Coming to the end of the year...

It's going to be a year soon and frankly speaking, I never thought I could grow so much in one year.

I thoroughly enjoyed planning for ICT lessons, talking to teachers about lesson ideas, bouncing ideas with Boon Keng, Siew Huang and the other ICT Directors but most importantly, I enjoy being a plain old ordinary teacher. I am lurving it!

I have bigger plans for 2012 as I have a better understanding how things work in CGS. It's time to work more closely with my eCoaches (after I identify those whom I want) and give them more space to develop and show what they are capable of.

It's time to develop myself professionally and deepen my mastery of the subjects - moving to teach Secondary One Communicative Arts and Secondary Two Mathematics. Lower secondary girls, very different experiences - but something I am ready for.

Here's to a great 2011 and a more fabulous 2012!

Emotions triggered after meeting up with an ex-colleague

Met up with an ex-colleague to celebrate her birthday and mine. We went through some really memorable times in my previous school context and the many situations we had made us closer. Some things that time can never take away, but may wash out or make them fade. But never erase.

She said I looked much younger and that all the dark shadows around my eyes have disappeared and I joked that I am having a darn good time in CGS. Actually, I am. And I feel very blessed that I accepted Mrs Eugenia Lim's offer to come to this school. Boon Keng is a great mentor and supervisor. Siew Huang, Eileen and Leo are great comrades and companions - it helps that they sit in the same staffroom - endless banter.

I think about how these past months in CGS has rejuvenated me and given me the time and space to try out new things and I know I have not made the wrong decision to join the school.

To my ex-colleage (I am sure she knows who she is), I want to thank you for the times we had spent reminiscing about what we went through in SST. Those were exciting, tiring and illuminating times in my life and I thank you for your friendship.

Google Docs - Revision

Got the girls to create Google Docs to share with me and their classmates essays they have written based on certain questions taken from the TYS.

Realized that it would have been more useful if I got the girls to give each other feedback too. Made a mental note that this should be routinized so that the girls would do it on their own even without me having to say so.

Google Sites - eLearning 2011

This year marks the start of a full five-day week when staff and student get to work from home during eLearning. I am very excited about it as I have never gotten to work from home during eLearning, and especially since I never get to have a live lesson with the girls before.

Here's the link to the EL Google Site and the link to the Math Google Site. Vas helped a great deal to come out with the acronym for the Math site - she's creative in that way :)

Imagine, marking attendance, teaching via a whiteboard, chatting, polling and setting assessments all from the comfort of your home! Amazing right? Here's a sample of the chat history I captured. Of course I had to play technical support role too!

Google Docs - Persuasive Speech

The start of Term 3 signals the beginning of Integrated Curriculum for the Secondary Three students, which I recall is into the second year. We have met up during numerous PD-IC sessions to improve on the scheme and the girls have had many lessons to prepare them for the performance task, which is to create a talk show to persuade a designated target audience to live healthily. Learning how to write persuasively is therefore an essential skill to teach and we got the groups to create samples of persuasive speech as practice.

Here's a sample:

One thing I could have done differently, if I had the time, would be to get each group to give comments.

Google Sites - Mid-Year Staff and ICT Seminar

Preparing for the Staff and ICT Seminar in late May and June was both exciting and exhausting as we planned to use a different platform this year - Google Sites.

We planned to show the teachers the capabilities of what Google Sites could do by modelling its use in the seminar itself.

Coordinating with the various key personnel was not easy as they each had different time lines and piecing and putting all the information into one site took me and the trainers, especially Jean, a great deal of time. But finally the site was done and we conducted the seminar, which aimed to develop the staff to create eLearning packages via Google Sites than on iMedia so that more collaborative elements like Google Docs and Web 2.0 tools could be employed to engage the girls.

Here's the link to the seminar site.

Google Sites - S2 Cluster Sharing

Usha, my HOD for the English Language department, asked me to conduct a workshop during the cluster sharing day. So I decided to put together some of the things I have done previously in another school context to show the possibilities as I have yet to design lessons that uses Google Docs for those stated lesson objectives.

Here's the link to the Google Site I created via ICONnect, because I wanted to show the teachers that they could already be using what the Ministry has provided to create engaging learning experiences for the students. The bonus is you get to archive what the students have done!

Mindmeister - Math Lesson on Population and Exponential Graphs

Looked through the Internet to find a possible equation to explain population growth and designed a lesson that required the girls to look at world population figures over the decades and make predictions on population growth. Fundamentally, I wanted to girls to realize the function that best decribed the growth is an exponential one.

The lesson went quite smoothly and Wan was at one corner filming my every move but the important visitors had not turned up. I was starting to worry they would not get to see the girls in action.

Just as I got them to work on Mindmeister to think about the consequences of population growth and how the data and information help policy makers make important decisions, DSP came in with a throng of other officials. My mind went blank but apparently the girls did not. They actively discussed and penned down their thoughts into the mindmap and here's their work:

BK said the lesson went well. I think I could have done better and begged him to not let me have to go through such an event again.

Mindmeister

CGS subscribes to Mindmeister and every staff and student has an account which allows them to create unlimited number of mindmaps. How cool is that, right?

Today I got the girls to map out their responses to a piece of situational writing to try out the platform as there is going to a visit by a very important person from the Ministry and Boon Keng, my supervisor, has asked me to present a lesson for observation. I have my reservations but since this becomes my main lesson observation for the year, why not right?

The girls seemed to know how to use the platform really well. This attests to the experiences they must have received in the previous 2 years.

Voxopop - Picture Discussion

To prepare the girls for their Oral Examination, I created a Voxopop group, entitled the Green Puma, as I received a green Puma watch from my wife. The girls saw that connection and made endless remarks about it ;p

This portal allows users to record directly and even comment via audio recording. Pretty cool!

Using 360 Panorama

As the girls were learning Box and Whisker plots, I borrowed some very long pieces of sari from Vas (whom is the first colleague I got to know and get along very well with) who recorded the heights of her girls and then made them go to the parade square to stand in increasing heights and then made use of the sari to mark out the first, second and third quartiles.

I decided to carry out the same activity with C3 and this was what they did. I enjoyed the experience of using the app 360 Panorama in my iPhone 4 to take in the entire scene.

iMedia - eCoaching

Created a group for the eCoaches too to think about the use of technology. Following Sze Gin's lead of course, since I am learning the ropes from her.

We shared with the team an article about what makes good coaching and got them to reflect and post up their learning. This came from one of the ICT Directors who looks into the ICT infrastructural needs of the school.

Google Docs - Key Ideas after Viewing Some Advertisements

Designed a Google Spreadsheet that required the girls to pen down their own responses after viewing some advertisements - the objective was to see if they could identify the key idea each advertisement was trying to convey.

iMedia - a continuation

Returned Math Test 2 to the girls today and I must say they didn't do as well as I have expected. So I decided to get them to reflect about their own performance.

Standard forms came up a few times. I think I must re-teach this portion.

iMedia

Created all the groups for my classes on iMedia. Have grand plans for the girls - for them to create blogs for reflections, for them to upload videos or images. I am amazed how much CGS has done for the girls, to create the ICT learning spaces, both physical and virtual.

3C3 is a high-ability class with girls who are very motivated. 3S1 is free-spirited, with a sense of humour.

Two classes, just two.

After teaching them how to vary sentence lengths and structures, I got the girls to post their reflections with a simple 2-1 structure. It feels great to be doing this and to be thinking about whether students have learnt something.

I look forward to using more ICT in my lessons.

The first day...

I survived the first day. 

Teaching English and Mathematics to the same two Secondary Three classes - I have to say this is the first for me. I checked and apparently quite a rare arrangement in CGS.

I think I started with them the wrong foot - maybe I was too stern in delineating all my expectations - I could sense the stillness in the classroom. Would I be able to engage them? So many things to think about - how to infuse technology in the classroom? How to make sure they learn the concepts? My mind is a whirlpool of information and right now I am still trying to make sense of the surroundings.

Small breaths. A step at a time. I will find my groove soon. I hope.