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.