{"id":705,"date":"2019-06-20T08:26:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T00:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/?p=705"},"modified":"2019-08-04T21:15:27","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T13:15:27","slug":"what-did-i-do-while-undergoing-my-latihan-ikhtisas-li_part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/what-did-i-do-while-undergoing-my-latihan-ikhtisas-li_part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"What did I do while undergoing my Latihan Ikhtisas (LI)?_Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

I taught form 1, form 4 and form 6 (MUET) classes when I did my LI.\u00a0 For the lower form, for the obvious reason, they assigned me to the classes with many students who got C range grades either based on their UPSR (for form 1) or PT3 (for form 4).\u00a0 I took it as a challenge because even though some of them got better grades, their English proficiency is still can be improved.<\/span><\/p>\n

I do admit that I struggled a bit to get myself familiar with the syllabuses and whatsnot.\u00a0 So I have to search for the DSKP, SOW and stuff even though my colleagues give whatever things that I need EXCEPT activity worksheet.\u00a0 I believe in personalised lesson plan and activity.\u00a0 Even though we might teach the same subject\/course, yet we should custom-made our teaching because we are different and our students are also different. Of course, this would entail extra efforts on our parts as teachers.\u00a0 So, some might use short-cuts of using the same worksheet for different classes taught by different teachers.\u00a0 “Sharing is caring<\/strong><\/span>“.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though I share the activity worksheet with others, yet I created my own after searching and looking at examples from the internet.\u00a0 Sometimes, I took an excerpt from a book that I was reading and turned it into a reading comprehension exercise.\u00a0 Normally, the available exercises would be abridged from the original source so using this approach, I need to abridge the excerpt as well.\u00a0 This would hone my writing skills as I realise that I “abandon” writing any journal during this period of LI.\u00a0 Yup.\u00a0 I decided to totally immerse myself in the process of being a teacher.\u00a0 As a teacher, you rarely involve in writing journals<\/a> or whatsnot for publication unless you are doing your post graduate study.\u00a0 When I did my LI, I notice that none of the teachers ever published their action research.\u00a0 The irony is some of them don’t even know what action research is.\u00a0 After investigating the factors of this phenomenon, I conclude that they are bogged down by many administrative stuff and teaching.\u00a0 So, before you know it, a year passes by without doing any research about and on your teaching i.e. action research.<\/span><\/p>\n

I religiously collected some data since I decided to use token economy for my form 4 class (majority of them rarely submitted any homework that I gave – especially the boys.\u00a0 The girls were different.\u00a0 They submitted their homework on time.\u00a0 No problem).\u00a0 I will write more about how I did the token economy in different post.<\/span><\/p>\n

How to encourage students to submit their work?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

First, you need to know how they complete their homework.\u00a0<\/strong> There are so many reasons how and why they submit their homework on time.\u00a0 \u00a0A common assumption is they do the homework themselves because they could complete the task that I give.\u00a0 But there are also students who would submit their homework and yet they complete the homework due to plagiarism.\u00a0 Yup, they would copy each other homework without understanding how to complete the task.\u00a0 In addition, there are also students who have difficulty to complete any homework that I give because they do not understand the topic or in writing composition, they do not know how to construct sentences.\u00a0 In this case, there might be students who will not submit the homework at all because of he\/she does not know how to do the homework and there are also another group of students who would still submit their homework and yet, they might submit incomplete homework.\u00a0 On top of that, there are also students who do not have the “tool” to write.\u00a0 Meaning, they do not have any pen to write and thus, they are not able to complete my homework.<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking at this variety of reasons how and why students submit (or don’t submit) their homework, as a teacher, we need to use different strategy and approach to deal with these variety of issues even though it might lead to these two things i.e. submission or no submission of homework.\u00a0 It is really unfair for a teacher to punish a student who did not submit his\/her homework when he\/she does not have a pen to write with.\u00a0 It is almost unthinkable at this age that there are students who do not have this basic stationery, a pen.\u00a0 Yet, this is the reality.\u00a0 There are students who could not afford to buy a pen.\u00a0 Given a choice of buying a RM2 worth of meal and RM2 pen, some might choose to buy a meal than a pen.\u00a0 Hey, you can’t blame them.\u00a0 According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the lowest basic needs are related to physiological needs.\u00a0 Yup.\u00a0 You need to eat and drink in order to survive (Alhamdulillah<\/em> the air that we use to breathe is free).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, it is also unfair for students to be punished if they are not able to complete their homework due to lack of understanding even though they have given their best effort to complete any given task.\u00a0 For example, if a student is only able to complete less than 350 words essay, we need to look closely at several aspects.\u00a0 If they have already use all of the points which have been discussed\/given, this means that they are not able to elaborate the points in more than one sentence.\u00a0 What should we do?\u00a0 Rather than punishing them for incomplete essay, we have to acknowledge their effort (and hidden struggle).\u00a0 But at the same time, we need to give constructive comments.\u00a0 There is an incident in which a student does not able to complete his homework because his pen has run out of ink.\u00a0 Yup.\u00a0 This relates to the first point.\u00a0 No pen = incomplete homework.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, if they copy each other work, we could not let this matter go without any action.\u00a0 We need to do something about it.\u00a0 In this case before we make any decision (i.e. punishment), we need to identify why they copy other’s work.\u00a0 Most probably, they might also have lack of understanding to elaborate points.\u00a0 But in this case, rather than giving their best shots to complete the task, they use the short-cuts way i.e. copy each other work.\u00a0 This is a classic example of mini plagiarism.\u00a0 Students should be punished if they copy each other work.\u00a0 Individual effort should be applauded and encouraged.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s why sometimes I give students “group essay”.\u00a0 Meaning, they have to discuss the points in groups and write their essay in mahjung paper later on.\u00a0 We can divide the essay into several paragraphs.\u00a0 So, each group would be assigned to one paragraph of at least 50 words.\u00a0 So, if I have 6 groups of students (one group = 4 members), I would have 6 paragraphs which equivalent of 300 words.\u00a0 So, in any continuous essay, since it is required for them to write 350 words, I wrote the first introductory paragraph of 50 words (of course, I asked each group to provide on sentence) on the white board.\u00a0 Later on, ask the students to continue writing the following paragraphs in their own group.\u00a0 In this case, students don’t feel pressured to complete the whole task on their own.\u00a0 But, you need to monitor closely when they complete their group work.\u00a0 To encourage group cohesion, you need to give reward if they could complete the task as a group.\u00a0 This would lead to the second point.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, reinforce desirable behaviours.<\/strong>\u00a0 Use rewards, praises etc. to make your students feel appreciated and valued.\u00a0 To be continued….\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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I taught form 1, form 4 and form 6 (MUET) classes when I did my LI.\u00a0 For the lower form, for the obvious reason, they assigned me to the classes with many students who got C range grades either based on their UPSR (for form 1) or PT3 (for form 4).\u00a0 I took it as … Continue reading What did I do while undergoing my Latihan Ikhtisas (LI)?_Part 4<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":851,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,13,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latihan-ikhtisas-other","category-random-rambling","category-teaching","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/hadijahjaffri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}