Number of journal : 4/8

Week : Week 4

Date : 21st August 2015

Problems

It was already week four but I still have trouble dealing with some teaching skills. As a

person who is new in teaching profession, I was really occupied this week and I had

prepared a detailed lesson plan for observations that required me to plan two lesson-plans

for the double period lesson. It is really tough. I am the kind of person who loves to do things

orderly and systematically. I will put a lot of thoughts in preparing a lesson plan. In other

words, I think too much. I am really careful in everything I plan. Planning a lesson plan is

extremely challenging but preparing the teaching aids can really exacerbate the present

mind-boggling problems. On the contrary, I am satisfied with whatever marks that my

supervising lecturer and mentor teacher had given me so far. The lower points were for me

to improve and the higher marks were to encourage me to do much better in the future. Also,

there are still some areas that need to be improved:

i. Time pace

ii. Instruction-strategies

iii. Careful preparation before presentation (teaching)

Analysis

Let’s further analyse the problems of the issues I’m facing:

Time pace:

When I plan a lesson, I always assume that students will be able to do the activities that I

have planned within the time allocated. But when the lesson was tested, I found that my

assumption was wrong as students required more time to do the activity. For instance, every

time I ask students to only copy down whatever I have written on the whiteboard, they would

take longer time than I assumed they would. Writing activity will make them occupied but

most of the time some of them were not able to complete their work on time. That is why I

always face a problem at closing my lesson, because students will take longer time to finish

their work at certain stage, I merely corrected their work without even explaining their

mistakes as there was not enough time to do so and closing my lesson improperly because

the time had exceeded few minutes from what I have planned.

Instruction-strategies.

In addition, I felt that I have failed to give clear and accurate instructions prior to the

activities. This has caused students to have difficulties in carrying out the activities because

they did not get a clear picture of what they were supposed to do. On the 21st of August, I

admit that my instruction was not as clear as it should be. Since I wanted to keep my time

pace, after I showed the sample of my paper-plate sandwich, I rushed straight to distributing

the templates and things for the language art activity until my instruction was actually barely

heard by all students. Thanks to Miss Hannah my supervising lecturer for had given a

helping hand and delivered clearer instruction on behalf of me.

Careful preparation before presentation (teaching)

For this point, I need to be more careful with my presentation and input delivery. This week, I

made the silliest mistake for delivering the wrong meaning of ‘Mend’ to the students. I did not

realise the mistake until my supervising lecturer told me so. To be honest, I have always

used word “amend” but I did not know why, on that day, for that lesson, I was rushing in

finding the meanings of all difficult words for my children (by searching the meanings on the

net), I made a mistake for that one. I could not see that mistake until Miss Hannah corrected

the meaning. As a teacher, I should never be wrong in delivering any input or knowledge.

Teacher is to teach, so I definitely do not want my children to learn wrong things in the

future. Thus, this should happen again. A careful and thorough preparation should be done

before I enter my class and also do a lot of research from different sources so that I will be

more clear of the meanings/ explanation.

Suggestions for Improvement

There are several ways that could be done to overcome the problem mentioned above:

I need to seek help and support from my supervising lecturer, my cooperating

teacher, the senior teachers or those who are more experienced, to discuss on the

best way to overcome my difficulties.

I have to make a lot of research by referring to plenty of reference books and the

internet before delivering any input / knowledge.

I should be firm with students when it comes to work within the time limits. I should

always remind students about keeping up with the time allocated.

I should give simple and clear instructions to students before asking them to carry out

certain task during the teaching and learning session so that they fully understand

what are they required to do.

Time for Implementation

Planning an activity for students of different abilities and dealing with students’ attitudes and

weaknesses are no easy tasks. However, I am sure that all these problems can be

overcome if I continue to work hard to improve my lessons. To be honest, I need to give

myself some time to enhance and develop my teaching skills as planning good lessons

require a lot of trials and errors.

Conclusion

I think from time to time, I am able to understand the needs of my students, how they learn in

order to help them in that process. I should be able to trigger their curiosity and provide them

with the necessary tools to continue learning. John Ruskin quotes, "Education is a painful,

continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning, by praise, but

above all -- by example." I found that they enjoy learning through songs and group tasks,

thus the more I provide such activities the more interest they will develop towards English-

lesson. Well, to conclude, teaching English is not as easy as ABC (a teacher must work

smart!)

Checked by

Signature

Name

Miss Hannah Sim Phek Khiok Miss Dayang Nurashikin

Date