When I did my Latihan Ikhtisas, there are many activity worksheets that I found from the internet (from various websites). One of the websites that I frequently visited is Busyteacher. One of the worksheets that I used when I taught conjunctions is this.
Category: Teaching
The art of story telling
I attended a workshop on using storytelling as a method in teaching and learning practice. The facilitators are PM Hayati and Ir Razali. I am not a good storyteller but I try to improve the art through crafting cases i.e. stories for my class discussion activities and assignments. Here is one of the notes that I got from the workshop,
What is OCD? It is not perfectionism
Mental illness does not mean that you are always looking sad and morose
Self-assess to know your mental health
Most of the time, we have the symptoms of psychological distress but unlike physical health like flu, fever and such, we overlook the psychological symptoms that indicate we are not ok. Perhaps, it is easier to “see” physical symptoms as compared to psychological symptoms. But, the thing when it comes to psychological symptoms, it can be manifested through physical expression. So, in this case, we can self-assess ourselves as a preliminary attempt to get help from professional people who are trained to help us with psychological distress.
I find useful website with various self-tests for FREE (only some of the tests are FREE such as mental health assessment, anger, attention span, mental speed, romantic personality, procrastination, blood pressure quiz, and menopause quiz ) .
Puppy love? Monkey love?
I had a quick chat with Ita yesterday. I asked her about what’s new and what’s not about school. She told me about some teenage angst among the form 5 students. Yup. Among the students who she mentioned was in my class. When they caught the form four student last April due to “energy booster” stuff, I wrote to all my former form 4 students a letter.
I am a bit busy off lately. I don’t think I would have enough time to write each and every one of them a letter. But I will meet some of them this Friday for our tuition class in sha Allah. So, I would have a pep talk with them. There are various issues that teachers are worried about. Among the issues are coupling, same gender close relationship, a minor brawl (this one is due to minor misunderstanding between a senior and a junior relating to defending one’s girlfriend) and lack of motivation in their study. Some of the issues are part and parcel of life. As teenagers, they are exploring their identity and thus they need to learn to negotiate with others. It is not easy to do that. They need guidance and lots of patience from other adults.
But the thing is, when it comes to opposite gender relationship, for some teachers, it is too early for them to explore in that area. For me, it is ok as long as they know the boundary that they have to abide according to Islam. A normal note from one to another is common. To meet or hang out at the mall is normal (of course this is not right if you don’t observe “the” guideline). Some of them might say that their parents met when they were at school. They were high school sweet hearts. So sweet right? Yeah right. Now, their children are following their parents footsteps. Of course, this makes thing a bit challenging for the teachers because on one hand. the parents are ok with that and on the other hand, the teachers don’t want it to become a culture at school.
Some people can balance their act when it comes to studying and coupling. But if you have string of Cs and Ds, it clearly indicates that you need to focus on one aspect more than trying to focus on both. But again, it is choice. At the end of the day, the students need to decide and be accountable towards their decision.
What did I normally do during relief class?
It was quite common for me to have relief class during Latihan Ikhtisas. Sometimes, I had few relief classes almost every day. At first, I didn’t know what to do during relief class other than “following” the normal practice i.e. let the students do their own work. But after some time, I decided to do some activities (with rewards).
Among the activities that I would do was spelling bee and trivia (quiz about general knowledge) but for form 3 and form 5 students, I would normally ask the teachers if they had handouts that they want me to use when I had their relief class and we would have discussion after that. In a way that, I would end up teaching the students. I did these few times and later on the principal and the GPK knew about it and thus, I would end up taking ALL relief classes for English regardless of the forms. For examination classes i.e. form 3 and form 5, I would normally assign to do revision exercise with them for grammar, writing, literature and such.
Normally, what I did was if I knew in advance that I would be given a relief class, sometimes I would book the computer room and did activities using Quizziz such as online trivia. Of course, some students were hesitated but I normally would reward those who got the right answer etc. with chocolates. The funny thing was sometimes when the students knew that they would get a relief teacher on certain time, they would ask me if I would be the relief teacher because they wanted to “play English game”. Yeah right! The power of positive reinforcement. Indeed.
My quizziz collection: Suitable for secondary school students
I have been using Quizziz since 2016. But when I went for my Latihan Ikhtisas, I still continued using Quizziz for my form 1 and form 4 students. Here are some of the Quizziz that I made that anyone can get access to any time, any where provided they have internet connection [Note: I make it public so that there is no password or code needed to get access to it]
Form 4
Charge of the Light Brigade (Poem)
Form 1
Grammar
Past Progressive/Continuous Tense
Multiple intelligence: What is that?
Any intelligence theory is complicated and could easily be misunderstood because there are many layers of intelligence. Some might think that if a student prefers to use audio style of learning (i.e. listening to lecture, talk, engaging in discussion etc.), he/she is an auditory learner. Well, it is easy to accept such assumption because it gives a quick way to understand one’s preference in learning. But, as human being, we are complex beings and thus, there are so many aspects and factors that affect our learning.
When Howard Gardner proposed his theory of Multiple Intelligence, he wrote many articles about it but off lately, other researchers have found findings that contradict Gardner’s idea. Gardner acknowledges that he might overlook some parts of human learning. As teachers, we have to take time to know our students. Knowing their intelligence level or learning preference is not enough. Compassion is one of the key elements to be emphatic teachers.
la Résistance
Oittt
Takde yang pdf ke
Yang ni tak reti nak guna la
That’s the message that I received from one of my senior colleagues who seems to baffle a bit when I gave him Prezi link.
I am a novice Prezi user. But, in line with the implementation of Future Ready Educators practice in UTM, I have no choice other than “transforming” my notes to Prezi. It is my baby step. Prezi can be converted into PDF but it does not look nice. I don’t like it. So, I would rather give the link so the users can have interactive slides. They can skip any subtopic or can look at any subtopic that they want with ease. Powerpoint has similar feature yet it is does not have any direct link like Prezi.
I guess, since the E-content is new, people are struggling to adjust to it. Like the OBE. I still remember back in 2011, when I attended the course on OBE, I was motivated to “practice” preparing the Course Assessment Report (CAR) by using OBE. But, I vividly remember my former HoD said to me when he saw that I was sending the *OBE version report, “Hadijah, just because you attended the OBE workshop, it does not mean that you should use OBE to prepare your report. You have to do it manually. I won’t accept this OBE version report“.
I was heartbroken (a bit). But, here I am facing such challenges again. I just need to be persistent in this. I need to adjust to the new requirement as FREE (Future Ready Educators) ASAP. I am not getting any young so I might need extra time to adjust myself with the new trend. I will try my best to learn the rope and never give up easily In Sha Allah. May Allah ease my journey as FREE
[*Note: Who can tell that a year after that incident, it was made compulsory for ALL Of us to use OBE for our CAR. By this time, I have got use to OBE and I don’t have much problem to navigate the system 😀 ]