My Commencement last month marked the end of my University life. At the same time, it is also the start of my new phase of life- in the Teaching Fraternity. I'm really excited to embark on this new learning journey. I started this new learning journey with a short one month attachment (Enhanced School Experience a.k.a ESE) at Yishun Primary School.
With no prior classroom teaching experience, this ESE program allows me to step into a school as a teacher for the first time. It was an interesting and brand new experience. In my short one month stay in Yishun Primary School, I was given more opportunities to do relief teaching rather than observing lessons conducted by the experienced teachers. Out of the (only) three lessons that I have observed, I would like to highlight one lesson with the class 5-Perserverance. Students in 5-Perserverance are of average caliber in terms of their academic abilities. It was a Science lesson on the human respiratory system conducted by their Science teacher- Miss Nisha. Throughout the one hour observation in the class, the students left me a wonderful impression in terms of their personalities. They were respectful and responsive towards Miss Nisha and me.
Miss Nisha started the lesson by giving her students five minutes to do a short revision on the concepts being taught in the previous lesson. Then she specifically pin-point students to answer on the questions based on the concepts taught earlier. After the revision, she used her laptop to show her students a video on the new concept (the mechanism of respiratory system) in which she would like to teach her students. The video was taken from the LEAD Portal, which is an online portal widely used by the school especially so for e-learning purposes. She paused the video as deemed appropriate, to reinforce and emphasize on the ideas and knowledge conveyed by the video. The Science textbook was not used throughout the explanation of the new concepts. Students seemed to be interested and were paying attention to the video shown. In my opinion, using the video instead of the textbook seems to have a positive impact in students’ learning by arousing their interests on the topic taught. After showing the video and explaining the concepts and before ending the lesson, Miss Nisha did an experiment in class. The objective of the experiment was to find out the volume of air exhaled. Miss Nisha used the visualizer to show the experiment to the class. The apparatus required were a container of water, a plastic bottle and a straw. Due to time and space constraints, Miss Nisha was not able to allow each and every individual student to do the experiment. Hence, a student was called up to be the representative for the experiment. The student was asked to exhale the air from his nose into the straw which is connected to the inverted plastic bottle placed in the container of water. The class was then asked to observe the air bubbles in the plastic bottle and the drop in water level in the plastic bottle.
Moving away from the specific observations made during the Science lesson with 5-Perserverance, I have talked to some teachers in the school about their opinions and feelings on the use of ICT for teaching and learning. In particular, I would like to highlight on the conversation with Mr. Leong, the Subject Head (SH) of ICT in YPS.
As technology advances so rapidly these days, ICT becomes an essential component in everyone’s life. To prepare students for that, the school has set up an ICT department and incorporates the use of ICT in the school curriculum. Approximately 20% of the students’ time in school revolves around the use of ICT. The ICT department’s vision is to create an IT-enriched learning environment where students acquire knowledge and skills for self-directed learning (SDL) and collaborative learning (COL). There are several goals in the ICT department and they include integrating the objectives of the MasterPlan3 into the curriculum and equipping pupils with baseline ICT skills. More details can be found on the school website http://www.yishunpri.moe.edu.sg/Departments_NONCore_ICT.html.
Laptops, computers and visualizers are the most common ICT tools used for all levels in the school. There are three computer labs in YPS and teachers are encouraged to bring their students to the computer labs for e-learning purposes. A ‘Mobile Cart’ which contains 15-20 laptops will be ready by the end of September 2011. This ‘Mobile Cart’ can be borrowed by the teachers for classroom teaching and learning, allowing a ratio of 2 students to 1 laptop. I find this pretty useful as it will allow teachers to have more opportunities to integrate subject curriculum into ICT learning for students, even in classroom.
There are two key ICT Programmes in YPS. Firstly, they have the iPod Touch Programme. This programme is targeted mainly for lower-middle primary students (Primary 1-4) and is aimed at giving students’ a head start in technology, as well as making learning fun and engaging for them. Upper primary students seem to be less involved due to their busy schedules in remedial and extra supplementary lessons in preparation for the Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE). During one of the assembly session in the hall, I observed one of the teachers in YPS introduced iPod Touch to all the Primary 1 students, teaching them how to switch on and off, from the visualizer. I could see that the students were really excited about it from their delightful expressions when they see the iPod Touch on their teacher’s hands. I was told that the Primary 1-4 children have the opportunities to go on a learning trail out of school using the iPod Touch. The school has organized field trips to the Zoological Gardens for Primary 1 and 2 students, Botanical Gardens for Primary 3 students and Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve for Primary 4 students. Unfortunately, during my one month stay in YPS, I was not given the chance to tag along any class for the field trips. In their learning journeys to different places, they will be using the iPod Touch to learn about the facts of animals in the Zoological Gardens, the plants in the Botanical Gardens and the wildlife in the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. They have to do online assessment quizzes and even create podcasts on the things they have learnt. In my opinion, I feel that this iPod Touch Programme is awesome and really arouse the students’ interest in learning about many interesting and new things that would not have been made possible in the daily routine classroom teaching and learning.
Secondly, the school has computer skills training programme for all levels. The main objective of this programme is to equip pupils with the necessary information and ICT literacy skills. For example, in primary 1, the ICT skills taught are iPod touch. They will also learn simple touch typing, basic operations and basic Microsoft Word. When the students progress up to primary 6, they will be learning more advanced ICT skills such as the Microsoft Excel, iMovie and iPhoto.
In conclusion, the teachers in YPS welcome the use of ICT for teaching and learning from the effort they made for the students of all levels in the school. Problems faced by the teachers in incorporating ICT into subject curriculum such as the lack of time (for example, not enough time to complete the syllabus) and sometimes resources (for example, not enough computers) are inevitable. However, I believe that these problems would eventually be eliminated given enough determination.
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