Eight Week of practicum at MRSM Balik Pulau

Day 1 - The schedule for this week is back to normal teaching and learning timetable after the hectic exam week. I spent most of my time during last weekend to mark students' paper and I spent the earliest lesson that I have with the students to discuss about their exam paper. By marking those exam paper, I knew about students' English performance on writing and reading comprehension as well as their IQ level to answer higher order thinking (HOT) question. I found out that most of my students have problem with information transfer and reading comprehension question and they have problem to think out of the box for  HOT question. Thus, I have decided that for those who failed their exam or acquired the lowest mark will have an intervention session with me. This intervention session means that I will provide a piece of reading comprehension or Grammar exercise each week for them, and they will need to see me around 5 to 10 minutes each Friday or Thursday after school to discuss about the answer. I will also provide a another reading comprehension or grammar exercise for the whole class, but they need to do it during their night "prep" once a week. Those exercise will focus on reading to enhance their comprehension as well as to provide more chances for them to meet a lot of low frequency words.

Since most of the students also have low English proficiency in speaking, I will provide exercise to them on speaking activities, probably debate.

eleventh week of practicum in MRSM Balik Pulau

Day 1 - It is the first day of school. The school is lacking of paper supply for photocopying any exercise paper. Thus, I have to figure out how to prepare "drilling" exercise for my students. I have finish all teaching topic according to the curriculum. Therefore, I am focusing on drilling them to prepare them for their final examination starting from today.

Day 2 - My colleagues and I ended up planning on exchanging our homeroom class. The teaching Day will be on Thursday (4th day of this week). It was like to give more exposure for us to teach different students in different classes and be out of our comfort. zone (the students that we know and that we have good rapport). Since, both of my class is Form 1 students, I exchange my Form 1 with Hamiza's Form 2 class. Aizat has two Form 2 class, so I ended up letting him teaching my Form 1 class. So, each of us will be teaching different Form class than the one that we have.

I do love my students, just like I am loving my own kids. They are my lovely kids. Their English learning and exposure is important to me. Even though, I will let Aizat "baby sit" them for one lesson, I did help Aizat by preparing the rough idea on what the lesson plan, teaching materials and exercise should be good for my students. This way, I am making it a little bit easier for Aizat to teach Form 1 students because it will be Aizat's first time teaching Form 1 students. He is not familiar with the curriculum. Furthermore, as an English teacher, I guess I do know my student's learning needs and wants as well as their IQ level, so it is better for both, Aizat and my students, if I help Aizat to prepare it.


Day 3 - Its school public holiday.

Day 4 - It was the exchanging class day. I am a little bit nervous on teaching Hamiza's Form 2 class. The form 2 have higher level of English's proficiency and I cant treat them just like my Form 1 students. It was easier for them to understand my instruction compared to my Form 1. By teaching them, they taught me on the needs of looking for different exercises for student with different level of English proficiency, different way to approach them and different way of giving feedback to them.

Day 5 - I realised that the previous English of my 1 Farabi have not taught them of poem "Sad I am" yet while I have plan to make revision about literature that I have taught with both classes. so, I did plan and taught my 1 Farabi the introduction to poem this morning. I will revise the poem again in the next lesson, next week. The experience on teaching other poem with them and other class, make it easy for me to apply the same skills with this poem.

tenth week practicum in MRSM Balik Pulau

Day 1 - It was teaching observation day. Even though the school was on leave for two days due to Haze problem. However, since the me, my other practicums colleague and lecturer, Mr. Jonathan, had planned to have teaching observation, thus, we proceed with it. I had asked the permission from Principal to allow me and my colleague to asked our students to gather for two periods lesson just for the observation. 

During the post-teaching discussion with my lecturer, I am glad that there was a few positive comment from him in relation to my personality and the way I carried myself as a teacher in teaching the. There was also a few constructive feedback in relation to the type of activities that I have planned for my students, in which use exercise based on context. 

Day 2 - There was no teaching or class today, so, I spent my time preparing teaching materials for the next day. 

Day 3 -  I asked students to exchange their comic with partner and asked them to rewrite the grammar mistake that I have checked with correct words or provide comment on the comic. I found out that this activity allowed them to focus on grammar with light reading and they did enjoyed reading each other's comic. 

Day 4 - I have started to allocate the first 10 minutes of my two periods lesson for each class to  do silent reading since last week. This is because I want to ensure that my students will read somethings for each week. I will be glad if they have their own reading materials outside of class time, but silent reading will ensure that everyone will have at least 20 minutes English reading time for each week. I I chose the article that they have to read. They can select different article for each time. in order to ensure that they did their reading, I have attached a paper for them to drop any comment and write their name each time they read the article. After they did their silent reading for a few times, which is since last week, my students had started to make full use of dictionary to find the meaning of any new or unfamiliar vocabulary to them and seems to able to write more to comment on the reading. 

I did running dictation with 1K. I found it too burdensome for the students from 1F to wrote 5 paragraphs when I did it with them last week, thus, I reduced the requirement to 3 paragraphs for 1K.

Day 5 - I was aware that the chosen text for today's lesson have a few low frequency word and new vocabulary for them. Therefore, I have set up "vocabulary quizzes" for pre-task in today's lesson. the quizzes required students to find out the definition of the chosen word and create two sentences using that words and write it on white board. I chose the vocabulary from the text that I will use in the task part for the lesson.  I found this pre-task activity to be helpful for them to do reading comprehension exercise afterwards and they are able to understand the article provided for them.  

Ninth week of practicum in MRSM Balik Pulau

Day 1 - the Monday was the first day of school after a week of holiday. Therefore, I took the opportunities of conducting speaking activity during a period lesson. I asked the students to do the 4-3-4 activity to talk about their school holiday activity. It was a good activity to allow students to practice their speaking skills as they were talking about their experience with their friends. however, there were a few boys that reluctant to participate in the activity because they were shy to be partner with girls.  thus, I need to figure it out on how to ensure that there is no gender issue or getting their cooperation while conducting any mixed pair and group activity.

On the other hand, when I taught students on Preposition, I found out that the "following-direction game" and demonstration on the use of preposition with volunteer engage them. The games and demonstration also enhance their memory and understanding on it.

Day 2 - The homework and the discussion of the topic that I taught yesterday has successfully allow the students to have better understanding on the topic, Preposition.

Day 3 - My homework for the student on their last school holiday was to create a comic on the theme of "exploration". Not all students did the comic, Thus I need to figure out in how I need to encourage them to finish and submit my homework. On the other hand, the used of comic allow them to be creative, create their narrative and allow them to creatively choose the language style and tenses that they want. When I was checking their comic, I am able to understand their ability in writing and their use of language. Different essay task with different topic provide different challenges for students to write.

Day 4 - It was a blocking class on the fourth day. That  was teaching two class at a time, which means 46 students at a time. It was hard to manage 46 students' behaviour at time, thus I should look for different way to get their attention on me while I am providing any instruction to them. I also need to keep rephrase my instruction to ensure that they understand it and went to each group to check on them. The activity of "expect group" was a new activity to them. So, It took longer time for me to explained about it to them. but, I demonstration on the activity always work in explaining it to the students.

Day 5 - the game on "running dictation" is also a new idea to the students. Therefore, I learnt that demonstration and rephrase on my instruction always important to explain new things to students.

Seventh week of practicum in MRSM Balik Pulau

This week is all about examination, which is Standardised test II for Form 1, Form 2 and Form 4 while Form 3 and Form 5 are having PT3 and SPM  Trial exam respectively. I spent the week to prepare lesson plan and materials for next week lesson and to mark test paper for my class. 

sixth week of practicum in MRSM Balik Pulau

Day 1 – It was Independence Day for Malaysia, so it was school holiday for everyone.

Day 2 – I was so happy in the morning since I thought that I have no class on that day. However, it ended up that my students told me that I have class with them. There was a lighting and storm of nervousness coming to me. Luckily, I have prepared some materials since last week, so, I ended up using them. A remainder for me next time, I need to plan ahead, always the timetable and always have back up plan for my future lesson.

On the other notes, I got some reimbursement money from the school in relation to the stealing phone cases.

Day 3 – I was planning to play ‘poison box’ game to check student understands on Tenses with 1 Farabi. However, we ended up spending time to check school homework and providing new worksheet. I guessed one period lesson wont be enough to do much activity.

Since my 1K students’ learning were ahead of 1F, I ended up spent one period lesson to play ‘poison box’ game with them. At least, the student were having fun playing the games and revising the tenses along with it.

I had two meetings for the day. The evening meeting was to discuss on the students’ co curriculum achievement and how to key in data for them. The other meeting was at night time. The night meeting was monthly hostel warden meeting to update every warden on the event that was happening around the hostel and to find out alternative to overcome students’ discipline problem in hostel.

Day 4 – For today’s lesson, I had problem with deciding on the punishment needed for my students. This is because even when I have reminds them the day and the night before the class, some of them ended up didn’t bring any materials for the lesson. It was supposed to be their learning aids for the day. So, I think I need to find the alternative to ensure that they do provide the materials needed for my future lesson with them. However, at least, I have the backup plan of sharing some music to them to give some idea to them.

I found out that there is a weak student in my 1K. He cant even understand or comprehension my simple instruction which was “prepare your favourite song lyrics” or “just write any lyrics of the song that you can remember”. He said he cant think of my sentences at all for the whole lesson. I tried to help him by providing some song such as the simple song as ABC song and guide him to write a few sentences about the song. However, he said that he don’t know what the ABC song is about, which showed to me that he have problem with English and he needs extra help with it.

At the night time, I have extra class with 1F to dicuss about some homework exercise that I gave to them. This extra class was intended to ensure that they can catch up with other class and prepare them for next week standardized test.

Day 5 – I have class with 1F only for today. I did the same activities with 1K, which was “my favourite song”. It tooks them only one period of the lesson to complete the task, compared to 1K students that needs 2 period. Therefore, they were allowing me to do some game to discuss and revise about some tenses that I couldn’t finish in previous lesson.

Fifth week in MRSM Balik Pulau

Day 1 – Today is the first day of the fifth week for me as a practicum teacher in MRSM Balik Pulau. Today I have been assigned to teacher one more class which is Form 1 Farabi. I am supposed to start teaching them next week, but considering that they haven’t had any English class since their English teacher move to another school a month ago. Therefore, I decided to see them today to check on what they have learnt and to plan on their learning needs. I hope that I can start to teach them as soon as I can so that they can catch up with my other class.

I taught them the poem ‘New Break’ in my 1k class today. I was surprise to know that they were able to think of some reasoning and interpret some of the line in the poem with just a little bit of help from me despite they haven’t learnt about poem much before.  I guessed I cant judge them anymore, but work with them to know them better.

Day 2 – My second day this week start with I was preparing the teaching aid for the day and was trying to prepare lesson plan for the next days. Then, I went to observe Hamiza’s Form 1 class. They were playing dodgeball game. During the games, the students needs to provide certain number of adjectives words before they were hit my ball. I thought that was one of idea that I can use with my students to ensure there will be production of output while they are playing games.

 I planned the charade games to teach adjectives with 1K students. They found the game as fun and they are waiting to play the same games next time. It was good to know that they were able to used adjectives words to guess the word during the games. I am thinking about using the same games with my other class, 1F.

After that, I went to observe Hamiza’s Form 2 class. She was doing debate about advertisement on the topic of artist and football player.  Those topics are some of the interesting yet familiar topic for student. It does help them to talk in English on what they familiar with.

Day 3 – It was an exciting day for me. My mentor praised me on the materials that I have prepared on New’s Break and she asked me to make copies for the whole Form 1. I am glad that it was useful for the students. However, since I will have block lesson (combine two class which are 1K and 1F for tomorrow lesson), I find it hard to find a conducive venue for 47 students. It is a challenge for me to prepare materials for them too and to ensure that I am able to manage two at a time. Hope it will go well for Thursday’s block lesson.

On the other note, I need to plan on ‘speed’ lesson for 1F so that they can catch up with other form 1 class. I might have to just teach 3 topics of grammar in one lesson. They have learnt those topics during their primary school English class, so my lesson will most probably be the revision lesson for them.

Day 4 - I found no other good venue than seminar hall for the block lesson. The lesson that I prepared for them was their first time encounter short stories in English, so they dont know much about the element in the short stories such as theme, characters etc. but, luckily, they have learnt about novel for Bahasa Melayu, so they could related it to the Fair's Fair. I tried to mixed them and ensure that they can work in group eventhough they are from two different class to ensure that they can have a lot of speaking opportunities. However, at the end of the lesson, one of the student told me that he wants to do activities alone and dont want to be involve in group activities anymore, as he find it a bit stressful and some students were not cooperate in finishing the task. It was expected to hear that, and I had to explain the reasons behind those selected activities to ensure that all students understand my lesson plan and intention.

Day 5 - 1F encountered the poem of "News Break" for the first time today. The lesson went well but, the activities was different from what I had plan for 1K, which was I didnt do the presentation part, but I just proceed with puzzle. This was because I am thinking about need to speed up the lesson and reduce their work since I have given a lot of homework to them for the week and for the weekend in order to catch up with other class.