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.