Week 6 - ULBS Part 2 & Feedbacks

So today was the second day of me judging the kids' ULBS. 

2E was awesome! We didn't manage to get everybody to present, mainly due to the kids (audiences) asking too many questions. It was like a debate. I had to remind some of the boys to, "calm down" when one of the girls got a bit out of hand with the questioning. But, I guess it's a nice change to see a girl doing the talking. 

Though one group didn't manage to present theirs today. Apparently their mahjong paper was stolen! True story,...so they had to re-do the whole thing. 

And the highlight for 2E's presentation was this! 

Behold the prototype of a handphone/camera/iron (???) from ZAS technology!!!! 

Seriously, they made a prototype of their presentation subject just for the sake of this oral test (which took them only about 10 minutes to perform). And they gave me the prototype as, "a souvenir".

(^__________^')

And remember 2B? The two boys that didn't do their presentation the day before?

They were first up today and, boy were they ready! And to my utmost surprise, they were really good!

They spoke well, they were able to FACE the audience, they were able to answer questions rationally and fluently (though thickly accented) - so it was all good. 

The girls who presented last weren't bad either. One of the girls seemed really reluctant to speak. But I've noticed that about the girl for a while. She's okay when she spoke to me individually, but I guess having to stand in front of everybody was a bit out of her comfort-zone. Nothing I can do about that. At least, she spoke.

 And after they finished their (2B) presentation, I told them that I won't be having them continuously  for the next coming weeks as I have other classes I have to focus on. So, before I get to their classes again, I wanted them to comment on my teaching. I told them that I'm still in practice, so I've a lot to improve on, so I asked them to be totally honest.

They need not to write their names. But some of the kids did anyways...

I guess since they're still young, they're not so critical of my teaching yet. A lot of the comments were very positive (and I think some of them misunderstood me and thought I was leaving them for good). The most negative comment would be, "smile every time" or "your face looks angry" which I find to be very cute.

(^ w ^) 

Below is a sample comment that really gave an impact to me.

"you can make me to be confident while talk in front" and "you make me like English subject"

I almost cried when I read this :')

but check out the "BAD COMMENT" TOO

HAHAHHAHAHA

Week 6 - ULBS Part 1

This week I was given the task to allocate marks for the kids' second ULBS. They were to do it as a group, through presentations. Each group were given a different topic (prepared by Kak Dee) and they were given the chance to prepare their presentations the week/a few days before. Each member of the group has to speak as the marks were for  their individual  performances within each group.

My 2B did their preparation the week before (week 5). I was not supposed to be with them for the presentations but due to Kak Dee having to go to a Pandu Puteri Camp in Lenggong, I was entrusted with the marking job. 

Most of the kids from 2B did ok. I had to remind them, 

"Remember, respect the presenters and respect the audience. This is a presentation, not a discussion, so make sure that AT LEAST I can hear you."

But the highlight of this class' session was when one group 'forgot' to bring their mahjong paper to class and wasn't able to complete the presentation. I don't think they forgot, I honestly think they didn't finish it. But, it's pretty understandable as they had some trouble with the preparation the week before. I tried to help, but there's just so much that I could do. 

So, when it was their turn, I realized that they weren't anywhere near me. The two boys would usually sit close to where I sit. But, for some reason, that day they were sitting in the far corner of the room (oh, we did it in the media room so they were sitting on the floor). It was then that they told me, 

S1: "...*mumble*..*mumble*..in the dorm". 

Me: "what?"

S2: "left in the dorm"

Me: "why did you leave it there?"

S1: "forgot"

Me: "ok. go get it"

S1 & S2: (0 . o)

Me: "are you allowed to go back and get your things?"

Other S: "dunno"

Me: "so what am I supposed  to do with you guys now? what should I do with your marks?"

S1 & S2: (-__-)

Me: "S1, tell me what should I do with you now?" "S2, do you think it's fair that you're not doing yours today?"

S1 & S2: ".............."

Me: Get back to your places. I don't want to waste any more time.

So, I continued with the other groups. While the next group was preparing, I went back to the boys and told them, "I want you to speak today. I don' care. You can prepare your presentation in a small paper if you want to. I WANT YOU TO SPEAK TODAY". And they stumbled along, trying to get their presentations done while the others were presenting.

But the kids were awesome sports. I told them to ask the other groups questions about the presentations and they did. And they were pretty good at coming up with the questions too. I could see that they're able to become critical thinkers - high level of thinking, but too bad about the language. No worries, plenty of room and time for improvement (^w^). Unfortunately, the two boys weren't able to do their presentations since we were out of time. I had to continue their tomorrow, along with the last group's.

Out of Class Activity - Dramatizing Wonders

So, yup. The form two kids took over the entire drama! Majority of the participants were my students from various classes, and most of them were boys as the script required male actors more than female...and 'cause the boys loved doing fighting scenes (= ________ =')

I was pretty 'military' during the whole rehearsal (2/12 days worth of rehearsal). At first, the leader from the Drama Club took the job of being the director, but somehow, she disappeared half-way through the process. I dunno, she had to be the MC of the ceremony or something of the sort and just left everything hanging for us to take care of (probably since she knew that we'd come for the rehearsal everyday)

So, this week, our afternoons and nights were filled with DRAMA~~! 

I was mainly the one yelling, "drama team, come up here!", "don't turn your back to the audience!", "where're the Brit soldiers?!" etc etc. And we took care of the audio and visual for the background (I used to do it for our group's performance in KMS so it was fine)

The kids again, were pretty creative. They suggested different things to spice up the script. They even suggested an additional scene! And it worked. They asked if they could do this and that, and they performed! I have to say, if it wasn't for the kids, the whole thing would've flopped.

The boys were pretty exceptional in the acting part, but the girls were quite hard to shape. There were only two scenes involving the girls and they hardly need to speak at all but they were so stiff and shy!!! But, I guess that's a given. The fact that they managed to shout out the lines were already something to be proud of (^ u ^)

And throughout the entire process, I was able to get to know the kids more and vice versa. They saw me out of class, they were able to interact with me in bahasa. So, it was nice. 

And the most important thing is, THEY DID A DAYM GOOD JOB!!

We got a lot of praises from the other teachers for it. And we have no other than the kids to be thankful to.

the lads~ 

and the ladies~

Week 5 - Creative Writing

So for Week 5 (the first week after the Eid break), I took 2B as my home-class. This was a continuation of what I was doing before the break.

I finished all the presentations on comparatives/superlatives (which was a continuation from me teaching Adjectives before the break) with them first before moving into this new topic. And to wrap-up the presentations, I asked them to vote for the best presentation by writing down which group they thought was the best and why. This was actually to make them use comparative/superlatives individually, and to train them to express their own opinions on a subject (though I doubt they realized that). I SPECIFICALLY mentioned that I will decide on the best group based on the votes and my own observations. And that they should be honest with their judgments. 

(a sample of one of the votes)

After that, I started with the new lesson - CREATIVE WRITING~~~~ (^ w ^)

I did a micro-teaching session in Auckland on creative writing before. So I kinda just recycled the lesson from that one. I made some drawings to explain the essential elements in a narrative. 

I was a bit worried if the kids weren't into these story-telling stuff. But to my absolute amazement, they digg-ed it!! Yay~~!!! 

I remembered how the elementary schools in Auckland have story-telling sessions with the kids to develop listening, speaking and reading skills. I did more or less the same thing but minus the reading. I used the pictures I drew above, and sat in front of the kids (they were sitting on the floor as I did this lesson in the media room - a.k.a LAC) and showed them the first paper. I elicited responses from the kids by asking,

"Now, what can you see in this first picture?"

And they would say stuff like,

"Skinny man!"

"Sun"

"Big circle head!"

I tried to correct them where necessary, like, "big, ROUND head". And of course, praises are useful to get them to shout more creative words out. I reminded them that they did a good job by using adjectives and that adjectives are important in order to make their audience understand more clearly about their writing as they cannot use pictures in essays.

And the session continued with them describing each picture while anticipating what the next picture would unveil. Honestly, they were totally into it (> w <)

And to have them apply these steps, I told them to write a short narrative using the plot that I have drawn. Alternatively, they can come up with their own plot but just be sure that they apply all the steps we've discussed earlier. Before they started writing, I also discussed what sort of language elements they should use in narratives (past tense, adjectives).

And the results were absolutely incredible! These kids really are creative and they like being creative. Here's a sample of one of the products,

Cute, huh :p

Out of class Activity - Dramatic

So the Eid break is over.

Back to school and first week in, DRAMA~~~!!!

Apparently the leader for the drama club didn't reply Moon's texts at all during the break. When we asked her at school, she said she didn't have enough credit in her phone to do so. Yeah right, 1 week of holiday and she didn't have ANY credit loaded the whole time?? She lives in Kota Bharu, and she's rich! Don't lie if you're not good at it, kid!

That aside, since they seemed to be busy (with who knows what), we had to do the scripts ourselves. And due to the lack of time, we just picked a random historical figure. Well, it wasn't really random as we all agreed that it would be best to do Tok Janggut as he was the historical figure representing Kelantan. Miraculously, script-writing took no more than 3 hours! (> w <). But of course, this was very much with the help of modern technology called THE INTERNET and GOOGLE!! Hwahaahahhahah!!!!!

So, we photocopied the scripts so that all of the members will get one each. But guess what, the Drama Club now refused to do the drama! Three days before the real deal, and we have no actors! The most annoying this was, the kids didn't tell us about it. They told their teacher (Moon's mentor - Kak Na) that they didn't want to do it and she told us about it later on. I don't know why the kids didn't want to tell us straight away. I mean, we met them face-to-face not long before they told Kak Na about the bad news. When we saw them and asked about how're things, they just smiled and said, "Yup, fine"

Lesson learnt : You can't rely 100% on kids especially when you don't have good rapport with them. They're probably not confident enough to tell you stuff and refuse to open up to you.

But they (the Drama Club) promised to find replacements. And they said they'll be training the form 2 kids using the scripts we provided. I felt a bit better after hearing that since I'm taking three form 2 classes. So I know the majority of the kids - that'll make things easier to handle.

Out of Class Activity - Drama (pre-drama)

At the end of the fourth week, (the last week before the raya break) we were informed by one of the History teachers that she was told by the Principal that the three practicum teachers (a.k.a 'us'), will be in charge of the historical drama for the closing ceremony for Merdeka on the 30th August.

This was very surprising as Moon and I did go and see the principal and said we'd like to get the kids involved in an English drama sometime before the end of our practicum, but we SPECIFICALLY mentioned that we don't want to do the Merdeka one because we wanted to do something fun and more English related...but, oh well. We got the job, so we have no choice but to do it.

So the history teacher left us to handle the whole thing by giving us a history reference book. She told us to choose one historical character from the book and make a script out of it. Then, get some kids who're not involved in the exams to perform it.

Now, how exactly do you write a script? Where do we find these kids? How exactly do you direct a drama? And how do you expect these kids to listen to us when they hardly even know us! (seriously, some of the kids still say, "Assalamualaikum, Kak" when they see us). Left in the dark, lost and confused. Nothing new there.

We turned to our mentors. Luckily, Moon's mentor has a class where the majority of them are in the drama club (4E). And she said, maybe we can go and ask those kids to be in the drama. We did. And the kids agreed to be involved, on one condition - only the Drama Club members are allowed to join.

"Problem solved!" we thought.

The Drama Club did Alice in Wonderland once. And they had their own director, etc for it. We thought that it would be best for the kids to choose their own historical figure (the one they feel the most comfortable to act out) and they can try and come up with their own lines. I had experience with entering public speaking competitions back in sec school, and I wrote my own text. Having to think of the words myself made them easier to memorize, so I thought it would be best if these kids do the same. And they agreed.

But, they were all busy with Actvity Week during the entire week! Everytime we bump into them we will ask them, "have you chosen the character?" , "when can we have a meeting with all of the members?" , "did you do the meeting without us?" etc etc. And the answers we got were always so vague...so in the end, we went into the holidays without having the chance to meet up with the team. But Moon took the leader's phone number so she could contact her for updates during the break...

Week 2 - 4

Okay, so I skipped updating for a few weeks. But I'm going to sum it up in one whole post. Believe me, there's a reason why I skipped updating the past few weeks. So here goes,...

Week 2 was when I started teaching. So Kak Dee told me to take all three of her form two classes - 2B, 2E and 2D. This was to fulfill the "teaching one-off lessons" criteria in the handbook provided by Uni. So, instead of teaching one one-off lesson, why not take three? And so, I did.

But before I started teaching my actual classes (2B, 2D, 2E), Kak Dee advised me to try and start slow and coincidentally, a form 1 class (1A) was available due to the actual teacher not being around that week (I think there was a some sort of meeting held somewhere...). So Kak Dee suggested me to try and have a spelling quiz with them. It's fun, it's light and it doesn't require me nor the actual teacher preparing for a subsequent lesson on the topic afterwards. So I spiced it up a bit and have the students to not only spell the words I took from the National Curriculum Handbook, but to also construct a sentence using that word! That was I can see if they really know the meaning of the words I asked them to spell - so it's kinda like a 2in1 thing! ^w^

And the form 1 kids were surprisingly good! Not only were they good with the spelling, their knowledge of tenses and sentence construction were also exceptional! I've been observing the form twos and fours, and I can see that the form ones are actually better than their seniors in terms of language abilities.

In the same week, I started taking one-off lessons with three different form two classes. But I taught all three classes the same topic, so lesson planning didn't take that much work (though it was pretty exhausting trying to come up with an idea of what to teach AND MAKE IT FUN AT THE SAME TIME!). So, I did present continuous tense with all three classes as a recap lesson as they've already done present continuous with Kak Dee before. Plus all three classes consisted of only one-period lessons, so I can't really teach them something new.

(the sheet I drew to do a present continuous re-cap with the kids)

All three classes are amazingly different from one another. 2B was the most passive and I guess having me being rather 'scary' with them didn't help much in making them want to speak up. Kak Dee's first comment on my teaching was, "remember to smile more. You looked like a warden just now" (> w <). 2E was more or less like 2B, but with Kak Dee's comment asking me to smile (and with the butterflies in my stomach gone :p) I was able to be more cheerful with them. And I guess that's why 2E was able to give me more creative varied works compared to 2B previously....they were less intimidated by me.

But 2D was the highlight of my week. Of course I was already getting tired of teaching the same thing, but I was also very concerned on how I should handle the class as they were pretty boisterous! The girls are so quiet, you sometimes forget they're there! And different from 2B and 2E, 2D's inter-gender cooperation and relationship seemed a bit on the shaky side...I wonder what I could do to avoid any boy-girl conflicts in the class in the future.
Plus, 2D is really...intriguing. I mean, one of the students made this sentence when I asked him to describe what one of his friends are doing in the picture he drew, "Hikall is doing suicide on the mountain" (!!!!!). I mean, I know his sentence was not 100% correct but I had a lot of reasons to be amazed. The fact that he dared to make such sentence with a teacher who had just taught him the first time screams he's 'trouble', but the fact that he knew what the word 'suicide' meant sort of blew me away! For a 14-year old local Kelantanese Malay boy to know that word shows that this kid likes English, 'cause you won't get teachers or his friends using that word often (at all, actually) in school. So, I was like, "what??!". And he quickly said, "Hehe just kidding, Hikall is climbing a mountain". 
Good sense of humour kid. I'm looking forward to having you in my class! 

Week 3 was when I first took a class as my home-class. Kak Dee classifies having a home-class as having a class that I continuously go to for the whole week, while teaching a continuous lesson. And she suggested that I teach adjectives.

Adjectives was okay. A pretty standard topic to teach for beginning teachers as they're so many ways one can do to teach the subject. I took 2B as the class seemed to be the least intimidating for me to go to. And I started by presenting and eliciting what the students already know about adjectives. I could see that they've covered the topic well before - meaning less work for me.

But to loosen the tension (as they seemed pretty scared of me previously), I asked them to draw something that they think best represent themselves in order for them to introduce themselves to me. I showed them a couple of pictures I drew myself (one was a Red Warrior logo, another was a mixed up picture showing comic books, paintings, a camera and music symbols) and told them how I think those pictures represent me.

(what I drew)

They did great! The boys were especially creative. The sentence construction was okay. But the courage to speak was the biggest problem. Of course, I had to ask some of them to keep quiet while their friends speak by giving them 'the look'. And fortunately, my 'look' worked! > w < And I could see them loosen up a bit after I did this session. They were able to get to know me, they could see that I am also human, I like the things that they like and that I am interested to know what they like just as well.

So I started teaching a continuous series of lessons to 2B while maintaining one-off classes to both 2E and 2D. There were ups and downs of course, and the most down thing was the kids' attitude with speaking up in class. They're so used to having to create single sentences all the time that they don't know how to speak in a normal conversation. So I decided to fix this by seeing how they would perform if asked to do a presentation. Of course, I didn't want to bore myself with the presentation so I prepared 6 different pairs of items for different groups to present about. They were all my stuff, and as I'm not that girly I was able to provide some stuff that can be relate-able  to they boys as well (comics, action novels, dvds of Spongebob etc). And they were unexpectedly REALLY DAMN creative!! I loved it! All I told them to do was be as creative as they can, and that I expect everyone to speak and BOOM! the explosion of creative and critical thinking took place! Even Kak D admitted that she was quite surprised with how good the kids are as they were able to speak, ask and answer questions, fully in English on the spot. 

On our fourth week though, we had the chance to experience something different than teaching. The kids were having their activity week so we were able to basically take a rest and see the kids do their stuff. The form two kids weren't doing anything exciting so I didn't get the chance to see my students strutting their stuff. But we were told to be the judges for the form 4's UNGA competition. Before coming here, I had no clue what UNGA was. I thought it was something like 'running' since the word 'ungga/hungga' means running in Kelantanese. But for some reason, the thing was held at night, right after the tarawih prayers which was very inconvenient for both the kids and us since we only had a few hours to get to all of the competing classes. Mr. Hussin (another English teacher involved in the judging) told us that this year's UNGA was different from previous years which were held in the afternoon, in the hall. 

So these were the competing classes. 

 China from 4D

England from 4E

Indonesia from 4C

United Emirates of Arab from 4A

And France from 4B (for some reason there's a dude in a chinese cap in France =.=')

From what we heard from the kids, they were absolutely exhausted!. Well, what with the fasting, the day-time activities, this. One kid told one of us that he hadn't had the chance to get a good sleep for three days straight....*sigh*

I wonder how do these kids cope in class....