Category: teaching

Teaching Assistantship (Week 2)

This week was interesting. One of the tasks I had to fulfil for this TA was to look at the pupils’ learning styles and difficulties as well as my CT‘s teaching approaches and strategies on dealing with these learning styles as well as their difficulties.

One strategy my CT uses in class was silent reading. She uses silent reading as a tuning-in activity. She said that as she’s also their Mathematics teacher in addition to being their English Language teacher, her use of the silent reading period is a signal to the pupils that it is now time for English Language and that their minds have to switch away from Mathematics. In fact, one of the routines after a short break is when she says “switch on your minds”, the pupils will mime a ‘switching-on’ motion and saying “switching on” in a sing-song voice.

One thing I took away from this week’s TA was from my conversation with my NIES. He asked me if students were learning. He said that no matter what strategy we used or what approaches we were to take, the very first question we have to ask ourselves as teachers would be “will the students learn?”

Teaching Assistantship (Week 1)

This week’s Teaching Assistantship (TA) is very short. We started on Tuesday and had Friday off due to Good Friday.

I finally had a Cooperating Teacher (CT) this time and I think I will enjoy this TA stint more than I did my contract stint.

I will write more about the rest of the TA when I have the time.

MLEA Micro-teaching

This afternoon was my group’s turn for micro-teaching. Last week, two groups had presented on SBA so this week, my group will be presenting on MLEA.

N was good! In fact, she was so good that I actually just wanted to find a crawl space to hide. For all my CELTA experience and whatnot, I have to say she was a natural. Someone once said to me that there are people who have a natural flair for teaching. N is one of those.

K was calm and she has a very soothing personality.

Actually, ever since coming into NIE, I’ve started doubting myself more and more. It’s a struggle to stay afloat amidst the assignments, group works and readings. Despite whatever experience I thought I had, I am really finding it very tough to come up with lesson plans, unit plans and all the little things in-between.

I know that I joined this PGDE programme to learn and that it is alright to feel overwhelmed as long as I keep at it. It is just frustrating that I am not as good as I can be even though I have been trying.

This is something I have been wanting for a long time and now that I have gotten into this programme, I feel like maybe I am just not cut out for this.

Meranti Project 2018

My Group Endeavours in Service Learning (GESL) group and I had to attend this 2-day course/module titled The Meranti Project. According to the National Institute of Education (NIE) website:

The Meranti Project is a MOE-funded personal and professional development programme specially tailored for student teachers. Held over two days in groups of 20, it has the following objectives:

a. helping student teachers to develop better self-awareness (better tuning into self);

b. providing a clearer idea of what Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) is all about and one’s role in nurturing CCE in innovative ways in the classroom;

c. better ideas of working with diversity in the classroom;

d. strategies for coping with being a teacher;

e. affirmation of choosing teaching as a career.

With the aid of informal dialogue sessions with veteran teachers, it gives student teachers the opportunity to listen to firsthand experiences of teachers and the perspectives of student learners. The programme also makes use of open sharing sessions and ingenious games to help the student teachers experience the core competencies of social emotional learning, to share their personal aspirations with their peers and to express their opinions in an open and creative environment.

At the end of the programme, student teachers will have a better grasp of the innovative approaches to Character and Citizenship Education and be better equipped when they begin their teaching journey upon graduation.

It was certainly an interesting 2-days. I will not blog about what happened as I respect the confidentiality agreement made before the course started but what I can say is that I had a very good facilitator.

I have heard horror stories from friends and seniors and I am really glad that my experience is rather positive. It is definitely due to the facilitator as well as my GESL group mates. After the end of the course, I guess I have learnt more about my GESL mates. Would I say it has brought us closer? Maybe. It has made me respect them more after hearing about their reasons and struggles about becoming an Education Officer (EO) and for a few of them, their journey has paralleled my own.

All in all, I guess this has taught me one thing. Keep an open mind. Always. Even if those who tells you one thing are someone close to you, someone whose advice really matters, keep an open mind. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Experiences are always personal and what may be a waste of time for someone may actually strike a chord in someone else.

Orientation!

I started my PGDE on 4 December 2017 in NIE and today marked the end of Orientation I.

Orientation II will begin on 5 January 2018.

All in all, from my last post until now, there certainly has been a lot of ups and downs. Since it’s over now, I shall not dwell on it and I may decide to post it up some other day as a sort of ‘throwback’.