EASE YOUR MIND COMRADES!

Greetings and as-salam,

I miss all of you TESLians! Oh I bumped into Joy and I was truly happy to see her until I automatically called out her name in excitement. It feels real good to see coursemates outside Uni. =) I know I have posted for the 3^rd reflection, but it turns out I posted way before Dr. Adele informed us on what is required in the post. Hehe. My bad, so here is my 3^rd reflection. Caution; it will be lengthy! 

Anyway, it has been two months since we started our practicum. How are you doing? My observations went well. I was not satisfied though with my performance on the 1^st observation done by Dr. Dorothy but she assured me that all was fine, thank God! I received useful advises and constructive criticism from her as well. My strategy for the 1st observation was to have a teacher and students-centered lesson in balance but it did not really work out because students were afraid to speak up and chose to keep it to themselves but gave good feedback on homework (it shows that they did understand the lesson but scared to stand up alone and respond to my questions).

As for the 2^nd observation, I made sure everything was well planned so that at least it would be close to perfection.  Yayy, this is when I’m going to say “when there’s a will, there’s a way” and “practice makes perfect”. Frankly, I was more contented with the 2nd observation. This time, I made the lesson to be student-centered and assigned them to work in groups. By doing this, they would easily share their thoughts with group members and participate actively.

This is what I did for the 2^nd observation with Dr. Dorothy;

The main skill was on speaking, I started the lesson by showing them the movie trailer of the Avengers. The students loved it as the video was interesting and had their favourite superheroes. Next I instructed them to be in their assigned groups and gave them a short lesson on adjectives. 

The pictures of the superheroes were pasted on the whiteboard. Moving on, I explained about the ‘Golden Circle’ (served as a guideline) where they had to think of which superhero they would be talking about and why did they admire his/her qualities. 

Students then discussed the characteristics of the chosen superhero in their own group. In the mahjong paper, they were required to draw the image of the superhero and came out with his/her characteristics by drawing a mind map. Before the lesson ended, students presented in front of the class about the characteristics of their groups’ chosen superheroes.  To make it interesting, strings of different lengths were each given to every group and the lengths represented the amount of time students had to present in front of the class (one of the two presenters rolled the string on her finger while presenting about the superhero chosen. When the string had reached its end, it marked the end of their presentation). As this group activity had a lot of doings, I had assigned a task for everyone in a group so that I could cater to the issue of time constraint. 

Two observations with my mentor went all right too. When Mdm. Suguna (mentor) first came for observation, I did reading with the students. On the 2nd observation with her, I did speaking with the students as language is all about using it by the way.

This is what I did for the 2^nd observation with my mentor Mdm. Suguna;

On that particular last week of teaching, I did speaking with the students as I had focussed on the reading, writing and listening skills during the earlier weeks. To stimulate students’ minds, I showed an environmental awareness video. Next, they were told to be in their assigned groups. I pasted posters of environmental awareness on the whiteboard as examples. Subsequently, each group was told to think about their ideal environment and what needed to be included in their environmental awareness campaign (for example; animals that are facing extinction, clean river, trees and etc). Each poster must have at least two messages to be conveyed to the public. 

Next, two students from each group were chosen to present in front of the class the messages that their poster contained. Lastly, students were instructed to write a short reflection about their love towards nature in their journal or composition book. Since it was my last lesson with the class, I gave pens and tid bits to all of them before the class ended but the group that came out with a poster that had impactful messages and excellent presentation received extra tid bits.

For the time being, all of the students are having exam. Hence, I can’t teach anymore. I wish we are being given more time. At school, I will talk to Winnie (the best partner ever), go for relief and my own classes according to schedule, help my mentor and the other teachers when they need my assistance, check my students’ exercise books and etc. Sometimes Winnie and I will ask around to see if there are tasks for us to do. We did help in organizing and facilitating the MBI Workshop for teachers and Language Camp for the Form 3 students. Besides that, we are busy marking our students' exam papers.

All in all, I enjoyed my lessons with the amazing students. Anyhow, I’m not sure how everything will turn out at the end of the teaching practical, but there are two things I’m certain of; I’ve learned a lot from teachers at school and Dr. Dorothy, and I have genuinely done my best.

Sharing time of some random pictures:

Recently I fell sick and I got a cake from a student

Well, that is all from me. I do hope all of you are doing excellent! I can’t believe our practicum will end soon, time flies! Thus, ease your mind my dear friends, we have faced several challenges, nothing will hold us back.


best regards,
Farha Alia