Term 1 week 7

It has still been a mountain of assignments to deal with. Somehow I have managed to mark and return them on time. I’ve also manage to write feedback on individual pieces of work given, as much as I can manage (and what my poor red pen has been subjected to).  However I’m not sure how my students understand or interpret what I’ve written. I guess only in the follow-up assignment then will I be able to know.

As for Music, I’m so pleased with most of the Sec 1 classes actually. They’re currently learning to play “When You Believe” on the xylo. So far progress has been good. They have (strangely) been able to progress much faster than the students from past years. Not sure what is the reason though. In fact, 1E2 is so fast they are ready to move on to another song next week. Of course there are also those who are lagging behind simple because of a poorer eye-hand-coordination. They just seem to take a longer time to learn the instrument.

For the Sec 3 class, the number is dwindling. Woohoo!! For once, I’m happy students are not turning up. I’ve also taken the assumption that they are not interested to come anymore. Cos at the beginning of this year, I had more than 25 students in my class and I was pretty worried about having to accomodate the schedule for sooo many school.  Well, I’m down to 14. I believe it’s going to dwindle somemore. I’m in the midst of marking their CA1 test and it becomes clearer who are the ones who are not doing well. But my question is that they are not doing well because of a lack of aptitude or simply because they have missed precious lesson(s) because they were cropped up with something organised by their school on that fateful Monday afternoon. I made it clear that I’m not obliged to do any make-up for a 3hrs lesson. I did email them my teaching materials. But there’s not much I can do if they miss a 3hrs lesson. Well, I hope this serves as a wakeup call to those who have been missing class and also a warning to everyone else not to miss the lesson as the consequences are detrimental!!!!!!!!!!

After this week’s AFL, I’m quite glad we finally got down to something practical. We got down to relooking our SIO and ensuring our lesson objectives are stated really clearly. I guess it has to be that clear that students can even tell themselves how they fare at the end. My only question that still remains is that if we need to stop to backtrack at some point of the lesson, then how can we move on? How about backtracking simply because students haven’t been paying attention? It may just signal to them that it’s ok not to pay attention cos the teacher’s going to reteach anyway… Teacher’s Complex.. To reteach or not to reteach? That’s the question..

Term 1 Crazy 6

Mad mad week… With all the assignments for CA1 that need to be completed, it’s been really a rush. For EL mainly, there’s 4 assignments to be done by week9. If you divide that evenly, that’s about 2 assignments per week. The pertinent problem is the marking. Thank God for 1NA, there’s only the Introduction to be done, not the full composition. I wonder how the other EL teachers who have 2 or even THREE classes to manage. With only 1, I’m already quite stressed.

Well, because of all these crazy madness, I haven’t really been able to “teach” since 2 weeks ago. Just preparing them for the assignment has taken away much time that I would normally use to really “teach”. For e.g. I had to forgo time for oral presentation and journal discussion, which in my opinion are more lasting language skills than writing a composition per se. I am hoping to be able to recover lost time when the CA1 is over.

SO since it’s a crazy week, I have only little time to spare for my reflection and will have to end off here. (See the irony?) I wonder if this is meant to be like this? Hm….

Term 1 Week 5

I’ve been thinking a lot about this AFL thing. So far the 2 sessions conducted by external vendors haven’t been VERY useful. But to say they were useless would be a lie. Some things mentioned did start me thinking about some of my classroom practices. One of them is the questioning technique and how we respond to students when they give answers in class. We often ignore all the “incorrect” answers and only highlight the “model” answer. I’ve learnt during session 2 that we ought to tap on the “incorrect” answers to show to everyone what is lacking in that answer. I have tried to comment on my students’ answers during lessons thereafter. But even after I do, students do not respond. So I’m not sure if my comment about the “less-than-perfect” answer go through to them.

Another thing about AFL in general that I have been thinking about it the scary fact that after teaching for so long, you start to realise that each time you walk out of a classroom after a lesson, what is the reality of how much learning has taken place? So much has been put into the preparation and teaching but jus how much learning has taken place? 

During my Sec 3 Music lesson on Mon afternoon, I decided to try out something, not something that was taught in the session though. Hehe… I just wanted to find out how much the students were learning from the what-seemed-like-an- eternal 3hrs lesson. 

I did a simple listening worksheet on a Fugue – the lesson for that day. I had a list of (a) to (i) questions. Some questions were evaluative in nature while others were factual. At the end of the listening exercise, I pointed out which were the factual questions. There were 5 altogether. These 5 were the litmus test of how much the students had been paying attention. For each of the 5 questions, I got the class to show by raising hands who got them right. This was also a way for me to know if I had been effective in teaching the key points of the lesson. There was 1 particular question where not many got correct. It was a simple concept of finding out the number of voices in the Fugue by interpreting a simple symbol. Simple it was, most of them didn’t get it. Then I realised I didn’t put much emphasis on it during the lesson. As for the few who got it, they were probably the MOST attentive in class and caught what I said in that brief moment. I knew it was my fault for not placing enough emphasis on it.

Through this simple exericse, I achieved a couple of things. First I found out who were the ones who REALLY paid attention and understood almost everything I taught (and conversely, who didn’t). Second, the students also got to see or realise for themselves if they were seeing stars or achieving them during the lesson. Lastly and most important, the students who made an effort to follow the lesson had their morale boosted upon knowing where they now stand in the class. I thought I should do this more often at the end of every lesson. A pity many times I have more to cover than the time I have.

Term 1 Week 4

This week is a short week due to CNY. Thank God for holidays such as these! But after this CNY hols, it’s gonna be a holiday draught until the March break. *sob sob*

I’ve been talking much about my Music lessons and have been leaving my English lessons out of the picture. Think I should start the ball rolling…

My EL class is 1N2. Until now I do not know all their names even though I see them almost everyday.

Currently the class is seated in groups and thus not all of them are facing the front all the time. This gets very irritating when you are teaching as you have no idea what they are doing. It’s worse for those whose backs are facing you. These people just don’t have the decency to turn their chairs to face the front. They have to be constantly told and reminded and rereminded again and again. It’s really exasperating I would say.  I think this arrangement is only ideal for group work sessions, definitely not all the time, and especially not when you are teaching (i.e. chalk-and-talk). I do not understand how some teachers can do that. I have yet to find anyone who can give me a logical explanation to this problem.  I am tempted to get them to move back to pairs during my lessons but am afraid this would waste time and generate unconstructive noise.

As such, I find that what I have been teaching for the past 4 weeks have been rather ineffective. Speaking objectively, I think the lessons I have prepared on Writing Effective Introductions for Narratives have been good so far. In terms of content,  resources and activities, they would be effective meeting the targetted result. The only issue now is the conducting of actual lessons. Sad to say, I can only say that only some of them have benefited fully from these.

Thus, I gave individual piece of work after a series of group work activities, to assess the learning. (AFL…jackpot!) I would say I was pleasantly surprised that most were able to write pretty good introductions. Apart from the widespread of grammatical errors, students were generally able to apply the various writing techniques taught. Now my only wish is for them to retain what has been taught, especially for the exams. The sickening thing about teaching language is that retention rate is often very low.

SO, the big question mark still remains – How should I deal with the sitting arrangement? It irks me to the core..

Term 1 Week 3

I have started lessons officially this week. Got into the flow of lessons and all that humdrum.

This week at the Sec 1’s GM lesson, I introduced the song ”When You Believe” (from movie “Prince of Egypt”) as the song they will be learning to play on the xylophone and eventually on the piano. What amazed me was when I started to play the simple tune on the piano, these students wowed with eyes wide-open and a few mouths gasping. I’m not being modest here but the melody I played was really a simple one; not even both hands; just the right hand. Some more spontaneous classes even clapped after I finished playing the tune.

I knew these responses were not to patronise me; they were from the hearts of very green young people. I’m really not sure why there was such a response but the only reason I can think of is that they are so lack of exposure to music or even the arts, and this can explain why any simple performace can sweep them off their feet.

I can only imagine if the same demonstration was done on the piano by me in another reputable school where young brats are driven by their chauffeurs in one of the many 7-series cars at home, I would not only get silence at the end, but perhaps be repaid by blank faces that say nothing more than “I can do better than you”.  

It is therefore my resolve and my duty as a music teacher (in a neighbourhood school) to give them as much exposure to various types of music as possible. Instead of just sticking to the limited list of songs in the original sow, I would need to start thinking about getting the students to listen and learn more types of songs. The only limitation and probably will always be is their lack of background and foundation in music. It’s strange music education begins in primary schools but till now in secondary schools, many students still cannot read music. Well that would be another bigger issue about theys syllabus and exams and stuff which opens up another can of worms.

As for now, I will be looking out for more possible songs which I think students will be able to learn to play. Hope this will open up more windows for them into the incredible world of music.

Testing…

This is a test blog. Tried blogging many years ago but didn’t sustain. This time I don’t have much of a choice but to make sure I keep this going. Cos it’s for WORK!! Hahaa… Well, I’m suppose to be a good teacher and do my reflection here. So this is a start!

Feels good to be back at work, and yes in school again.  Besides dreading the deadly alarm at 5.30am, I enjoy returning to the classroom, or rather the music room. It reminds me of my reason for teaching – to empower students to further their pursuits in music. (sounds cheesy I know. My hair stood too!) I feel very strongly about this as many young people do not have the means to be able to do so. Education in music is one of the way I guess, paves the way for them to further their interests in music. I’m so glad S’pore is doing much to support people who are not interested in the “Math & Sciences”. The opening of YST Conservatory and recently the Arts School. How I wish I had more options when I was a student.

Anyway, back to work reflection, it’s been almost 2 weeks of school. Started my Sec 3 O Level Music class 2 weeks back. For the first time, I have such a big class that I actually had a class list with index nos. OMG! There were about 20 pupils from all over, including our own. On on hand there will be more admin stuff to be done especially after the exams and even coordinating a common exam date. But I’m excited to be able to try out more strategies in the classroom with such a number. In the past it was never more than 15, often below 10 in fact. Having such a small class does limit certain group activities, peer support and coaching. As a result I often stick to the chalk-and-talk method which I know was plain torture to the pupils. Can you imagine for 3hrs? I can’t. I think 20 is a very ideal class size for many activities. Not too big or small. I’m making the extra effort to modify my lessons so that I can tap on the class dynamics for more effective learning. For eg. when I was teaching the concept of “polyphony”, having a size of 20 allowed me to have a S-A-B vocal ensemble where students could sing and hear for themselves the layers of music. This was rather difficult when I had less than 10 people.

Also after the AFL first session of training, I learnt several things. 1 thing that I remember very well was that students do have prior knowledge that we often do not tap into. Having more students in the class means there’s MORE prior knowledge to be shared and thus LESS to teach. Woohoo!!! I’m going to try this out when I teach the Orchestra next week. Will update and see how things go. *Fingers crossed*