My last lesson with Primary 2 Purple - 02 Nov 2008

It was my last lesson with them because they were going to have final examination starts next week. So both my operating teacher gave me an opportunity to carry out a revision for both english and maths classes. As in for english subject, i decided to teach topic "Simple Present Tense" because i'd realised and found out that some of them were still having difficulties in building up 'Present tense' sentences. I was having a PowerPoint Presentation to recap and assess their knowledge and understanding on that topic. To make the revision time more fun and interesting, i'd included some oral questioning where there would be a reward given to the one who could answer it correctly. I had prepared 10 prizes to be won.

Presentation (Recapping Previous Lesson):

The questions would be under crossword activity where they need to guess the correct opposite words.

Simple Present Tense

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Maths PowerPoint Presentation on topic Measurements as per requested by Teacher Ezan:

mathsRevision.031108

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For oral questioning and assessment, i used online game and show them with projector. I had to use projector as the school's computer lab are still under renovation.

Click here for Exercise 1
Click here for Exercise 2

Blogging is educationally sound for teaching students?

Blogging is educationally sound for teaching students because (Davis 2008) :-

• It provides a space for sharing opinions and learning in order to grow communities of discussion and knowledge — a space where students and teachers can learn from each other.

• Blogs help learners to see knowledge as interconnected as opposed to a set of discrete facts.

• Blogs foster ownership and choice.

• The opportunity for collective and collaborative learning is enormous. Students have the opportunity to read their classmates’ blogs and those of others. This is not possible in a regular classroom setting.

• The interactive nature of blogging creates enthusiasm for writing and communication.

• Blogging engages students in conversation and learning.

• The interactive nature of blogging creates enthusiasm for writing and communication.

• Provides the possibility of connecting with experts.

• Encourage students to be active student who can contribute own ideas and opinions.

• The archive features of blogging records ongoing learning. It facilitates reflection and evaluation needed for teacher to make assessment and evaluation.

Therefore, You will build your skills over time. Not starting means not getting anywhere.As time progresses, using these tools will become second nature for the students, and yourself.

DISCOVERY SCIENCE

TOPIC: VARIATION

Science Lesson Plan

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To review the slideshow presentation, please upload it first. The texts were animated.

Science Lesson Plan

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PLAY GAMES TO DISCOVER MORE




HOMEWORKS

Pupils will be given below student's worksheet in order to evaluate their understanding.

homework

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For further exploration, click here.

On 3rd November 2008

I had prepared a lesson plan with powerpoint slideshow for English and Maths Revision. The computer labs were still under renovation. So I had to bring laptop and projector to the classroom. But I realised that the pupils were so exciting when they use ICT tools in learning. Anyway, They were having revision weeks. So i was asked to do revision with them to recall what they had learnt. For the English lesson, i had prepared 10 oral questions for the pupil to elaborate and answer. The one who could answer it correctly will be given a reward. They had to pick out only one number which had different prizes.

mathsRevision.031108

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Simple Present Tense

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Below will be the pictures of a pupils who was trying to answer my question



At the end of the day, I showed them my blog to my students. I told them that their picture were posted on my blog. They were so happy and ask me to tell them the link so that they can view it at home.

On 20th October 2008

I was told that my TP school was having a revision week. There is not a lot of thing to do except for preparing test, recapping previous lesson, etc.

This picture showed Ckg Dalela was writing few questions which the pupils needed to copy in their exercise book. Then the teacher would recap and discuss how they expected to answer it during their final exam. At the end of the class, teacher was collecting their books and marked and corrected any mistakes.

Homework on Euclidian shapes

Go to this link to upload the document. Apologize on any wrong formulae... It's very hard to remember and recall all of those formulae...(Yikes!!)

Measurement.hw - Upload a Document to Scribd

Schooling on Hari Raya

6th October 2008, "back to school"!!! Few students were still absent. Guess they slept late lastnight. As usual, early morning assembly..... The headmistress assistant was giving them speech on Hari Raya Aidilfitri greeting and mentioning about school guidelines... Just to recap in case the pupils had forgotten i guess :)

Ckg Dalela, the maths teacher was giving a lecture on topic statistic, pictogram. She said this topic would give them a hard time so she must be carefully teach them. In this topic, the teacher explained that to be able to read pictogram easily they know their tables (multiplication) or know how to do addition.



Below picture shows a boy name Ashraf, trying to solve the problem. Here, the pupil should be able to do his table5 as 1 monkey stands for 5 monkeys. Therefore, if there is 4 monkeys in red monkey column,it represents 20 mokeys (4 x 5).

Our maths activity on "Money"

To download above activity/ words document, please click here.

For playing the interactive games, click on to below links:

Game 1

Game 2

My Excel Drawing Project

On 4th September2008, Dr Leong asked all of us to draw a picture using Microsoft Excel. The aim of this activity was to attract our students in order to learn how to use this program. Below was what I had created. The character was taken from a carton called "FUTURAMA". Wah ... couldn't believe i made Bender!!!

For downloading, click here.

http://www.esnips.com/doc/7ee7d822-7ddf-49dc-8078-0fe108612d21/drawing

My Very Innocent Students

My 4th week

On my fourth week of my TP, dated 1^st September 2008, I was given another opportunity to practice teaching. It was Ckg Dalela’s period where I was being asked to read two ‘Big Books’ mentored by herself. Frankly, I was a little bit worried, not because of the fact that I need to interact with the pupils. But seriously I couldn’t remember how the stories go (hahaha!). The book called “The Kittens” and “Goldilocks & The 3 Bears”.

First of all, I gathered the pupils in front of the class by sitting on the floor. I showed them the first book, “The Kittens”, and asked them if they had already read the book. I inducted few minutes of brainstorming session where they could try to explain to me what they thought the story was before I read it to them.

"how many cats can you see in this picture?"

"What is the color this cat?"

"How do you spell green ribbon?"

"What does kitten mean in malay?"

My 3rd Week

My third day in school, on 25^th August 2008, I was totally wacky and exhausted. I was being informed by a teacher that I was going to take over Ckg Dalela’s period. I was not ready for any of that. In addition, I haven’t had any teaching experience. My first period was with Primary Two Green (satisfaction level). As I came in, I set up a simple icebreaking. I started introduced myself and tell them a brief description about me, continued by each one of them. As I tried to memorizing their names, it looked like they started to communicate with me, like telling me the one who cheated a lot in a class, troublemaker and etc. It lasted for about 10-15 minutes before I started the class.

With today’s experience, only then I understood the importance of preparing lesson plan before you came into the classroom. A teacher needs to have this to guide on what and how to teach a lesson. I could also help teachers to teach confidently and feel more secure, reduce uncertainty and anxiety. With lesson plan, various teaching methods/ strategies can be prepared to suit the needs of the pupils.

My 2nd Week

On August 18, 2008 was the second week of my teaching practice. Like a week before, English was my first period. I was still observing Cikgu Dalela. On that day, I went earlier before the class began. I took some picture, to study how the teachers did classroom management. I had realized that the student tables were rearranged. Last week, their seating was clustered into 3 groups to facilitate group interaction and communication. It helped them to enhance small group discussions and cooperative learning, but also invited chatting and socializing among themselves. But then, their seats were back into traditional arrangement but lined up next close to each other horizontally. Unfortunately, it made me difficult to remember them as I already tried to memorize some of the pupils according to the seating.

Few pupils were posing as I took few shots. More pupils were anticipating the crowd and the noise was becoming louder and louder as they were starting to argue who should be line up in front and back. I was so scared that the next classroom would be annoyed with the noise until I exclaimed that I would put away my camera and stop taking their picture. Some of them were complaining but I kept on quiet, ignoring them. Later, Ckg Dalela, the English teacher came. Everyone was standing straight and greeting her.

She asked them, what she was doing few minutes ago. She was kind of doing a role playing in front of the classroom. Some of pupil answered correctly, “Teacher is walking in to classroom”. Ckg Dalela was performed next actions like sweeping the floor, swimming, drawing and writing. The pupils very excited and concentrated on what their teacher was about to do next. The teacher drew few pictures on the board to recap their previous lesson. By this way, she knew and could assess her pupils on their understanding. Below were some examples:

1. A piece of biscuit.

2. A carton of milk.

3. A packet of sugar.

4. A bottle of vinegar.

Ckg Dalela was using herself and objects around the classroom as the material of her teaching aids. Few minutes later, after giving the pupils some exercises, Ckg Dalela went out of the classroom as she was called by the headmistress. I was totally in charged. The pupils were very good as they could do the exercise quickly. They were starting to move everywhere in the classroom and disturb their friends. I asked them to go back to their seats because I was going to point at pupils who could give me the correct answers by rising up their hands. They were very competitive among themselves indeed.

* During Mathematics period with Ckg Norizan. *

I had realized that whenever Ckg Norizan came into the classroom, all the pupils would behave. After they greed her, Ckg Norizan would ask them to read Multiplication of 4, 5 and 6 altogether. She would then ask few questions of multiplication before the pupils could sit. They were really giving full attention to her.

Move on to topic of their lesson, it was under “Measurement – Date”. Ckg Norizan had asked them to bring a calendar. By referring to the calendar that they brought from home, she asked her pupils on what they had found in the calendar. There were days, months, years, weeks, date and time of prayers. She asked them to check how many days are there in each months as well as total days in a year. There was a lot of interaction between the teacher and the students. It could stimulate their critical thinking as well as improving their skills on problem solving.

My 1st week

sOn August 11, 2008 I came to see the principal of Sekolah Rendah Kiarong, Brunei III to report myself as a Teacher’s Assistant. It was a beautiful day as the traffic is on the low tide. After I parked my car around 7:15 am, I asked a nice and friendly lady, school cleaner where the principal office was. Later, I found myself in the office explaining myself to the new and only school’s clerk named Dyg Suhaila the purpose of my attendance.

It was already 7:50 am and yet the principal was not around. I must say that their school’s principal was giving a very long day speech. As I was shuffling my file unintentionally, a man named Ckg Kassim, the vice principal came into the office. I was called into his office and explained to him where I need to be posted for my TP period. After few minutes of discussion, he decided to give me four periods of Mathematics and English subject for Primary 2 which they indicate with color purple. In that school they divided their pupils into few classes/categories. For example in Primary 2, they put purple class as the most brilliant and outstanding pupils, green as the normal pupils and pink as the slow learner pupils.

My first mentor was Ckg Dalela, the English teacher. That day, she’s having a reading class where she had read two big books, “Houses” and “Ginger Bread man”. It was around 8.45am I was amazed by how the pupils can read after their teacher with a good pronunciation. The pupils were able to count all the houses, windows and even differentiate colors. I found it very interesting to know how well these children can understand the meaning of the words in Malay. Below are the pictures which were taken during the big book reading class.

The pupils were having a pleasant and happy time in this class especially where the teacher needed to do different intonation for the fox and the ginger bread man speeches. The teacher corrected their wrong pronunciation by repeating the words. At the end of the session, the teacher closed the book and began to ask pupils on the spelling. And once again, I was amazed by them. They can spell a long word like “ginger bread man” correctly.

During their exercise’s time slot, Ckg Dalela asked the pupils to open up their exercise book. They had been tested on spelling of 15 English words referring to the earlier class activity. I walked around to see how far they can spell words. I was feeling a little bit relieved as I found few wrong answers on their books. Soon I realized the girls were much more intelligent and quick on writing down answers correctly. They competed with each other on how fast they could spell out answers. On the boys’ side, I found out they were less battle with each other. But they much more careful to secure their answers from being flick through by their friends. It did explained how much boy’s behavior on how protective they are started on their growing up periods.

After the exercise, I build up my gut to approach the boys’ crowd. They were having discussion on the stickers they bought from the library. When I was interrupt their discussion, a boy was being friendly to me and showed me his stuff. It was some “DOA”. I read the contents one by one both the Arabic words and the Malay explanation. I explained to them the purposes of the DOA and why they need to practice them in everyday routines. The group was getting more crowded from time to time as they were interested on my explanation and began to ask question. Therefore, I was successfully becoming visible to them as they were starting to communicate with me. I was making friends with them. I felt a little satisfaction in me.

My next period would be around 11.30am. So, Ckg Dalela brought me around the school so that I will be familiar with some of the teachers, staffs and pupils. Later, we went to the school’s hall to have a break. We were having cold Milo and “mangga muda” with “kicap pedas”. I sit with some teachers and school’s kitchen staff. I felt like I was being a part of their family now.

Around 10.00 am, I went back to the office and got myself ready for the next class. I was having a fun on that day but not for Dyg Suhaila, the clerk. She was having difficulties on Office Words where she did not know how to insert lines for the urgent “minute paper” that was asked by the principal. She felt really hopeless and at the peak of panic time. Kindly, I assisted her through the trouble she had. By the way, I had a plenty of time to kill. It was a perfect time for me.

At 11.35 am, I went for the Mathematics period. They were having an activities using ICT. (As the school’s computer labs are both under renovation, the teachers need to take turn on borrowing the laptop and projector for the classroom activities). On the classroom’s whiteboard was projecting the multiplication of 5. Every pupil was standing and reading multiplication of five (5). They looked very much happy and enjoying the activity using the ICT tools. Later, the teacher asked them why they need to know multiplication of 5? What does it use for in real life situation? Frankly, I asked myself, why do we need to learn & memorize it? What is the importance of it? I could find the real answer for it. Then, a student raised her hands and answered “We need to know it in order to read time (clock). I was half laughing with myself for not realising it.