idiosyncrasy

imperfect as I am
I always ponder on myself
How can I do better
realising the problems
with no power to alter facts
that is the start of inferiority
and depression

11.11

Mr. C: Games

3 times table

Everyone stands in a group and each kid can say up to three numbers of the results of three times table (i.e. 3,6,9) and the next person said the following answers but they can't do the same amount of number as the lst person unlesss the it was only one number. the thing is there is a fixed number that will eliminate participants when it was their turn to speak the number, for example 30. So kid has to trick other people to say 30 or simply to avoid that.

Hangman

Picking someone out of the hat (抽签)： Mr. C picked one name and let the person do the picking and pick the name of the students out of the hat. The selected children guessed one letter.

To the students who shouted out the answer, Mr. C asked them why he didnt like people to shout out the answer and told a story of people spoiling his game.

11.9

It is quite surprising that Sasa had a talk with students about her expectations of the students, "I have high expectation of you. Do you know what that means?" and why it is important. Later on, I realised she mentioned this to justify her asking people to stay at the classroom at break time if they make silly mistakes like capital letter and punctuation (honestly, I think she wont do that). She then led on to the topic on importance of capital letter and punctuation, which was followed by a mistake spotting  section.

How to memorise words

It was very kind of Sasa to introduce me to ways of learners remembering the hard words. Unlike the Chinese way of reciting, they had plentiful of interesting writing and painting to do. For instance, "colour", "Pyramid", "wordshape"  (Medicine, with painting of pills on letters), "Giraffe and monkey" (tall letter like "h,k" are giraffa and lower letters like "p,g" are monkeys with long tails. Also, there are kids who wrote poems.

11.8

8th November

I got busy and lazy. Yesterday I have learnt that the TEFL course that I signed up for contains an obligatory online course of 30-hour and it was expiring on 11th, which was one month after my registration. That discovery was shocking as I didnt know it was compulsory and that it started right from the registration. The reason why I learnt that I had the course is that I got an email from the website "reassuring" me that it is acceptable to purphase extention...unbelievable...I am really concerned about the quality of class provided by this TEFL organiztion with the sole purpose of profiting.

Trip to a Local Middle School

I have been informed that on Tuesday, Yr 5 were going to a local middle school. Through this experience, I have developed a stronger intention of letting my children study in the U.K. instead of in HK. 

School Trip is not easy. A short (10 minute) journey to the school required 7 adult assistants. We wore bright green vests and had to stop cars when crossing roads (funny incident: when I was rushing into the middle of the road to prevent cars, I heard a kid shouting, "Don't go. You are risking your life!"). When we arrived, we were led into the main hall and there were secondary school teenagers running the events. Every 3 students led a group of young children to train leadership. Their activities indoor include crossing rivers on mats, hug in three, wink murderer, hack (chop), bing bang wa.

11.7

Contemplation

I rarely talked about myself, but today I really feel like exploding as I tried and hid all the unpleasant feeling I got from the school. I feel left out and superfluous. The teacher does not need a volunteer and I am allowed to stay in the classroom and help any students, BUT,  I am not needed. Not by the teachers and rarely by the students. I also hate myself from being so scared. Scared about starting conversation with other teachers and about asking for things to do. Today Sasa was not in part of the morning class due to a doctor appointment and she didnt tell me. I think it might be beacause she thought it is not necessary. However, I gathered she thought so as she regards me as unimportant. You know, like what is the point of telling Cindy. She is just a volunteer, doesn't help to maintain the order of the class and not there to teach. (Even so, I am happy that today I could maintain discipline in class while no teacher was there. I said "I think not it is the reading time rather than the talking time.")

I think I really need to do something, like asking to change classes or to get more work from Sasa if I am not getting to do TA job.

11.4

Reflecting

Yesterday I just learnt that I was rejected by the English Open Door Programme (Chile Volunteer). Even though this is not the end of the world, I still feel quite sad as this programme could really help me gain some experience in teaching communicative skills. They  allow volunteers to teach 25-30 students each time with communicative activities, which fits perfectly in my specialty. This failure led to contemplate why I am not chosen. I believe one of the reasons is that I am not experienced enough and also I didn't perform well enough in the interview. It makes sense. As I was talking with Laurie today, she told me that the job hunting starts in April, but I should come back earlier to have as many interviews as I can to gain experience. I should never be disheartened. This is just the beginning and I am still learning. 

My conversation with Lemon and Laurie also shed light on other possibilites. I can study PGCE and it shouldnt be too hard as it doesnt have thesis and that working in Macau is also possible.

Path to become a Teaching Assitant

I am not saying I will become a TA, but I am very glad that I can actually learn and do something rather than being a Volunteer-in-waiting. Mrs TB asked for my help with children in need. It turns out that one of the TAs left before half term and the school has decided move all the TAs down a year to make up for the vacancies, which resulted in the lack of TA in Yr 5. (The lower level the children are, the more TAs they have. So Yr 5 only had one.) To adapt myself to taking up the job of TA, I was taught how to practice with Dyslexic children. Different levels of children require various teaching methods. I obersved Mr TB to learn. They all have a special envelop)

The first students were L & E from Mr. C's class.  L is the one with the highest level of dyslexia. By that I mean the level that I thought all dyslexia is like: having difficulties reading and writing. So L has 5 words from their professional dyslexia instructor (DI). He was asked to read the word, spell the word orally and draw the shape of the box (while he was drawing, he should keep spelling) and write it down on the given sheet. Remember, he should read and spell when he writes each one. E was very incredibly good at reading, that was when I learnt that dyslexia can be varied. E read a chapter to me and explained what had happen. During that, I asked question guiding him to cast light on the text and to make sure they understand. I wrote on his reading diary what he has read and words that he didn't know. He would go through them at home with his parents. Before his reading time, he carried out the "look, cover, write, check". What it means is that he got a word (from DI), he briefly looked at it, covered it, read and spell orally 5 times prior to writing the spealling down. After that, he checked his spelling.

While they were doing the spealling, T, Mi and Kri were reading their book. The point is that they have to be heard, and asked because they were having some problems with reading. J, on the other hand, is very similar with E. He does the "Look, cover, write and check". The difference is that E doesn't need to read out the words, which indicates he is of higher level. T, from 5/6, could be of the same siuationas as L or slightly better than L because he does the box as well. However, when he is revising, he doesnt do the box unless when he struggles to spell orally (for 3 times), he does the box.

Two kids (Lou and B from 5/6) did the dictation to evaluate their level. What they should be doing next time is to do dictation of the ten words that are mistaken from the day before and together with the new mistaken words, choose some mistaken words from the last dictation and write on a small yellow paper to let them print out.

BTW I have noticed that Mr. C allowed Ss to put their "Water filter" in the classroom and Sasa threw them away. I remembered the children being heartbroken when they saw Sasa put the filters in the rubbish bin. From my perspective, teachers should also care for the feeling of young children. They can be influenced while you are not paying attention. They learnt from you. They throw away things that they regard as trivial but might matter to others.

11.2

Science Workshop

Yesterday there was a science workshop. It seems like they have workshops around once a month or two. These people were from Warwick engineering major and they talked about the significance of accessible and drinkable water. Do you know:

• 1/3 of our body is made of water.
• 97% of the water on earth is in the ocean.
• 2% of the water on earth is in the shape of ice.
• Most civilisations started close to water

So, only 1% of it is acessible and drinkable.

They let students to make their own water filter with gravels, sand, cut water bottle, rubberband, tissue paper and cotton. So what most groups did was:

1. Fix the tissue paper at the mouth of the bottle with the rubberband
2. Tear open cotton and lay them flat close to the mouth of the bottle
3. Put in sand and spread it out
4. Put in Gravels and spead them out

The groups that had the cleanest filered water are the ones who 

1. put cotton on top as well as at the bottom
2. spilled the sand and gravels and claimed there were double layers of sand and gravels

One thing worths noticing is that in one group, cute E came up with this rule that whoever wanted to speak had to hold the blue pencil to avoid shouting out. Even though it didnt carry out quite well, it is a good idea. I think next time to carry it out, one has to confirm everyone agrees and tries to stick with it.

An interesting teaching method during the process is that Sasa asked students a lot of guiding questions and led students to  ponder on the reasons why they needed to make filter and why dirty water ws not drinkable. This further brings up thoughts such as African people has to drink problematic water and fall ill and there are bacteria in the water. 

Before trying out the device, learners were requested to explain how they designed it and why. It is absolutely noteworthy as they needed to learn something from it. Afterwards, Sasa asked them to draw diagram and wrote what they have learnt from it.

Science poster

As they hadn't finish their Egyptian Poster, they continued doing it after lunch, which is very enjoyable for me as there wasn't much work and walking around. Hence, I stayed at the table of your Majesty and they were really chatty. I think one reason is that I was there, But I should not be a reason, should I? I am there to help and Sasa has noticed that your majesty talked with me a lot. So I told them to start this game, whoever spoke first lost, and lost ones needed to clean the table. If they wanna talk with partner, they had to ask for my permission and the communication had to be related to the work. It actually worked very well, they asked for my permission and kept an eye on each other. 

Your Majesty was performing exceptionally well, he didn't say a word and he wanted to win. After he finished his poster, I showed it to other students in the group and justified the significance of not chatting. As a matter of fact, all of them have accomplised their posters, while the mahority of students in other groups hadn't finish!!!! I certainly got a sense of achievement and so did they. At the end, I told them that I was very proud that they didnt speak produce so much.

through the conversation with Mr. C, I have learnt that the lack of ICT is another essential difference between Hk and the U.K.. In U.K., Ipad and interactive screen are vital for classroom teaching. On the other hand, HK Schools saved the money for the teaching resources like Japanese teachers.