REFLECTION 7: 5 THINGS I WILL TAKE NOTE WHEN I AM IN TEACHING WORLD

There are few things that I will take note when I'm in the real world of teaching.

• Be ready and well prepared before entering the class. This is because the students might ask questions to teachers to answer. 
• Set rules and regulations so that the students respect the teacher.
• Provide a rotational seating for all students. Means that, every students will rotate their seats weekly and will not be seating at the same place everyday. This will make satisfaction among the students.
• Remember all the students' name. This is because the students will realize that teachers do take care of them and this will increase the respects towards the teacher.
• Carry out class activity which makes the students to be focused. For example, the teachers can conduct mini games in the class like crossword puzzles, hangman, and quizzes.

REFLECTION 6: THE BEST MOCK TEACHING

Hello Everyone!

In this reflection, we are assigned to chose the best mock teaching teacher. It's really hard for me to choose one because each and every teacher have done their best. Each of them had their own unique strengths that captured our attention during their respective mock teaching. Some of them have come out with interesting games and songs, even some of them are good in voice projection, rewards such as Toblerone Chocolate and also homework😬. Hurrmmm....I'm in hard time now to choose who's is the best presenter for mock teaching. In my point of view, I think Sivasangakary was the best presenter for the mock teaching. Here is the picture of her during the mock teaching.

The reasons why I love her teaching was because of her voice projection and the way she conducts the class without letting us to feel the boringness. She begins her teaching with a crossword puzzle as a hook for the students' attention and from there she introduced the topic that she is going to teach. Besides that, the pedagogical methods used by her was really awesome. The chapter that she chooses to teach was Sets. She drew the diagrams of sets on a Mahjong paper and start to teach. She showed some examples of sets. She also used PowerPoint slides to explain what is sets. Below are the pictures taken during her mock teaching.

She also carried out a class activity where all of us are divided into two groups. After completing the activity, she asked us to paste it at the whiteboard and then discussed the questions with us. Siva had the best teaching pedagogy-shows that she has the potential of being a great teacher. I really liked how she was well prepared, her confidence level was high and the best thing was she gave us an enjoyable experience. Great job Siva ! 👍

GROUP ACTIVITY

DISCUSSING THE ACTIVITY WITH EVERYONE

Yet, other presenters also have done their best. I wish everyone all the best and believe all of us will achieve our goals one day.

Thank you 😃

REFLECTION: CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Hello Everyone!

I'm back with a new topic after a long time and would like to share some information on effective classroom management.What is classroom management?

          Classroom management is the process of establishing an elderly, productive, and harmonious educational setting.  If the teacher’s goals are compliant, the methods used to achieve that goal will differ from proactive methods, which emphasize student responsibility. Proactive classroom management aims to help students become self-directed in their learning and behavior. Proactive teachers are reflective. They continually examine and renew their mini-theories about how to bring out the best in their students. While educational researchers and practitioners borrow from many theories, psychodynamic, behaviorism, biophysical, and developmental theories are the most influential. Proactive teachers use classroom structure, instruction, and discipline methods to promote student responsibility.

Structure

• Establish routines for all daily tasks and needs
• Orchestrate smooth transitions and continuity of momentum throughout the day
• Multitask

Instruction

• Strike a balance between variety and challenge in student activities
• Increase student engagement in learning and make good use of every instructional moment

Discipline

• Use consistent, proactive disciplinary practices
• Have a heightened awareness of all actions and activities in the classroom
• Include the use of space and proximity or movement around the classroom for nearness to trouble spots and to encourage attention
• Anticipate potential problems to limit disruptions
• Resolve minor inattention and disruptions before they become major problems

         
          To achieve these ends, proactive teachers structure procedures and routines that build community. They understand the power of group dynamics to influence individual behavior, and they recognize that the best way to prevent problem behaviors is to motivate and engage their students. Finally, proactive teachers practice positive behavior supports. They teach students with persistent discipline problems new, constructive social skills.


KEY COMPONENTS OF EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT


There is increasing agreement among researchers regarding the type of school and classroom environments needed to support positive behavior among a wide range of students. Current research indicates five components of effective, comprehensive classroom management:

• Understanding students’ personal and psychological needs 
• Creating an affirmative classroom climate and a community of support by establishing positive teacher–student and peer relationships and maintaining constructive involvement with students’ caregivers 
• Involving students in developing and committing to behavior standards that promote on-task behavior and help support a calm, safe learning environment 
• Using instructional methods that facilitate optimal learning by responding to the academic needs of individual students and the classroom group 
• Implementing responses to unproductive student behavior that treat students respectfully and help them develop skills for working effectively in the classroom and school settings

Thank you 🙂

REFLECTION 5: EXPERIENCE ON MOCK TEACHING PREPARATION

Hello Everyone!

I'm here today to share my experience on mock teaching preparation. What is mock teaching actually? Mock teaching is something that you going to teach ( it might be any topics that you master at ) in given time to the students. Mock teaching provides the teachers a safe environment to practice teaching , how to give and receive constructive feedback and provides a platform for a better understanding of the content of educational lessons.

What do I Feel?

When I recalled back my past on mock teaching, I realized that I have gone through the hardship. At first, I was very excited about mock teaching because it would be my first teaching lesson ever in my life. As time pass by, I feel so nervous when my turn is in next week ( 15 December 2016 ). Till now I haven't decide the topic that I'm going to teach for mock teaching😕. Since my major is Mathematics, I choose to teach Percentages. After choosing the topic, I begin to plan my lesson plan. Besides lesson plan, I also have to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, notes and homework for the students and also a class activity. The activity that I planned to do for mock teaching is a game that uses the idea of domino game. That game basically will be related to the topic that I'm going to teach. I hope this activity will make the students to understand well about the topic. This activity also will make me easier to evaluate the students whether they understand or not what I have taught.

This is what I have planned for my mock teaching. I hope everything goes fine next week. With the God's grace and blessings from my late grandpa, hope I can do my best.

Thank you😊

WEEK 7- What Did I Discover?

USING POWERPOINT FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

Hello everyone!

I'm here today to share what I have discovered in week 7. Hope you guys will enjoy reading it.
Well in week 7, my lecturer Dr Ng have discussed on how to use and apply PowerPoint presentation for teaching and learning. In my previous blog, I have shared about the effective use of PowerPoint in teaching and learning. As a continuum of it, I'm going to talk about the Do's and Don'ts when preparing a PowerPoint slides.

CRITERIA	DO’S	DON’TS
Font	Font size should range between 18 to 48 (according to importance) Use fonts that are easy to read, such as Arial, Tahoma, Times New Roman Use uppercase letters for the first letter Leave space between the lines of text Use statements, not sentences Use keywords to help the audience to focus on your message	Do not include too many details and data Do not crowd the information, do not use flash and curvy fonts Do not use all uppercase (they are difficult to read and will appear to your audience that you are yelling) Do not use abbreviation Do not use too many font types and colour in a slide
Colour	Use appropriate colour Use high contrast colour (light background with dark texts or vice-versa) Use colour that will stand out and will be easy on the eyes (dark background with light text is the best combination) Use PowerPoint colour scheme Limit the use of colours to 2 to 4 colours/shades Use complementary colours	Do not have multiple colour scheme Do not use dark colours on a dark background (red, blue and black should not be used together as text and background) Do not use too bright colours Do not use yellow on blue and red on green
Images, shapes and graphs	Include graphs and charts that shows relationships, changes and growth Use relevant images and graphics Use 1 to 2 images per slide Use shapes to illustrate complex topics	Do not use too many shapes and charts Do not use too many graphics and images (this can be distracting) Do not use low quality images Do not use meaningless graphs that are difficult to read
Special effect	Use sounds to help convey, complement and enhance the message Keep transitions to a minimum Use the same transition or variation of the transition Use appropriate animation if needed	Do not use sounds when they are not appropriate Avoid flashy transitions (too much movements will distract your audience) Avoid using random slide transition Avoid meaningless animation

Remember, PowerPoint is a tool to enhance your presentation. Don't let it overwhelm you and your message!

Thank you 😊😊

REFLECTION 4: RULES TO EFFECTIVE USE OF POWERPOINT FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

Hi everyone!

I'm back with new a topic to be discussed today. Hope you guys will enjoy reading it!



WHAT IS POWER POINT ? HAVE YOU GUYS USED POWER POINT BEFORE THIS FOR YOUR TEACHING AND LEARNING?


I'm here today to share some rules of using PowerPoint effectively for teaching and learning. First of all, let me tell you what is PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a complete presentation graphics package. It gives you everything you need to produce a professional-looking presentation. PowerPoint offers word processing, outlining, drawing, graphing, and presentation management tools- all designed to be easy to use and learn.





RULES TO EFFECTIVE USE OF POWERPOINT FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING


❶ MORE IMAGES LESS TEXTS

• Heavy word slides can be difficult to read from the back of the room.
• People can only listen and read at the same time for a very short period.
• The presenter will be out of sync if the audience decided not to read the slide and just end up with listening to the talk.

❷ ASK YOURSELF IS THAT YOUR PRESENTATION WORKING WITH YOU OR AGAINST YOU ?

• Images are nice to look at, engaging, enriching and can support your story
• People can look at images and listen to u speak at the same time, no problem
• But most importantly, images help people learn
• Learning is improved when narration occurs simultaneously with relevant images.

❸ MAKE THE MOST OF IMAGES BY HAVING IT AS LARGE AS YOU CAN

• This will attract audience attention

❹ MAKE ONE POINT PER SLIDE

• It is better to have many slides in which each slide contains one points
• Allows audience to digest
• Important messages with different colours

❺ AVOID USING BULLET POINTS

• It causes all sorts of problems
• You tend to read all the point aloud
• There is no point to write the points on slide if you're going to say the same thing

❻ KEEP THE SLIDES SIMPLE

• Do not use too much of transitions, animation, and templates
• Just focus on what you are going to present.

❼ CHOOSE READABLE FONTS AND COLOURS

• Do not use light colour for fonts if the background colour is very bright
   

❽ DISTRIBUTE YOUR HANDOUTS

• Makes audience life easier
• If they cannot see the slides, they can refer to the handouts given to them
  
  
  That's for today 😃😃

REFLECTION 3: DESIGNING LESSON PLAN

DESCRIBE FOUR POSSIBLE MISTAKES A TEACHER MIGHT MAKE WHEN DESIGNING A LESSON PLAN?


Hello everyone!

I'm back with a new post today. What is lesson plan actually? Why do the teachers have to prepare lesson plan before teaching and learning session? I'm sure these types of questions had crossed your minds before and are wondering what does the lesson plan for. No worries. I'm here today to give some brief explanation about lesson plan.

A lesson plan is the teacher's road map  of what the students need to learn and how it would be done effectively during teaching and learning session. Before planning the lesson plan, the teacher have to identify the learning objectives for the class meetings.Then, design an appropriate learning activities and develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. A successful lesson plan should include :

• Objectives for student learning
• Teaching and learning activities
• Strategies to check student's understanding 

LESSON PLAN STRATEGIES

Back to the question above. There are many mistakes commonly done by the teachers in preparing their lessonplan. Here are the some examples of mistakes that a teacher might make when designing a lesson plan:

1. NOT HAVING A CLEAR OBJECTIVE. Meaning that the teacher give the lesson's objective which does not specify what the student will actually do that can be observed. So, the teachers have to give a clear objective so that the students learning and understanding can be observed.
2. IRRELEVANT LESSON ASSESSMENT. The lesson assessment is disconnected from the behavior indicated in the objective. An assessment in a lesson plan is a simply description of how the teacher determine whether the objective has been accomplished or not. The assessment should be based on the objectives given. Anything else is flawed.
3. PROVIDING AN INEFFECTIVE ACTIVITIES. This means that the teacher have provided or prepared activities which is not really based on the objective. The teacher shouldn't prepare activities that makes the students busy but should contribute in a direct way so that the objectives are accomplished.
4. PLANNING BEFORE GETTING TO KNOW YOUR CLASS. Among the three mistakes mentioned above, this are the main mistake that usually done by the teachers. A teacher should get to know her students first before starting her/his teaching and learning session. This is very important because the teachers are going to teach their students not themselves. Teachers should bare in mind that whatever that they are teaching should  draw their students attention and interest. When this are done, the teaching and learning can be carried out very smoothly.

And that's all from me today. Hope you people enjoyed reading my blog. Thank you. Meet you guys soon with another interesting topic.

Thank you :) 

REFLECTION 2: TEACHING PEDAGOGIES

Hello everyone. In my last post, I have shared about the schools of thoughts and today I'm going to share a little bit about teaching strategies that I would apply to teach Mathematics for Form 4 students. There are many strategies that can be used to teach mathematics but I prefer to use direct learning, inquiry based-learning and cooperative learning.

DIRECT LEARNING

Direct learning is the use of straightforward and explicit teaching techniques which usually used to teach specific skills. It is a teacher-directed method meaning that the teacher will stand in front of the class and disseminate knowledge and information.

I choose this method to teach mathematics is because it is not easy to make the students understand what is the teaching. For example in Trigonometry, I will give an introduction to this topic as the students did not learn this topic before. Then, I will give clear explanations and examples on how to solve the question. After that, it comes to guided practice whereby some task is given to the students to be completed after teaching the particular topic. In order to make sure the students understand topic, I will bring the lesson to a conclusion by highlighting (revising) what was covered. At the end of class, homework is given to the students based on the topic taught and it is being collected by me on the next day. The homework is then checked by me and will evaluate how far do the students understand the topic taught.

INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING

Inquiry-based learning is a teaching method that focuses on students investigation and hands-on learning. In this method, the teacher acts as facilitator by giving guidance and support for students through the learning process. This method falls under student-centered approach in which the students play an active and participatory role in their own learning process.

 Inquiry-based learning works best after the direct learning approach. As i said earlier, the students are given some question to be answered after teaching a particular topic. Inquiry-based learning takes place when the students do not understand what is taught by the teacher. The students tends to seek for help to solve question in which the student will ask the teacher personally how to answer the question or will ask their peers to teach them. Through this learning, the students will discuss some question together and this will ensure they understand that topic. This approach also will bring understandings among their peers.


COOPERATIVE LEARNING

Cooperative learning is a teaching method that uses small groups to maximize the learning of each of those group members. In this approach, I will give the students some problems to provide them with opportunities to practice or review mathematics skills or concepts. When the students are given question to be solved, they will discuss in their groups and come out with some solutions for the questions. A research has done on this teaching method and have demonstrated positive result for improving high-order mathematics concepts . So, this method proved that it gives a positive outcomes to the students.


All the above are the teaching methods/strategies that I would practice in future for my students.
Will be back soon with another post. 
Thank you.

REFLECTION 1: SCHOOL OF THOUGHTS

In the subject Pedagogy in Education, the schools of thoughts are divided into three which is behaviorism school of thought, humanistic school of thought, and cognitive school of thought. Before I reflect on my weekly reflections, I would like to some facts about each school of thoughts.

Behaviorism school of thought

IVAN PAVLOV

B F SKINNER

BENJAMIN BLOOM

JOHN B WATSON

• The images above are the person who contributes for behaviorist theory
• Behaviorism is a worldview that operates on a principle of "stimulus-response"
• Assumes a learner is essentially passive, responding to external stimuli
• Behavior is shaped through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement
• Below are the examples of behaviorism

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

By: Ivan Pavlov

OPERANT CONDITIONING

BY: B F SKINNER

BLOOM'S TAXONOMY

BY: BENJAMIN BLOOM

Humanistic school of thought

• Believes that human beings are different from other species and possess capacities that are not found in animals
• Focused on individuals free will, personal growth, and self-actualization
• Humanist thinkers are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
  
  
  
  
  

  

  Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

  
  
  

Carl Roger's Self Concept

Cognitive school of thought

• Cognitivist - Jean Piaget, Albert Allies, Aaron Beck
• Importance of thoughts and thought processes
• Perception, thinking, memory and language

Jean Piaget's Theory

Zone of Proximal Development

By: Vygotsky

REFLECTION QUESTION : IF YOU WERE A TEACHER OF YOUR SCHOOL SUBJECT MATTER, WHICH SCHOOL OF THOUGHTS WILL YOU PRACTICE ?

IF I WERE A TEACHER FOR MATHEMATICS SUBJECT, I WILL PRACTICE BEHAVIORIST SCHOOL OF THOUGHTS. THE REASONS WHY I SAID SO IS BECAUSE MATHEMATICS IS A SUBJECT WHICH CONSISTS LOTS OF CALCULATION AND SOMETIMES STUDENTS HAVE TO MEMORIZE FORMULAS. AS WE ALL KNOW, IN BEHAVIORIST THE STUDENTS WILL FOLLOW OR IMITATE THEIR TEACHERS OR PEERS. FOR EXAMPLE, THE STUDENTS WILL FOLLOW THE STEPS TO SOLVE A MATHEMATICS QUESTION AS HOW I TAUGHT THEM. THIS IS HOW BEHAVIORIST THEORIES WORKS. BESIDES THAT, REWARD  AND PUNISHMENT SYSTEM ALSO WORK BEST IN THIS APPROACH. WHY I SAID SO IS BECAUSE THIS SYSTEM WILL ENCOURAGE AND GIVE SOME MOTIVATION TO THE STUDENTS TO PERFORM WELL IN THE SCHOOL. FOR INSTANCE, GIVING REWARD IN TERMS OF PRAISE FOR STUDENTS WHOM PERFORMED WELL AND FOR THOSE DID NOT DO WELL I WILL GIVE THEM PUNISHMENT IN POSITIVE WAY LIKE GIVING EXTRA EXERCISE OR ASK THEM TO DO THE PARTICULAR QUESTION MANY TIMES. THIS EVENTUALLY WILL ENCOURAGE THEM TO PERFORM WELL.

IN A NUTSHELL, THESE ARE THE REASONS WHY I WILL CHOOSE THIS SCHOOL OF THOUGHTS FOR TEACHING MATHEMATICS IN FUTURE. I HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY READING MY BLOG.
DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW.

THANK YOU :-)

ABOUT MYSELF

Hello everyone !

First of all, I would like to thank for viewing my blog.My name is Saktiswari Muneeswaran and currently pursuing my Bachelor of Education (HONS) majoring in Mathematics at UNITAR International University. I was born on 5th January 1995 in Taiping, Perak and I’m 21 years old. Currently, I’m staying happily with my extended family in Shah Alam, Selangor. I have 3 siblings and all of them are girls. The person that I love the most is my grandmother. I'm also interested in many things such as henna drawing, doodling, gardening, and cooking. 

Here are some of my henna arts and doodles.

SIMPLE HENNA ART

PEACOCK FEATHER HENNA ART

MY FIRST DOODLE ART

Everyone have goals in their life. As a human being, I also have goals. My goals of life are to achieve in life with a good job and also to prove some people out there who had back stabbed, talked bad and insulted my grandparents and parents due to past events in their life. Yes...One day I will prove that to them. This would make my parents proud of me. Besides that, becoming a teacher is also one of my goals too and now I'm in the pathway of becoming a teacher. The reason why I wanted to be a teacher is because I do not want my kids to be treated as how I was treated during my school days. I hope my goals and dreams come true one day.