Blog 1: Night at the Museum for Factual Recount Writing :)

THE CLASS

Throughout my ESE, I observed 1 Grace, a lower secondary Express class. They are considered as one of the lower-end Express classes but students were still relatively fast in understanding lessons. They were very vocal about their opinions and were quick to ask questions when in doubt. They were quite an active bunch too, where the boys were more talkative and easily distracted. However, when given work to do or their interest is piqued, they are able to channel that energy and concentrate well.

THE LESSON

For this particular lesson, the teacher, Miss Pierre, had prepared PowerPoint slides and had a video to show the class.

The lesson was on writing factual recounts and it was to prepare the students for their report-writing in Paper One. Miss Pierre first used her PowerPoint slides to introduce the students to factual recount writing. Since writing factual recounts requires the use of past tense, proper sequencing of events and the names of people and places involved, the slides listed these in short bullet points followed by examples to give the students a clearer picture. Though PowerPoint is a basic ICT tool, students were engaged from the start as it was still a break from the usual marker-whiteboard lessons. With the help of PowerPoint, Miss Pierre also could juxtapose sample recounts side by side, one a positive example and the other a negative example. The students that way could really visualize how a proper factual recount looked like and what Miss Pierre expected of them. She also made them read these recounts off the PowerPoint slides, keeping them engaged and also thus, training them for their oral examinations.

The video then came in for an activity, where they had to apply what they had learnt from the PowerPoint slides. The video was a short scene from the movie “Night at the Museum” and it immediately got the students excited. Most of them had watched it before and so, anticipated the activity even more. Miss Pierre gave them clear instructions that they were to watch the video then fill in the activity worksheet, listing chronologically the events that took place in the scene. As the video played, Miss Pierre walked around the class, ensuring that the students were paying attention and also, reminded them to look out for names of characters and places so that they can use be specific in their activity.

ICT- A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

For the last question, I interviewed both Miss Pierre and the ICT Head, Mr Choo.

Miss Pierre thought that ICT could really make lessons more dynamic for students, especially the use of videos. However, she pointed out that the use of videos is easier for certain subjects than others. As a Literature teacher, she can easily find videos on the texts she is teaching. But as an English teacher, while she can find videos on issues/themes that the school has chosen to teach the students, she is hard-pressed to find videos on writing or answering techniques. In short, while she can easily find videos on content, she cannot do so for videos on skill. Miss Pierre also mentioned that while ICT makes learning more fun, it makes teaching slightly trickier. For one, time management becomes even more crucial, having to factor in set-up time. Two, in the event that a lesson is planned around an ICT and there are sudden technical difficulties such that the ICT cannot be used, the teacher faces immense pressure to save the lesson. So there must be a back-up lesson plan for lessons involving ICT and the IT head must be on standby.

ICT Head, Mr Choo, said that he welcomed the use of ICT for teaching and learning. He said that it was inevitable that ICT became integrated with our education system. He pointed out that ICT had changed the way information was sent and received among staff and students, with PHS having their own wireless network and PHS email in place. He also pointed out how learning had become independent and self-directed---Teachers upload notes ahead of time unto Google sites and students can access these before lesson. They then come into class informed and prepared, as opposed to tradition.