Wendy's STRATEGIES

For a long time I haven’t reflected on the blog about my teaching experience in SMK Taman Tun Dr Ismail. First of all, I have to thank all the afternoon teachers in the school who are warm-hearted, supportive and tolerant. Secondly, I need to thank my adorable students who have given me so much joy. My heart is filled with gratitude because I got quite good classes so that I can carry out certain interesting and inspiring activities with them. All the kids in my classes possess different talents and their performance is eye-opening. Before I was quite reluctant to work in the school; however, until now I’m very content with the work there.The problem that I encountered first is students’ names. 

As a Chinese, Malaysian students’ names are bit hard for me to memorize, but I realized that if I don’t know their names, they won’t feel close to the teacher and when I ask them to answer some question, they don’t know who I’m asking. Therefore, I told myself, one week later I must remember all of their names and faces. I asked each student in two classes to give me their photo and at the back write down their names. I collected their pictures and looked at them when I have free time. Then I made a name list. Every time before I start my class, I’ll call their names and match their faces. After a few lessons, I can easily call their names. My students, mentor and supervisor always asked me how I can remember their names so fast.. haha. Students need respect and they feel the teacher value them when you call their names. They can see and feel the teacher’s effort. 

Second, before entering the classroom, I tell myself try to make everyone in the class answer the question once. It’s very important for the teacher to give every student equal chance to speak up in the class on average. I don’t think any student likes a teacher who is unfair and have his/her particulars. In this way, all the students will respect the teacher.

Thirdly, students’ lack concentration. Since I’m working the afternoon shift, the students easily feel tired and that’s understandable. Whenever I see some students are bored or starts to doze a bit, I’ll call them to answer my question, walk around them, facing them while I’m talking or give them pair, group activities. Moreover, when I give students writing assignments, I make comments on all the paper. I don’t give “Well done” or “Good effort”. That’s too abstract and not helpful to their writing. I point out their strengths and weaknesses, which are clear to them, so they know where they should work on. 

The last one is developing students’ summary capability. Right now we’re learning novel. Every class, I ask students to summarise the previous chapters orally or in written form, but even with the best classes, students still feel blurred and get lost in the sequence of the events. They told me they are so confused. Then I ask them to look at the content page. Based on the title of each chapter, I first of all ask them “wh-“ questions. When they’ve given me enough useful information, I then ask them to link the key words together and retell the events. I lead them to summarise one chapter after another. In this way, students can memorise crucial events and details better. Using titles and “wh-“ questions. So all these are my experience with my form 1 students. 

And my weakness is lacking creativity. In the future, I will use more visual aids to help my students learn better. Like Wang Yi did