Pei Pei: of managing a bunch of really proficient kids

For the first three weeks in school, I started by doing observations in class. Not only did I learn about delivering lessons effectively, I learnt about classroom management as well - a very crucial part of making the whole lesson a success because no one wants to teach in a class where all the students are doing other work and students who are interested to learn will not be comfortable in a noisy classroom as well.

Through the observations, I find that lessons in school is still very traditional, very teacher-centered. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that it is altogether a bad thing. It's just that now since we are moving towards PBS, I feel that lessons need to be more colourful/vibrant and engaging to students at the same time. This makes me feel that I want to focus more on student-centered activity like presentations when I start teaching later in the same week.

My mentor made me teach during the first week itself because no matter how many times I observe, I can only get so much experience, she said that once I start teaching the experience that I get will be totally different and I will learn more when I actually teach. I really agree with her because standing in front of the class to deliver a lesson is totally different from being a listener at the back. Now that it's been sometime, I'm glad that she made me start early because I have more time to experiment and improve myself at the same time :)

For the first literature lesson, I taught them about imagery. Students are divided into groups and each group get an imagery from the poem In the Midst of Hardship. They were given drawing blocks, colour pencils/pens, coloured papers and also newspapers for them to illustrate the imagery that they got. They are supposed to make the other groups guess which imagery they are illustrating.

From this lesson, I can see that MOST of the students are enjoying the activity as it gives them the freedom to express their creativity. Boy they were really creative, they make tools and props out of the newspaper when I was only expecting them to paint a picture. From this lesson I learnt that I can test out more fun and creative activities with this class, as they are very proficient in English and they enjoy presentations, which is really becoming one of my strategy to get the students to involve themselves.

I can see that even the passive students participate once their friends start to do so, which is comforting to me because at least, they are participating in my lesson, good start, I thought to myself :)

I think that one of my challenge in teaching a class with a very high proficiency is that I need to constantly look for interesting and challenging materials which will still provide meaningful learning for the students while engaging their minds and concentration in class at the same time. I tried looking for materials which are not found in the textbooks or workbooks. I research online to find more resources which I can use. There are many lesson plans online but most of it are not suitable so I usually look for interesting articles and create my own worksheets most of the time that can cater to my students' level. Creating my own worksheet was the hardest part T__T because I need to create worksheet which is meaningful and challenging for HIGH proficiency students! Which is not easy, given that I'm not that proficient myself :(

Sometimes when I'm lost for ideas, I will discuss with my partner to look at more possibilities. Being a teacher, one have to always look around for new resources AND also for helping hands so that when you feel that you are falling, you have hands that will pull you up again. In this case of T.Practice, discuss with your mentor, partner and even the other senior teachers if you face any difficulty, surely they are more than willing to help if you ask!

And yes, there are really some naughty/mischievous students who will always twist my words into other meanings and make the class laugh! Although they make it harder for me to manage the class, but I enjoy having them as they make the class more lively - which I really appreciate as I feel that a class which is too silent is boring and it somewhat shows that students are not really interested!

So just how I tackle these talkative kids at the back of the class? Like what I did during the day Dr.Adele observed me, I usually will just pay attention to what they want to say, and I let them to have the chance to speak because you should never restrict your students from giving response no matter what their response might be!

My strategy is that I will listen to what they have to say, and if they say something related to the question I asked or something which is decent, I will give my response to their answer. BUT, if what they say has got nothing to do with my question, I will ask them to say it out loud to the class then I will ask the class what do they think of their naughty/mischievous friends' response to my question.

Most of the time, the rest of the class are helpful and cooperative with me and these naughty ones will get their lesson because their own friends will start to question them back and ask them to explain their response/answer and they will be lost for words and sometimes they even feel shy! :D

I think it works because every time I do that, no one dare to mess with me again. However, I think there should be new strategies because some of them seem to be not affected at all by this and this trick won't work forever.

Therefore, in my opinion, I still think that classroom management is one of the most challenging part of a lesson and I will strive to improve!