Category: Teaching

Perkhemahan Akademik Fasa 3 SABK Madrasah Alattas Alarabiah: Hari Kedua

Today is my session (1 August 2019).  My session should begin at 830am.  But the students came at 9am.  I was mad.  They took their own sweet time to have breakfast.  Ita apologised because she did not forcefully urge the students to be quick.  What is wrong with this situation?  Why did the teacher has to apologise on the behalf of students?  I hate to deal with situation like this because the ones who should apologise are the students who came late.  Not the teacher who is in charge of the programme.

I met Fatin who was participating in a team building programme with the TNCPI office during lunch.  Fatin must be amused looking at how I was flocking by students who chatted non-stop about what they like about the camp.  What they liked about the camp?  Well, they got a smartphone courtesy of the hotel in each room.  So?  What do you expect?  Yes.  They stayed up late and got busied updating their Insta post.  They also said that it is quite rare for them to have opportunity to stay overnight at a hotel.   Some of them belong to B40 families.  Indeed it is such a rare opportunity for them.  Alhamdulillah the hotel gave them a good deal.  They have printed logo and signage in each seminar room.  So, students took pictures and whatsnot.  Me?  I took pictures for documentation purposes.

 

Perkhemahan Akademik Fasa 3 SABK Madrasah Alattas Alarabiah: Hari Pertama

Today (31 July 2019, Wednesday) is the first day of the academic camp.   My session will start tomorrow (1 August 2019, Thursday).  But I came today because I want to check out the venue and Ita asked me to help her taking pictures for documentation purposes.  Since they cannot use DSLR camera, we are relying on each other’s effort to take pictures throughout the sessions by taking turn using our smartphones instead.  Here are some of the pictures.

Using song to teach grammar_Part 2

“Sooner Or Later” by Alan Parsons

Oh what a price we pay
For the things we say
And the closer I get to you
The further you move away

All the lies we tell
In the games we play
And the longer I think it over
The harder it is to stay

Sooner or later I’ll be free
To leave the past behind
Sooner or later you’re gonna be
The last thing on my mind
Little by little I’m finding out
The truth behind your eyes
Maybe if I don’t show
I thought you might like to know
You’re gonna be the last thing on my mind

You didn’t want to know
I could have told you so
But the moment I think it’s over
The further there is to go
Just a little word
Such an easy way
But the longer I think about it
The harder it is to say

Sooner or later I’ll be free
To leave the past behind
Sooner or later you’re gonna be
The last thing on my mind
Little by little I’m finding out
The truth behind your eyes
Maybe if I don’t show
I thought you might like to know
You’re gonna be the last thing on my mind

This is the song by Alan Parsons.  This is a breakup song.  Indeed.  Well, my intention was not to teach the students to be romantic.  It is far from it.  But as teenagers, they need to learn how to regulate their emotions such as handling with rejection, break up and whatsnot.  To motivate them to learn English is not easy.  Song is one of the ways to teach which is widely used.  There are numerous research done this.  One of the examples is by a team of researchers from Turkey.

I have not yet conducted any research on this issue. Last year, when I was undergoing my Latihan Ikhtisas, I had contemplated this though.  Since I only taught one class for one form, i Ikhtisas, I had contemplated this issue. Since I only taught a single class for a single form, it was difficult for me to “perform” quasi-experiments. I was specifically assigned pupils with limited English skills. Therefore, it is comprehensible why the other class had higher grades than mine, despite the fact that my instructor never used songs in the classroom.  The students become more receptive to my teaching style, that much is certain.  Some of them are in under my special care until end of the year.

Can perceived parental favoritism affects personality?

Environmental influence does affect one’s personality in one way or another.  The influence can be varied from one individual to another, so different individual might display differences and uniqueness.  

Does parental favoritism affects personality?  Well, if you look at personality traits according to OCEAN, there might be different spectrum of personality traits.  So, some researchers would look at link between one variable to another in a simpler form.  One such study is about perceived parental favoritism and its relation on narcissism.  What do you think?  

Cooperative Learning: Student Teams-Achievement Division (STAD)

There are various activities that can be conducted to engage students’ team work and motivation.  In cooperative learning, we can use Student Teams-Achievement Division (STAD) where a small groups of students with different levels of ability work together to accomplish a shared learning goal.  In my case, I combine jigsaw activity with STAD.  So, the instruction that I give for jigsaw activity would also include instruction for STAD.

Cooperative learning: Jigsaw activity

I have done jigsaw activity for my class for several semesters.  At first, I just gave verbal instruction to the students on how to do the jigsaw activity.  But later on, I realise that it is better for me to give the students written instruction that they can refer to.  In this case, they can have a copy of the written instruction so that they refer to it when they want to conduct jigsaw activity in their class when they undergo Teaching Practicum (or after they graduate) for the undergraduate and for PG students who are teachers, they can use this activity in their class as well and they can share it with their colleagues at school through Latihan Dalam Perkhidmatan (LDP).  

So, HERE is the written instruction that I give to students when I do Jigsaw activity in my class.  

Domestic cats know their names

My cats, Robyn and Batman know their names.  But Robyn rarely will reply back when I call her name.  Batman would always reply back by meowing loudly.  I miss him badly.  Every time I come back home, without fail (unless he is asleep inside the house), the moment he saw my car, he would run and start to meowing to welcome me back.  Such moment would be something that I miss now since he went missing.  Robyn is such a princess.  She would only meow when I pet her.  Not when I call her name.  A research which has been published in Nature found that domestic cats know their names.  Indeed

This is Robyn

This is Batman

Dunning-Kruger Effect: What is that?

A senior colleague and I were discussing about an issue relating how people overestimate their ability level.  Meaning, sometimes we might find people who think they know a lot but in reality, they do not know much and they do not even realize it.  Ironic, isn’t it?  But this is the reality.  Incompetent people think that they are amazing, genius (and the list goes on)

The cartoon strip is taken from The Business Times

This is dangerous in academia when you think that you know a lot and thus there is no need for you to learn or relearn something to upgrade what you already know.  There is always new thing that we can learn from one another or through reading or doing research.   Look at the diagram (taken from Marketcall), 

In psychology, it is called as Dunning-Kruger Effect,

“People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.” Excerpt from Justin Kruger and David Dunning (1999) article published in Journal of personality and social psychology.  

This is the opposite effect of Impostor syndrome.  

The personality traits: Does it really define who we are?

When it comes to personality traits, most of the time, we are looking at how different individuals from others.  But the differences are somewhat related to situation that individuals are dealing with.  In this case, our traits are transcended from being characteristics that describe us as a person to how we react to certain situations based on what we have learned through cultural norms that are imposed on us or how we impose those cultural experiences on ourselves.  Thus, there would be traits that seem to be out of place, as if we are out of character.  But we have to look closely that we need to have a space or place to be ourselves.  This is a time for us to recharge.  This is what Brian Little said.