Week 3 Reflections (Soo Hoon)

Well, all of us are supposed to bring laptop for the previous session.
Without fail, Dr Tan demonstrated SDL and CL again. Two weeks ago, it were the Mindmeister and Think-Pair-Share, last week were "Jig-saw" method and the use of laptop.

This is the first time i have seen a class conducted using laptop for "Jig-saw" method. This affordance of technology enables students to move around discussing, surfing net for information and typing relevant information straight into the laptop. I believe this scenario will not happen so soon in the schools yet. Not all students can afford personal laptops and not all schools have the budget to supply one for each student. However, I am really looking forward to such studying environment in the future!

Dr Tan mentioned that he had actually altered the traditional "Think-Pair-Share" method for the previous lesson. True enough, teachers have to make changes to cater for different type of lessons, students and take into account of the time constraint. Teachers should always bear in mind that no two lessons should be conducted exactly the same way.

For the previous lesson, the class was introduced to the 5 pedagogical approaches used in learning. Each of us specialized in one approach and share among our group through verbal discussion and comments in the Wiki page. This was an illustration of CL.

I was in-charged of Inquiry-based learning (IBL). In my own opinion, IBL has not been widely practised, at least within my years of schooling. However, after reading up on the IBL, i feel that if IBL is successfully embedded in students, the world is seriously going to change! Students are going to perform SDL, CL on their own. They will perform case-based learning, project-based learning and resource-based learning on their own initiatives. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

However, things are not as easy. How do we get all the students to think and ask relevant questions? This is the huge challenge awaiting for the new century teachers. To bring our students to next level, abandoning the traditional form of teaching (verbal teaching, memorising information), our teachers have to come up with different innovative ways to arouse the interests of the students. Good luck to all of us!

The 5 pedagogical approaches are often inter wined. Rarely do we see them existing alone. The 4 other approaches have been widely implemented in schools. However, how effective has they been used in school is yet another issue for us to ponder. Did we all attain the aims and results of the approaches each time they were implemented?

For the past 1 year, I had taught students as an untrained teacher (contact -teaching), without any clue of teaching pedagogies. I simply go into every lesson, hoping that students would understand what i had said.

Next lesson, we will be taught on lesson planning and I am looking forward to implement those pedagogies I have learnt for the past 3 sessions.