of vandalism in quite some time! Window panes are also intact - something which my own (more 'reputable') secondary school could not boast about at all! I believe this is because the students are not left alone in classrooms in between lessons to wreck havoc; students have to leave the homeroom when their teacher leaves!

3. The teacher is able to keep his/her teaching resources in the homeroom.

This simply translates to teachers having to carry less items (big protractors, set squares and dictionaries) to and from class.

On the down side, students take about 5 mins on average to get from one class to another, sometimes more, losing valuable curriculum time in the process. Further, if you have more teachers than the number of homerooms, the latter have to be shared, which can be irksome. Finally, I believe that the homeroom system naturally causes a time-tabling nightmare! :x

Student Profile

The student population generally fit my expectations. The only thing which surprised me was the large number of international students in this school, somewhere in the region of 20%! This made for some interesting sharing sessions and interactions.

Thought-provoking Lessons

Other than my assigned 8 (55 min long) periods a week, I was fortunate enough to be able to observe an additional 12 periods each week, thanks to both my accommodating mentors :) One of these classes was a secondary 1 NA class. It's hard to describe the exact problem in words, but I'm pretty certain all of you will know what I mean when I say that I wish we could do so much more for our NA kids all over the country. To me, they seem like the most untapped source of potential. So many of them could achieve so much more in their lives, if only we could give them more (of the correct type of) attention and care!

Change in Perspective of Literacy Teaching and Learning

In the past, I'd only been prepared to have to teach slightly modified activities for NA kids, as compared to lessons prepared for their express counterparts. I thought that would be sufficient, but I was mistaken, as I found out in my time at YCKSS! On a regular basis, my mentor spent so much time on classroom management that not only did he have to simplify the activities for the NA class, he also had to cut down the amount of content he could cover! Putting the two together, I would say that the NA kids got significantly less taught to them over the same period of time (even though many students were just as capable as the express kids!). It really wasn't my mentor's fault I feel - there was just too many disruptive kids and he had to deal with them! I guess I have to be prepared to do the same, at least until classroom management for certain NA classes becomes less of an issue :)

Areas in Which I Wish to Learn More

I'm quite interested in learning about anything any of you might have to share! Particularly in novel and interesting ways of teaching English content! :))

I look forward to seeing all of you in class.

Giles Lim :)

ESE reflection

Dear Mdm,

I was attached to a JC (ACJC) and so did not observe any English classes. I am very sorry that I cannot do this assignment in its entirety. I would like, however, to share my experience with regards to my experience of ACJC's school environment and profile of students, and areas I wish to learn more.

The school environment,

Generally, ACJC has a very conducive environment for learning. First, students are always kept physically comfortable (all classrooms had air-conditioning and with a few exceptions, were largely spacious). Second, both the 'hard' (physical) and 'soft' ICT infrastructure was readily available for employment (every classroom had a projector and visualizer and the online portal was pretty user-friendly and was chock full of information). Third, the culture of the school encouraged discipline in both CCA and studies. Students were regularly given responsibilities that facilitated personal development (national education council; 'green' council etc)

Profile of students

The profile of students was quite surprising. I had expected lots of slightly spoilt, effectively monolingual, but outspoken young people. Instead, they came across as a rather hard-working, 'bilingual' (in quotation marks because the bilingualism is only observed on average. Individual students largely spoke English or Mandarin Chinese), and slightly shy bunch. I was told that the make-up of the students in ACJC had shifted away from what it traditionally was.

Areas you wish to learn more

Since I did not observe any EL lessons, the areas I would like to know more about are plenty. I would like to know how grammar can be internalised. My experience with EL learning was that when I wrote, I just went with what sounded correct. Grammar rules hardly crossed my mind except in grammar-specific exercises. It wasn't that I didn't know the rules. There was just a dichotomy in my language use. How do we remove this dichotomy is what I would like to find out. I would also like to find out how EL teaching can be effective in improving the general EL standards. My observation thus far is that EL teaching is rather context-specific (framework for essay-writing, format for letter-writing, etc) and produces good context-specific EL users. The general EL standard, however, seems to be exclusively dependent on exogenous factors (e.g. home language environment). Lastly, I would like to learn how EL teachers can engage students. To the average student, EL can be very dry (at the end of the day, one just sits for an oral examination, an essay examination, and a comprehension examination with a disproportionate focus on summary skills). I would like to learn how we can make this 'dry' assessment mode more exciting.

Regards

Soh Ning En Christabelle

Relection

My ESE was slightly different as i did not had the opportunity to observe any lessons due to circumstantial constraints. I was however given 2 classes to teach. Below is my experience with an NT class.

During my teaching stint and ESE, I have a chance to interact with NT students. Through these interactions, I realized that the main issue with NT students lies with their short attention span. Initial attempts to teach were met with setbacks as students were not able to focus and tend to fall asleep. As such, I have deployed certain techniques revolving around the SOW as well as some additional plans for the class.

Firstly, I attempted to bridge class management together with the English language. I made it a point that students who violated my ground rules were asked to write at least one paragraph with reference to why she violated the rule. While one paragraph is not a lot, it serves as a start for students to write and in doing so I am able to determine the standard of the students. As such, the I believe that the ability to bridge class management together with the English Language would be of benefit to the students.

I noticed that during initial class assignments, the students have the tendency to write down their answers in a haphazard manner if they do not understand the passage. In addition, the students tend to lose interest in their work over a period of time if the work handed to them is in a repetitive manner. As such, I decided to marry the concept of role-playing with assignments as well as to teach students how to look for contextual clues in order to help them check their own answers. An example of a lesson the I did was to use a menu of an actual restaurant as an assignment. Students assumed the roles of beginning waitresses and would need to have proficient knowledge of the menu in order to answer questions in the worksheet. I taught the concept of looking for contextual clues and all students were armed with a highlighter to help them spot the clues. The particular menu was used because certain culinary and gourmet terms were not commonly seen and students were unaware of their meanings. In order to complete their assignment, students need to depend on the contextual clues in the menu and the worksheet. I realized that the class was more engaged and focused in their work. Students attempt to look for contextual clues when they do not know the answers instead of writing down an answer haphazardly.

An initiative that I implemented with permission from the HOD was the use of Information Technology and blogging. I went through a short tutorial teaching the students how to create their own websites using an online blogging platform called Weebly. The students were each given a specific web address for tracking purposes. The online blogging system allows students to pen down their thoughts. A new theme is given every week, pertaining to assignments the students have done. In the case of the food menu from the above paragraph, the students were tasked to do a short write up on their respective websites regarding their favorite food and how they would promote it from a waitress’s point of view.

Link to the Main website - http://stc2010ong.weebly.com/

However, due to the school’s extensive involvement in the YOG’s closing ceremony, the online blogging assignment took a hiatus for 3 weeks before it resumed. I however did observed issues regarding this online assignment. Certain students tend to practice plagiarism and attempt to copy and paste resources from websites. As the students were tasked to do these assignments out of class, there are possibilities that the students are not the actual writers behind the blogs as seen evidently from their use of language during and out of lessons. I feel that the platform of blogging has the potential to help students gain interest in the subject and also cultivate the healthy habit of penning down their thoughts. However, I also feel that as a pilot project, there are many aspects that need to be improved.