What a term it has been, adapting to new experiences as I continue to figure out my teacher identity.
The 10 weeks hasn't been a bed of roses, but with pain and struggles come growth!!
Using this post to document some of my 'experiments' and takeaways from the term.
Experiment #1: Weekly Reflections with my Form Class
Started doing weekly reflections with my new Sec 1 form class with the intentions of getting to know them better as individuals, as well as to provide them with a safe space to share about their school experiences.
Each week's reflection questions invite students to look back on and share about their week. Going through this reflection process will hopefully guide them to be more reflective and intentional in terms of their thoughts, behaviour and actions.
My takeaways:
I really enjoy reviewing my students' reflections every week! Through these reflections, I got to learn about their hobbies and their lives outside of school, which helped me connect with students I otherwise wouldn't have 'common topics' with. Some memorable/fun things they shared:
👧🏻 raises chickens at home!! I got her to show me pictures of her atas chickens and she spoke super excitedly about them for a full 10 minutes. (A pleasant surprise because she is usually really reserved 🤩).
Another 👧🏻 was watching Hospital Playlist (K-drama) and I shared with her that it is one of my favourite K-dramas (slightly comforted that I am still keeping up with the times and relatable to them in such small ways hahaha)
Beyond the light-hearted stories that they share, these weekly check-ins also allowed me to flag up potential issues students have in terms of stress levels and friendship issues, and provide prompt intervention.
Especially because I do not teach all of the students in my form class (FSBB woes 🥲), the reflection log is a really useful platform for me to get to know them and also to gauge how well they are coping in schools.
Experiment #2: Managing Sec 3 Full Geography class
I initially struggled quite a bit with managing this class, and the class size did not help 🙃 In a bid to get students to regulate their behaviour and take greater ownership over their learning, I changed their seating arrangement and got them into groups of 4s/5s.
My plans for them as a group:
Keep each other on task - during day-to-day lessons
Learn together - during pair or group discussions
Group presentation - of current affairs related to Geography
Group points were awarded for good behaviour/class participation and delivering the group presentations, while points were deducted for misbehaviour/late coming.
To 'formalise this union' (🤪), the groups came up with their group flags:
My takeaways:
At first I wasn't sure how useful this system was going to be, but I did see some improvement in terms of students staying on task and reminding each other of my classroom expectations.
In the process of putting together their group presentations - where they shared about news related to Geography - students were also able to see the relevance of what they learning to the real-world context and use the geographical terms they have learnt to unpack the news for their classmates. [Added bonus: contribute to example bank for LDQs]
E.g. Earthquake terms - epicentre, shallow-focus earthquake
Another added bonus: contributing articles to the Humans Read Blog 🥳
Experiment #3: Empowering Softball CCA leaders
Entrusted the captain and vice-captain of the team with the responsibility of setting up and running our CCA's Instagram account (follow us please! @aes.softball HAHA).
My takeaways:
There are many different ways to empower students. Showing them that I trust them, and trust that they can reach my expectations, is one of the greatest forms of empowerment.
Faster =/= better. Giving students the time and space to experiment instead of being too quick to provide feedback will allow them to feel a greater sense of ownership and pride over what they have created.
Remember to place greater emphasis on the process rather than the product!
☜ A proud mama moment when the student leaders took my idea of doing a bingo to engage our softballers and ran with it.
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