History
This was the week when I formally took on my teaching duties with respect to lectures and tutorials. Compared to my contract teaching experience at PJC last year, I actually felt a stronger sense of excitement and anticipation for this practicum teaching stint. One key reason was my knowledge of the appropriate teaching pedagogies which I had learnt in NIE and greater awareness of how I could employ them during my lessons, which naturally enhanced my confidence as a trainee teacher. In addition, I personally felt the need to live up to the high expectations and the demonstration of confidence in me by my cooperating teacher, who after all had effectively given me de facto control over the teaching of the JC1 H2 History students. Hence, I would say that I had a clear understanding and sense of purpose as to what I aimed to achieve in my practicum.
Reflecting on my first lecture, I was generally pleased with the relatively smooth fashion in which the lesson was conducted. For one thing, I was able to handle the pressure of facing a large group of students and speaking confidently and intelligently about the lesson content. At the same time, I was able to adhere closely to my lesson plan and deliver the lecture with minimal hiccups. That said, the unexpected shortening of my lecture period due to the extended morning assembly meant that my original lecture and tutorial lesson plans had to be modified on the spot since I ended up only covering half of my intended lecture content. In this respect, I realised that I would definitely need to factor in such contingencies in my future lessons in order to avoid a possible panic attack on my part, and ideally balance between dealing with time constraints and sticking closely to my lesson plans.
For my first tutorials, I made a special effort to try and remember the students’ names as a first step towards establishing good rapport with them. The genuinely happy expressions that were displayed on the students’ faces when I was able to remember their names outside of class (e.g. at the school canteen) in a way showed that I was moving in the right direction. While I did not actually conduct full-scale ice-breaker sessions, the self-introductions by the students did provide me with important insights into their mindsets and worldviews, which could be potentially useful to me as their teacher over the long term. However, since my first tutorials were focusing on covering the rest of the lecture content, it was primarily conducted using direct instruction from me. I would be the first to acknowledge that this was not an ideal way of conducting a tutorial, which in my opinion should place a stronger emphasis on the stimulation of student’s critical thinking and argumentative skills, and also encourage active student participation in discussions. As such, I will certainly need to revise and refine my teaching approach regarding my future tutorial sessions.
Project Work
The lesson observation for my scheduled Project Work class this week was cancelled due to the PJC Walkathon 2012.
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