Rou Jin's lesson was on health and she provided huge cards of fruit pictures with descriptions of the fruits at the back of the cards. At first I thought flash cards were a little too childish for teenagers, but somebody (I think, Cherry) didn't know what a cauliflower was. Seriously, Cherry? Thus, Now I'm thinking maybe not all students know their vegetables.
Hmmm....She made her students read aloud these descriptions...Although you can use the read aloud technique in class, it is not as rewarding, they say, as silent reading. We must expose to our students the art of silent reading for understanding. Therefore, a reading skill is usually taught through silent reading. Remember reading aloud is not 'reading' but has more to do with 'pronunciation, intonation etc' and those skills are NOT reading skills. I particularly love all her mind maps. She drew samples of them on the board. I love them! Be careful, though, of sentences which are separated to a few key points. E.g., 'Exercise - stimulates thinking, repairs the body, and improves blood circulation'.
Most of the time, students like yourselves forget to read them as 3 different sentences. Exercise stimulates....Exercise repairs the body...Exercise improves... When you forget to check a sentence and be thorough in your proofreading, you tend to miss out and make grammatical mistakes. Forgotten 's'es for plural or singular forms are usually the case. Be THOROUGH. P/s this is not a proficiency class. Sigh sigh
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteGood points- she uses the white board very well, because in the real classroom we may don’t have the chance to use computer in our lesson. She teaches students the mind map to help them organize their opinion. And she gives the students different kind of cards to get their attention to the lesson.
Aspects to work on- there are some grammar mistakes in the handout, make sure you check everything before you come to class.
Good points
ReplyDeleteShe gave all the colorful cards with vegetables to students, and let them spell it, which is good. We may think that all these words are easy and everyone knows them, but actually not. She also gave examples about mind maps. Good for students to write wiht a clear structure.
Improvements
I like the tiny pink ball, the way how you throw it on the desk and let the students answer the question is a nice idea, but you need to be careful that students may become noisy or out of control because of this activity.
She started her lesson well because her set induction manages to attract students’ attention by showing them colorful fruits and vegetables’ cards. At first I thought it was childish but later on after she went through each card, it was actually can suitable for form four low proficiency’s students because some of the vegetables were difficult to spell.
ReplyDeleteFor the second activity when she threw the ball to determine which student has to read, it was a creative idea but it might be difficult to be implemented in larger classes. Instead of the teacher throwing the ball maybe teacher can ask a student to throw it at their peers.
Another good point about Rou Jin was she showed the examples of each mind map to the students which was important to refresh students’ about it. It will be more interesting if she only shows several and asked students to go in front and draw a mind map that they know on the white board. The article that she used was also suitable for form four students because it was not too long and complicated for them. For her last activity, she also provided some clues for the students in each box for the mind map which was really good in assisting low proficiency students.
Went well
ReplyDelete1. As what she did last teaching, this time, the lesson was still really well prepared. We could see so many typing works in her slides and she even bought a words card for her teaching. That was impressive;
2. Very Malay style teacher (Attire, way of speaking and activities);
3. She knows what the Malay classrooms are, so that she knows what to focus on;
Need to improve:
1. The difficulty setting was little bit low, it may bore the form 4 students;
2. Teacher`s response for students` answer should not just be “yes or correct”, but give more explanation
3. Exercise should be divided into two part, one for lower proficiency students and one for higher
Good points:
ReplyDeleteThe flash cards really help to attract students' attention. She gave a few types of mind maps and it was good because students could choose to have any of it. The mind map really helped to guide students in their writing.
Aspects to work on:
Read aloud should be changed to silent reading because read aloud activity is speaking skill.