T1 Thoughts and T2 W1

A new term begins again and I made a promise to myself to be more diligent in blogging this term! Lets summarise shortly Term 1. Term 1, for me, was CRAZY BUSY. Lol :) This is the first year im teaching the 4Es, and its also the first yr i am a first in charge of a CCA. So, it is a lot of firsts for me. I am trying my best to cope with the new responsibilities in my own way (taking it one (baby) step at a time). In many ways, I do feel like I am taking my O Levels all over again as I am constantly preparing answers to questions and I am always "bugging" Rozi (my self - appointed mentor :)) to seek clarifications on what is expected of the chapter for the O Levels. I hope to learn more in the UCLES course that we will be going for in April.

There is also a challenge for me to get more acquainted with my form class as I only teach four of them (out of 31) due to the banding in Maths. For Term 1 remarks, I had to seek out comments from respective subject teachers who had taught them and I would definitely have to do the same for Term 2. Hence, to me, FT period is rather sacred as it is the very rare chance that I get to see my form class as a whole. Hence, I am thankful that this term, CE lesson will be conducted by me as it means I will get to spend more time (precious 40 mins) with my form class and get to know them better so as to help shape their development in AI.

This term, I kicked off EM with 4E2 with the chapter on Graphs in Practical Situations. We started off with the notes. After checking through the files in Term 1, I realised many students didnt finish the examples in the notes. Hence, this term, I started off by listing to them very clearly my expectations: that it is A MUST for them to complete all the examples in the notes as I go through them in class with them. I made it a point to be more vigilant and do more rounds in class as I taught them this week to make sure they filled in their notes as we went along. I think sometimes, it is easy for us teachers to assume that as we are going through the examples, the students are all taking it down. I realised this is not always true when I checked their files. Hence, I need to be more careful and continuously check if all students are on task. After reading Hwee Hwee's blog, I think I am gg to follow her method of getting them to show me their completed examples b4 I release them for recess on Wed as my lesson is b4 recess. I will roll this out in wk 2 ( i am sure there are gg to be lots of moans and groans haha)

Ok back to this week with 4E2. As this chapter involves graph drawing and drawing of tangents, we practiced drawing graphs in class. I showed them an example of a graph I had drawn and wrote on the board the checklist for a perfect graph: Labelled axes, units, smooth curve, no kinks or hairy lines, title for graph etc. So as students drew their graphs, I got them to check their graph against the checklist on the board. (We did this for CF curve too) I also emphasised to them that graph drawing is one of the sure-will-come-out questions for O levels and told them that it is a must score question because the steps are all the same. For tangents, I demonstrated via the visualiser how to draw the tangent for a curve and got them to practice drawing in class. I walked around to assist those who had difficulties drawing a tangent.

We are almost at the end of the chapter now which is good as I am on par with the SOW for 4E2. I still have one problem with the class: Because they are very stubborn and insist on not sticking to my special seating arrangment for other lessons. With my seating arrangment, they are much quieter as compared to the usual one where they sit beside their friends and CANNOT stop talking. So when I step into class, I usually have to wait about a good 5 mins whilst they take their own sweet time to move to their seats. I need to get some sense of urgency in these students! They simply love dily dalying.

T1W8 - 4E1

This class is rather weak. Many of their foundation is not there. I have completed Probability with them and will be giving them the test tomorrow. Many of them are able to do probability as compared to circles which they are very weak in. I think my challenge now is to try to motivate this group of students. I intend to come up with this top scorer template and print it out and paste in on the notice board. For every test, Im going to write down the name of the 3 top scorers for all to see on the notice board. Hopefully, this will motivate the class as seeing their name will inspire them to work harder for Maths. I shall try this next term as Term 1 is drawing to an end soon.

T1W8 - 4E2

4E2 seems better now in terms of their attitude. They are quieter in class and when given seat work, I notice many of them actually attempting the questions and discussing the work with their partners. The talkative ones are more focussed in class now that they are seated away from their friends. The new seating arrangment worked because I marked their probability test and many of them passed. Especially those who failed the previous test. I have students who even scored 15 and above for the test and these students used to be very distracted and michievious in class. Hence, Im going to stick with this new seating arrangment as it works in getting them to be less distracted and more focussed in class.

I started on cumulative frequency this week. I intend to go at a faster pace for this chapter in order to catch up with the SOW.

T1 W5 - 3N (O)

I am rather slow with this class. I just started Chapter 2 with them and I am very far behind the SOW. But thats because, they are so weak in Indices and many of them kept failing their tests. I start to wonder how some of them even got to do O level maths as they seem to have difficulty in grasping simple concepts too! I need a lot of drill and practice with this class.

T1W5 - 4E Maths

For this week, I continued on probability for 4E1 and 4E2.

4E2: 4E2 is a big class comprising 41 students. Initially I had difficulties managing this class because they are v TALKATIVE. They just cant seem to stop talking to their friends. Especially this group of boys and some of the girls. (Can i name names in this reflection? Haha.) I tried to make the lesson more interesting by showing them the 21 DVD and talking about counting cards and they still wasnt able to get them to be more attentive. Exasperated, I spoke to Mrs Tay , their form teacher regarding the background of the class. Through my conversation with her , I found out that the class chose their own seats and they are all seated next to their good friends.

Hence, I decided to do up my own seating arrangement for the class for Maths lesson. I identified the talkative ones and separated them. I also pulled out the weaker students, some of whom were sitting right at the back and made them sit in front. After that, there was an improvement! They were more attentive, and I could tell many of them were concentrating and doing seat work when I assigned it to them. Heartening to see the slight improvement.

4E1: 4E1 has changed a lot this yr! for the better :) I can safely say many of them are taking their studies more seriously esp. after I kept scaring them about the need to pass maths if they want to go jc, poly. Some of them are really weak, but at least their attitude is better than last year. I feel very happy when students like Dian get full marks for circles test. Heartening!!

2009 T1 W1 - Reflections

Today was a tiring day. I met all my classes today. It was good to see my pupils after the long break. Happy to note that my 4E1 students were listening attentively when I was telling them about the importance of this year and that they need to work really hard to achieve at least a B3 in maths.