Bern's Blog

This week is the presentation of our lesson plan. I was the second to present according to the alphabetical order name. My subject was English for Form 4 students and I taught about the meaning of poems and how to recite it. The title of the poem is Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. First I introduced world known poets, those from 18th and 19th century. Then I showed a video of how to recite Sonnet 18 poem. It was fun as my classmates were sporting and join along in the activity session, which was a small competition of reciting the poem. All of us, including me learn the meaning of the Sonnet 18 phrases by phrases. This poem indeed is a beautiful and meaningful poem.

Class activity for this week was we were doing preparation for our mock teaching in the coming week. We need to do three forums, three lesson plan and mock teaching as assignment 2. The mock teaching is based on one of the lesson plan that we have prepared. We need to do lesson plan by applying one of the theories-school of thought. Therefore, a simple essay need to be done to explain why the theory has been chosen to be the basic of the lesson plan, which is also for the mock teaching. I have decided to choose behavioural theory to apply in my lesson plan and mock teaching for the coming week.

This topic, classroom management is the last topic that we learn for this pedagogy subject. Classroom management applies to all, namely: a) effective classroom start on time b) students know the classroom procedure c) teachers understand how to teach for mastery d) teachers have high expectations for students success Duke (1987) defines today's classroom as a comprehensive management plan that should include both proactive (preventive) and reactive (disciplinary). Classroom rules developing should have materials such as chalk board, chart paper and marker and also methods in class. There are certain guidelines available to manage classroom which are by establishing physical environment and psychological environment. A good classroom management should consists of: a) a set of class rules posted in the classroom, important to maintain discipline b) arranges classroom carefully to minimize disturbance and provide students with sense of confidence c) teachers know the n...

For pedagogy's class this week, we presented our lesson plan that we did in pair last week. Everyone present with enthusiasm. Sir Wan too, was there during the presentation and he gave us feedback on our lesson plan. He guide and told us what were our mistakes and how to improve those. Basically we understand better now how to construct a lesson plan. Every pair did a good job in their teamwork. The only problem exist was our minor mistakes on the lesson plan and those too, will be improve.

Pedagogy class this week is quite interesting. We learn to do what a teacher always do before entering class which is to set up a lesson plan. We are required to find the syllabus for any secondary schools subjects, reminded in the previous class. But those have been uploaded by pedagogy's course leader, thanks to her. We decided to choose simple topic and subtopic and are being taught in English language, such as English and Mathematics chapter 1 for Form 1. We used the lesson plan format to guide us doing our own lesson plan. It's a pair work so we discuss with our partner and need to type it directly in Microsoft Words. My partner is Angel and we're doing good in teamwork pairing. Our lecturer, Mr Wan Kamaran also helping a lot by guiding us and improving us by telling any mistakes on the lesson plan. Everyone was busy with their own partner to complete the lesson plan that we did not realize the class almost ended. Every partner need to present their lesson plan ...

Pedagogy lesson for this week is about learning styles. Learning styles means reasonably stable patterns of behaviour that indicate learning preferences. There are four types of learning styles, which are cooperative learning, discovery learning, constructivism and direct instruction system. Cooperative learning (CL) means a successful teaching strategy with small teams and each of the students have different level of ability so they will work together. Discovery learning (DL) means students finding or figuring out things by themselves whereas constructivism means the teaching and learning process that intends to maximize students understanding. There are four founder of constructivism, namely John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Maria Montessori and Lev Vygotsky. Direct instruction system (DISTAR) is based on learning theories with concept of No Child Left Behind. This system makes sure the students learn until they really understand what they learn, no matter how slow and how many things need to...