Coping, Adapting and hopefully Surviving

b. Reflect on your teaching practicum so far: What have you learned from your experience during TP? What kinds of challenges do you foresee as you develop as a Literature teacher in your specific school context?

My Practicum thus far has seen several rather drastic changes and shifts. At the start of the practicum, I was assigned to a CT who was teaching Secondary 3 Literature Romeo and Juliet. She was tasked to teach 57 students altogether in 3 different groups. I was supposed to take up her teaching load and for the first two weeks I did so. It was interesting and I felt that I was really building rapport with the students. 

After the March break however, my timetable was rescheduled and I was informed that I now had to teacher 3 Secondary 1 literature classes and I would only be seeing ONE group of Secondary 3 students for literature. This was quite upsetting especially since I had adjusted and prepared myself to teach the following group.

But it was the additional preparation of more lesson plans, this time on Animal Farm, and the lack of rapport and familiarity with that class that was the most discomforting. 

I have since learned that, that is the norm for my school and I should get used to it. Nonetheless it is quite challenging as it appears that I will have to get used to a constantly shifting and changing environment. That is I suppose an aspect of the particular school environment that I find myself in that I must learn to adapt and try as best to cope with as I can. 

Getting back to more pedagogical concerns, one thing that I have noticed about the students is the lack of literary skills and strategies to cope with essay writing. While the school vision is quite weighty, at times I feel that the basic skills of literary writing are lacking in the students. 

My challenge then will be to focus on building and developing students' core skills: writing, close reading and textual analysis and inference to allow for better response and critical thinking about the ideas and questions driving each literary text. 

The texts will always change, hopefully by concentrating and focusing on fundamental skills, it will aid students in better preparing to tackle and take on the exams as well as the various literary texts that will come their way in the future. 

Reflection #4 (due 9 March, Saturday)

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1. Describe the state of literature in your school - state how many classes are taking pure and elective lit at upper sec, how many students are there in each class, what texts are being used. Describe the state of lit in your school - Are teachers passionate about lit? Does the principal emphasize lit? how do the students perceive lit? What are the typical approaches to teaching and assessment?

2. Refer to debates in the media last week (see ST report "Big drop in number of students taking literature" on Feb 25 followed by forum articles and Sunday Times report). Get involved in the discussion and give your views on these matters e.g. what have you learnt from the discussion? What troubles you about the discussion? What is your own opinion about the value of lit or factors accounting for its decline based on what you’ve observed in your own school?  

QCR523 Posting 3: Learning Journey Reflections

Reflect on your class learning journey. What are some principles and practices that you can take away from the experience?

Deadline: 23 February 2013 MN

QCR523 Posting 2: Alternative Assessments

Explore in some depth one kind of alternative assessment. You may:

(1) Read one of the optional articles from Weeks 3 to 4. 
(2) Google or do a literature search on the same or similar form of alternative assessment. 
(3) Explore some other idea not mentioned in your readings.
  
Share about your readings and your thoughts about the specific form of assessment discussed. You should use this as an opportunity to explore an alternative assessment that you may be interested in for either your essay assignment or for your own classroom execution.

Deadline: 9 Feb 2013, Sat, Noon

QCR523 Posting 1: Purpose of Assessment

From your readings and your classroom discussions and activities, what is one principle of effective assessment that you would define for yourself as a classroom teacher?
Deadline: 20 Jan, Sun 2359 hrs.

Jodee's Reflections

PLEASE POST ABOUT: (1) 3 TIPS FOR TEACHING/ CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT/ PLANNING GLEANED FROM MICROTEACHING. (2) GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM YOUR OWN OR OTHER LESSON OBSERVATION.
1) Make seemingly difficult and obscure terms understandable and applicable to the students

At times, when we start out teaching students that we are not yet familiar with, we tend to overestimate or underestimate their abilities when it comes to teaching them new concepts. Especially for a subject like literature, where many carry a preconception that it is obscure, difficult to score in an examination and that it is irrelevant to their lives, I find it very important to keep that in mind, so that I can hopefully debunk those ideas in my lessons during the course of the year. I especially liked Andrea's simple activity where students got to experience discrimination as something arbitrary and senseless. This made a seemingly difficult idea immediately relatable and relevant by encouraging movement in the class, at the same time making literature fun.

2) Encourage a safe and participative classroom culture

Especially in a learning environment where students are expected to sit and absorb information that is being given to them, it might be difficult at the start to get students to voice out their opinions and speak up in class. I've learnt that it helps to lighten the classroom atmosphere with humour, as Brennan and Samuel have proven in their lessons. Their friendly and approachable tone of voice and questioning methods help encourage the students to attempt at providing answers to the questions posed. Debates such as those conducted in Wee Kiat and Damien's lessons also encourage a participative culture, and forces students to take a stand and defend their beliefs. This means that students are now active participants with a personal stake in their learning.

3) Making literature seem easy doesnt mean you have to dumb it down

I was impressed with the way Pepper, Mark and Jia Min incorporated difficult literary terms eg. metaphysical into their lesson to great effect - students were neither thrown into the deep end to struggle with the terms nor had the term drilled/force fed to them. In Mark's case they were taught to break down the larger term into its root word, and his explanations tapped on the student's prior knowledge by linking various other subjects such as geography and history in a true multi-disciplinary manner. Perhaps, it is important to remember that while we attempt to make literature simple and understandable, we still have to give them the right terms to work with, albeit with a gentle introduction, an interesting lead in activity or more scaffolding as they work through the meaning of the literary term.

Tiying's Reflections

PLEASE POST ABOUT: (1) 3 TIPS FOR TEACHING/ CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT/ PLANNING GLEANED FROM MICROTEACHING. (2) GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM YOUR OWN OR OTHER LESSON OBSERVATION.

Tip 1) From my own microteaching, I learnt that while it is good to be firm and strict, too much firmness may impede the flow of discussion. Students need a safe environment before they feel like they can voice their opinions. 
In this aspect, I believe that Mark has done a really good job. His humor made his class fun and enjoyable, and I believe that his students will find class discussions and debates natural in class. I'm not a humorous person though, so I'll admire his classroom management style and create more scaffolding questions to help my students think deeper on the text.

Tip 2) It might be good to remember that students are not familiar with certain technical terms that we have taken for granted. Words like "feminism", "social stratification", are very confusing for students and they tend to lose interest easily. It would be good to spend more time dwelling on such words and allow students to develop an awareness and understanding of such words.

Tip 3) Brennan's debate class is also a good way of forcing students (like me) to speak out more in class. By having students discuss in groups first before having certain students present also allows them to have some mental preparation. So, instead of merely calling on students suddenly (and thus giving them the shock of their lives), it might be good for students to be prepared first. Their discussions would also be more productive, thoughtful, and responsible since they have more time to form opinions and justify them.