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.