Week 14: For this week, I was told to prepare a lesson on “Types of software”. Before I actually deliver the lesson, I had some assistant from a lecturer “Mike” from my university. He was very helpful (he was still on contract leave but he comes to uni and work!!) and very knowledgeable in the area of computer studies (who wouldn’t when you have taught it for 20+ years). I learned a lot because the way he taught was very simple and straightforward and he even told me what questions to ask and how to teach some simple concept to the students. After that, I had an observation from teacher Sabariah again on the 3rd and 4th period. She made a comment saying that now I do know a few names of my class which made me laugh. She also mentioned that this lesson better in a sense where the questions I asked help in relating to the students. For example, teaching the concept of multiuser and single user, I used TV as multiuser and asked the students if toothbrush is multi or single users? They laugh on hearing the question but at least they understood the concept. The bad thing that she observed however is the somehow monotone which I do from time to time. She said I need to have that changed and I do know I have that kind of problem years ago (thought I should have been much better!!). During recess, there was a power failure at most of the buildings in the school, luckily it returned during the 8th period which she told me to relief which was for 30 minutes only. The lesson remains the same where they continue on with the PowerPoint. Some students did do their work but tried to browse onto the Internet to sites such as FaceBook. Then it struck me because the lab for the upper secondary are quite outdated and there is no internet access, which is not really fair for my students. Let’s just hope those condition will be change soon in the future. Just before I go back, I saw teacher Jojo and she asked me how the homework that I marked was and I told her that the students are struggling with definition of some terminology. She agree so and said that is something that we need to work on. That’s it for the day.
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Week 13: I finished the 2nd part of the topic “File organization” for the class of 1st, 2nd and 5th period which I continued from week 12. For 1st and 2nd period, I felt that because I’ve didn’t managed to finished it on time from last week, there wasn’t enough substance for this week. In fact, I was teaching that a bit slower in pace compared to the usual pace. However, I tried to make it up with more questions and ask them to see if they understood the concept. As for the 5th period, as usual, I had to speed up the pace more but this time I felt that the 30 minutes timeslot was just alright and I finished the 2nd part of the topic nicely. As for the 3rd and 4th period, teacher Sabariah (H.O.D) decided she will take these classes up. I just sat somewhere near the projector and the laptop and helped her move through the presentation slides. In her class, she knew most of the names of the student, something which I still couldn’t do yet and sometimes refers to a particular word in Malay, I feel it was very helpful to the local students as they seem to understand it better after that. It was a class about “Database” and she roughly covered 1/3 of it as it is a big topic. She said that this topic was more on practical rather than theory so she hoped to rush through the theory part and get into the practical. Some student handed in the homework from the last week as well. For the 8th period, I relief her class and she told me to tell the class to continue working their assignment on PowerPoint from last week.
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Week 12: In this week, I continued on teaching the class with the lesson from last week. For the 1st five periods, this is the first time where there is no teacher in my classroom. It seems like a weird thing because all this while I have someone there with me, maybe I’m feeling a little insecure (other teachers, friends and college, actually don’t like someone there with them). For the 1st ad 2nd period, I taught “File organization” (1st part) to them, while I try finishing what I left on the 3rd and 4th period (2nd part of File Organization). On the 5th period, I try on the 1st part of file organization and again because there is only 30 minutes, I kept it very simple and actually finish the lesson again. So I find that I should really try to keep things simple and short sometimes. The 8th period for this week is slightly different. I didn’t go to the usual class because I was asked to relief the class of year 7 of teacher Liyana. I was given a set of paper with questions on them and was asked to take care of the class. I’ve met them before in the 1st few weeks and find them to be very active. When I gave them the question, most of them find it hard to answer and asked me whether they can refer to the textbook. I told them to answer the questions first and they manage to answer the more generic question. After they tried, then I told them to refer to the textbook and they cheered. After that they manage to answer the entire questions. When they finished, I look at the answer and find that they need to improve some of their English in grammar or just the construction of the sentence, but overall they did well. When I collected all the papers, I discussed with them. When I finish the discussion, there is still 20 minutes and I told them to read the next chapter and I will test them with some question. They are just so enthusiastic and are just so active in doing the things I told them to do. It was quite noisy but I find it they can be enjoyable.
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Week 11: In the 1st period, I was informed by teacher Jojo to start the class (1st and 2nd) period by using the last week’s notes (Data representation). During the class, Dr. Leong came to observe me and did some grading there and then. After that he told me he had to rush to tutong for another observation. For the 3rd and 4th period, I introduced a new topic (File organization) to the class. The teacher in charge (Hjh Noor) who is also the H.O.D., assess me while observing my lesson. I find that I had spent too much time on the activities and I need to improve more on getting to know my student and time management. In the end, I only managed to finish half of the lesson which I had intended to teach. In the 5th period, I taught data representation again, but this time I kept it simple and manage to go through the lesson by shortening the activity. In the end I manage to finish the lesson, so I learned that I can also keep it simple and finish the lesson. And again as usual, I was again at the 8th period and this time the class is to try using some sort of PowerPoint. I was quite amazed that they are well competent enough in using the basic features and are very enthusiastic in completing the work assigned to them.
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Week 10 School Holiday
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Week 9: Public holiday
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Week 8: In the first 2 period of the morning, teacher Jojo let me participate in her class partly so she can see how I handle the class. She had written some questions about control system on the whiteboard and lets the students take their time in answering the questions. She then passed me the answer sheet and let me takes over the class. Instead of just giving answers, since it was a combination of 2 classes, I divided up the class into 2 sections and do a short question and answer where I encourage students to answer the questions in a group. Some of the answers prove to be a little hard and maybe they haven’t fully grasped the concept, so I had to give some clues to kick start their brain. Maybe because I’m a new teacher (smiled a lot), they are more open-minded and didn’t worry if their answers were wrong. We had a small discussion before I gave them the appropriate answers.
In the 3rd and 4th period, I was asked to teach the topic “Data representation” which was assigned to me at week 6, while teacher Sabariah (H.O.D.) observes me. It was a relatively smaller class than before since we only had 6 students. I went into the introduction of the lesson and briefly go into the fundamentals of this topic. Basically it is all about how information is stored in the computer and computers only communicate in numbers language while we communicate in English or other language. I used the projector as I had compile notes of my own the night before using MS word. I will post the lesson content and lesson plan shortly after in my blog. During the lesson, I had designed some activities for them and one of the tasks was to convert their first name into binary digits by showing them the ASCII table. That way they can visualise how the computer sees and understand what is being input. After that, they convert some binary digits which were given by me back to normal words. Now that I’ve made sure that they understood the fundamental of the topic, I go into the conversion of decimals into binary digits step by steps. Now I know that knowing the subject matter and teaching can be a different thing because it took me a few attempts to actually explain it the simplest way and the trick behind the conversion. I found out that the students there don’t ask as much but they would do the work/exercise that the teachers assigned to them. After several tries and success, we move on to try converting binary digits into decimal. They manage to do half of it before their class was over and the rest was assigned as homework. During the lesson, teacher Sabariah did comment that my fonts on MS word were a little bit too small, so I resized it there and then. I actually thought that I would have slightly more things to teach which relate to this topic but then I found out that I only need to teach how to convert decimals to binary digits and vice versa only
In the 5th period, it was teacher Jojo’s class again and we’ve got 8 students in this time. She lets me handle the class again but this time the topic was more on the revision of MS Word. This time, she hands out the questions to them and gave them 10 minutes to answers. Since I was supposed to take over, I divide the class into 2 teams so both sides can do a discussion in this topic and formulate the answer. I found out that this group was less reluctant in asking and answering since they are in group (I’ve observed the same class for several weeks already). After they gave me the answers, we had a small talk and I gave them the answers. I took a picture for this class.
After the class, during the recess, I stayed at the labs since there are no assigned seats for me at the office (I had to sit somewhere and use other teacher’s table that were absent). After recess, I’ve meet the teacher who was suppose to handle the next class (form 3). We chatted for a while and realise that no students was coming. After 30 minutes later, she discovered that the students had just come back from the book convention at the indoor stadium. She knew the students would be tired, so she asked everyone whether they want to go to the canteen. At the canteen, she bought me a drink and when everyone had some rest, she begins talking casually and start to ask some questions to the students. It formed a nice discussion as everyone was more relaxed and happy to do so since they are outside the “typical” classroom settings.
For the 8th periods, I went with teacher Sabariah for the ICT lab, which is at one floor below the computer studies lab. Stpri has ICT and computer studies lesson. ICT lesson is more instructional where each class has 1 period a week to learn how to use application such as MS Word while computer studies lesson are more generic and is the ones that is assess for ‘O’ levels. While we were there, I sort of become her second in charge in helping her with the class. She would use the projector and show the instruction of how to use the simple features of MS Word using the projector and the students will be seated on their chairs and follows the instruction. Because there are almost 30 students, it can become quite chaotic as everyone is trying to complete the task and when many try to raise their hand to seek help. She told me that if I wasn’t there, she would appoint 2 to 3 students who are more competent and when they finishes some of the task, they were to teach and help those around them who learn slower. That was my story for the whole day.
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Week 7: National Day. Was at the stadium, met the principal there and manage to take some photos with her and the other teachers.
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Week6: No classes due to rehearsal (dancing) for Brunei’s National day. Mostly I stayed at the office where I continue on with my studies and during which I ask Teacher Jojo of where I can find resources on exercises for the students. She gave me a pile of notes and exercises for Form 4 student which I went to photocopy in the afternoon. At the last two lessons, I went on to the class for year 7 with Teacher Liyana to observe and help out if I can. I was also notified by Teacher Sabariah that my lesson will be on Data Representation. I took a picture quick picture.
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Week 5: In this week, Teacher Jojo and Teacher Sabariah were just about to finish and conclude the topic of control system. However I noticed that both use different approaches. Teacher Jojo wrote down on the board of what she taught before and then question the students whereas Teacher Sabariah uses a mind mapping technique to conclude the lesson. Both know what to teach and what to ask from student.
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Week 4: For today, I am still observing Teacher Jojo in her class. She has moved on to the topic of “Data logging” which is a part of the topic from week 2 “Control system”. In Teacher Sabariah class however, she lets the student follow on the work from week 2 because there was a miscommunication which results in no teaching for those 2 periods. After that, I observed one more class by Teacher Jojo and went back to the office. After the recess, I went to the lab just to see who will be teaching later. The other teacher was friendly enough and said “Yes” to me when I asked her whether I can have a peek at how she teaches. I took a picture for that.
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Week 3: Chinese new year celebration.
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Week 2: It was a rainy day with heavy traffic and I reached Stpri at 7:30am. I met the principal who told me where to sign in (next to her office) and then was brought along and introduced to a teacher (Jojo) who was teaching form 4 (topic: Control System) in the lab with 16 students. The teacher was friendly and told me it was also her 1st time to teach form 4(same as me) and she gave me the compiled notes for form 4 (given by the previous HOD). After the class was over, I followed her to the office and sat there and I was surprised when 5 students came up to me in the office and said I will be their teacher for their class. Apparently they had waited for half an hour in the computer lab before. I didn’t have a clue of what was happening, but I followed them back to the classroom. Since they have the textbook, I instructed them to read it and reassured them there will be an appropriate teacher for them the following week. There were only 5 students in that class. After that I manage to observe 1 more class by teacher Hjh Nor Sabariah. She teaches form 1 and uses the DVD teaching materials with projector to teach. The children seemed to be entertained by the visual teaching materials and she had a lot of positive interaction with them. On some of the English shown, she explained it with the Malay language (bilingual) and the students liked it because they can understand it faster. I took a picture of the classroom setting.
Note: I noticed that there is national anthem every morning and they pray when the class starts (because I had been studying at CHMS), those things are something new to me and something which I have to get used to. I’ve also noticed that there is homework to be given after every class. I also got to know a few teachers by that time.
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Week 1: There was confusion about whether there is any TP today because there is one lecture today (Monday) scheduled for Mike. Most of us came to university, met up in class and then we found out that we were supposed to report in to individual school, hah! Anyway we manage to use the time to sort out our entire schedule and some of us got all of the signatures from our lecturers.
I actually went to Stpri to report in on Tuesday. The principal was friendly and understanding when I told her what had happened on Monday. She got my details down and told me to come back next week. I was surprised to know that I do not have any HOD (Head of Department) because she just got transferred.
Kenny, need to maintain your TP journal.