Its been some time since I last wrote. Had to prepare for deepavali and then had family over so was busy with all that.
Am trying something new with my sec 1 english class. Divided them into groups of eight and they have to come up with a murder mystery. Whats different is that they have to act out 12 scenes from the story and photograph it. then they have write captions below the photographs and do it like a booklet or display board. They have to show me the story first so that it makes sense. They get their grammar right now but their stories are still quite childish.
Doing murder mysteries now. So as part of whole theme - we played a game identifying the murderer and murder weapon and today showed them an episode of CSI - they were quite transfixed - even after lunch break there were a streamof questions about why this happened and how did they find out and so on.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Friday, October 17, 2003
One Act = Many Consequences
The timetable change came into place and I had two classes at the same time. Solution - supposed to leave sec4 class to do their work by themseves Why? Geography easy what - they can do themselves. How to do that? their exams are in 2 weeks. so i gave my sec 1 class work and was shuttling btwn the third floor and the fifth floor.
We are having an open house for the school in feb and during the open house meeting -- the art teacher comes up with the brilliant idea that we have a english compo competition nationwide to ask students to apply and then when they come can have more pple for the open house - wonderful idea! but me and another colleague looked at each other and went " Well we have to think abt the marking!'' His comment? Oh typical teachers, you think only of the marking load'' Can you imagine? Could be more than a 1000 scripts! and i only have 9 teachers. Arghhhh - I just told them to take down the idea - we still have to get approval from the P. If they go ahead with it - i m going to ask them to hire a person to sit and look through all the scripts!
I tell u the way they do thing really drives me up the wall! No planning ahead or looking at whether we have the facilities, logistics and so on. First they decide then later sit down and think how to solve the problems. I give u an example. They decided to reshuffle classes in sec 2 according to ability so three of the classes became 4. They already decided to do it then they sat down and thought " which students in which class", Then do we have enough teachers, then after that do we have enough classrooms and then realise some of the extra classes have no whiteboard. So they move down the sec1s to make space to classes that have no aircons ( we have locked windows due to air and noise pollution outside so zero air circulation) They add in the whiteboards and guess what - its too high. Nobody says anything until a day had almost ended when i went into class and had a neck cramp trying to reach the top of the board!!! So today the sec1s moved again temporarily to another class until the aircon is fixed. One rash action = many consequences.
The timetable change came into place and I had two classes at the same time. Solution - supposed to leave sec4 class to do their work by themseves Why? Geography easy what - they can do themselves. How to do that? their exams are in 2 weeks. so i gave my sec 1 class work and was shuttling btwn the third floor and the fifth floor.
We are having an open house for the school in feb and during the open house meeting -- the art teacher comes up with the brilliant idea that we have a english compo competition nationwide to ask students to apply and then when they come can have more pple for the open house - wonderful idea! but me and another colleague looked at each other and went " Well we have to think abt the marking!'' His comment? Oh typical teachers, you think only of the marking load'' Can you imagine? Could be more than a 1000 scripts! and i only have 9 teachers. Arghhhh - I just told them to take down the idea - we still have to get approval from the P. If they go ahead with it - i m going to ask them to hire a person to sit and look through all the scripts!
I tell u the way they do thing really drives me up the wall! No planning ahead or looking at whether we have the facilities, logistics and so on. First they decide then later sit down and think how to solve the problems. I give u an example. They decided to reshuffle classes in sec 2 according to ability so three of the classes became 4. They already decided to do it then they sat down and thought " which students in which class", Then do we have enough teachers, then after that do we have enough classrooms and then realise some of the extra classes have no whiteboard. So they move down the sec1s to make space to classes that have no aircons ( we have locked windows due to air and noise pollution outside so zero air circulation) They add in the whiteboards and guess what - its too high. Nobody says anything until a day had almost ended when i went into class and had a neck cramp trying to reach the top of the board!!! So today the sec1s moved again temporarily to another class until the aircon is fixed. One rash action = many consequences.
Monday, October 13, 2003
I hate school. Strange that a teacher has to say this. Strange and a little weird that if I was in Singapore I would probably say the same thing. So is it the job or me? Or have I just lost steam and interest in the job? But as always it is not the kids that turn me off the job but the adults - the adults doing the admin. There is a timetable change which comes into effect on wednesday in the middle of the week - a single action that puts in place a stream of consequences that leads to one big mess. I can see the mess that is going to happen and I can lessen the mess to a lesser degree but at this point I am a little sick of being the one to predict these things - almost as if I am the eternal pessimist. So I have done what I can - the rest will unfold by itself.
On a positive note I had two fruitful lessons today. For English we did animal stories - the students had brought animal stories from home and I asked them to identify the main feature and asked them to contrast to traditional stories. They all knew what to do and were quick in picking up the main points. Then i pasted 4 stories on the four walls of the class and each group had to send reps to the walls to absorb as much information as possible in one min - then another rep would go and so on. After coming back to the group they had to reconstruct the story in their groups. In the follow up period they had to present the story as differently as possible to the rest of the class. Most of them acted it out and that was fun - Now they have to write a original group story for the class.
Successful Lesson No 2.
For Geography we had a five sided debate on which group deserved control of the forest. I had one round in which they all presented their points and in the second round anybody could have a go at what they felt - Oh they got really passionate and were still arguing (with some strong points) when the bell went. They didnt want the next teacher to enter the class. They only relented when I told them they could continue in the next lesson. Felt really pleased with how this lesson turned out as I observed some true learning taking place.
On a positive note I had two fruitful lessons today. For English we did animal stories - the students had brought animal stories from home and I asked them to identify the main feature and asked them to contrast to traditional stories. They all knew what to do and were quick in picking up the main points. Then i pasted 4 stories on the four walls of the class and each group had to send reps to the walls to absorb as much information as possible in one min - then another rep would go and so on. After coming back to the group they had to reconstruct the story in their groups. In the follow up period they had to present the story as differently as possible to the rest of the class. Most of them acted it out and that was fun - Now they have to write a original group story for the class.
Successful Lesson No 2.
For Geography we had a five sided debate on which group deserved control of the forest. I had one round in which they all presented their points and in the second round anybody could have a go at what they felt - Oh they got really passionate and were still arguing (with some strong points) when the bell went. They didnt want the next teacher to enter the class. They only relented when I told them they could continue in the next lesson. Felt really pleased with how this lesson turned out as I observed some true learning taking place.