4 Comments// Posted in course, learning, teaching by Nor Fadzleen Sa don on 05.14.10.
When I received this joyous
news, I told my students that I would give them a treat. I felt it’s only fair that my success is shared with all my students, those who made me who I am today. So as promised, I went to KFC and brought along a few students to carry the goodies back to school. It was amusing to watch the shock on the employee’s face when I mentioned 6 barrels for takeaway. I think it’s the first time they’ve ever received such large order at the drive-thru. Sure, it’s a dent in my pocket but seeing how they appreciated my lessons all these while, well, to me that’s priceless. I didn’t realise that my initiative moved even the rowdy ones until they approached me that day and fumbled through their thank-yous. Miraculously, they became more cooperative the next day and even hand in their homework on time! Oh my god! Now I know how
LouAnne Johnson must have
felt. If I knew feeding these kids greasy fried chickens can change their attitude by leaps and bounds, I would have rushed to the KFC earlier, hehe.
When I went to SMK Gelang Patah for the Immersion Programme the next day, I’ve discovered that all teachers face various adversities in teaching, some may vary depending on situation and circumstances. Dealing with troubled adolescents, especially ones with discipline problems can be tough. Without doubt, good class management is vital in ensuring the flow of the lesson. The teachers I’ve met are dedicated teachers who had to deal with a challenge, engaging weak students to enjoy English Language class.
I had my fair share of teaching the last class, the one where not many teachers would be rubbing their hands in glee whenever they need to enter such class. You’ll find a lot of sleepyheads, troublemakers and some of them are clueless, not sure why they need to be in school. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to coax all your students to hand in your work in time. Well, hopefully not because they’d copied the work from their friends. *shrugs*
I’m no expert in teaching. I’ve only been teaching for 9 years but I believe that regardless of your years of teaching, your success in teaching depends on how you engage your students in your lessons and how well you control your class. Voice projection is essential too. Apart from that, we need to accept students’ criticisms as well. Once, my students in a class I’ve taught confessed that they thought the lesson for that particular session was boring because it was just worksheet and textbook. I know it’s easy to feel demotivated once we receive such comment but if we reflect it positively, it could actually turn us to be better teachers. After receiving such feedback, it’s only fair that we try to improve ourselves as teachers. Turn lemons into lemonade, they say. Hence, any feedback from students, positive or negative, fueled me to find engaging teaching alternatives to cater to their needs. Songs, language games, pop quizzes, multimedia and Internet-based learning are some of the catalysts for engaging and meaningful lessons.
In my honest opinion, all teachers face adversities and challenges in schools, regardless of whether they teach in a good school or not. It’s unfair to label teachers just because of the demographic aspect or the attitude of the students per se. Nonetheless, I believe that teachers have strong impact on students’ engagement in learning. In order to receive good results, we need to give good teaching as well. It’s a reminder to myself that I need to be a constant learner and always try to give the best in everything I do.
Next Monday is the Teacher’s Day celebration. Ironically, right after the T-Day’s lunch, I need to tear myself away from the celebration to attend a meeting. Yes, that’s right, a meeting. I’ll be in Pontian to attend the ‘Mesyuarat Peningkatan Akademik Matapelajaran Bahasa Inggeris Negeri Johor‘ for 3 consecutive days. Happy Teacher’s Day to all the teachers out there. Kudos for being the resilient multi-tasking experts. YOU ARE THE UNSUNG HEROES!
No Comments// Posted in immersion, teaching by Nor Fadzleen Sa don on 05.08.10.
This week is a super hectic week for me. Rushing to classes, attending meetings, dealing with book distributors on daily basis, restocking books on E-Source, YPJ tuition classes, doing paperwork, the list goes on and on. On top of my manic schedule, Fahmi, my youngest son was down with high fever two days ago. My husband and I dashed to the nearby clinic and we were alarmed when his temperature reading was 39C! It took a doctor, two nurses and two frantic parents to hold on to a wailing infant. The doc gave him suppository medication and thank god, his temperature dropped after that. Still, he didn’t sleep well at night. That means mommy didn’t get her sleep too. Took CRK yesterday, just to keep an eye on his progress. Alhamdulillah, he’s now back to his normal self which is climbing onto sofa and running around the house like a mini RoadRunner. Heh, a mom’s jobs never end aye?
As I was scanning through the
PPDJB’s website (my daily digest), I stumbled upon
this. Oookay, to go or not to go, that’s a big question. I discussed with my husband and I decided to attend the meeting since hubby was around to take care of the kids. On my way to the school, my principal called to inform me on this meeting and she sounded relief that I was aware of the rendezvous.
The meeting was held at SMK Tasek Utara 2 and we were briefed on this programme by Pn. Raziah, En. Baba and En. Hafiz, the PPDJB’s officers. Generally, the Immersion Programme is aimed towards helping under performing schools in improving their academic performance of critical subjects in public examinations (PMR,SPM). I am one of the selected facilitators who will be observing the subject teachers for this programme. Majority of the facilitators are Guru Cemerlang and Key Facilitators of the respective subjects. Well, the main tasks of the facilitators are to supervise the teachers, guide them in planning their lesson plans, demonstrating ways to conduct conducive lessons and share innovative methods in teaching.
I’ve been assigned to monitor two English Language teachers at SMK Gelang Patah. I’ll be meeting the teachers next Thursday and I hope I could discuss with them on their needs and perhaps, some challenges that they face in teaching English Language in their school. I do hope that the teachers would benefit under my personal tutelage. Hope for the best!
No Comments// Posted in speaking by Nor Fadzleen Sa don on 05.04.10.
The mere mention of Public Speaking would induce students to have the following symptoms : butterflies in the stomach, sweat rivuleting down their backs, frequent visits to the restroom and some even resort to messy gut puking scenes. Oh well, maybe I’m exaggerating a wee bit but from my observation, majority of Malaysian students have inhibition when it comes to public speaking. They might garner strings of As and various accolades but that does not automatically guarantee that one can speak nonchalantly in public.
I would like to share some great tips on how to give a good speech, e-mailed to me by
Jamilah Samian, a Certified Professional Trainer (CPT) who is also a sucessful author. If her name kinda rings a bell, perhaps you might have came across her books:
COOL MUM SUPER DAD, IBU KOOL BAPA HEBAT, COOL BOYS SUPER SONS and ANAK LELAKI KOOL & HEBAT. Thank you Kak Milah for imparting your knowledge and expertise to me. I hope these tips would benefit the rest of the readers as it has greatly benefited me.
1) The key to give a good presentation is preparation. Find out who your audience will be and what the purpose of the speech is. Suit the content to your audience.
2) There are several different kinds of speeches e.g. motivational, informative, persuasive and inspirational. The best kind of speeches always motivate and inspire people to change. Begin with the end in mind … You start by asking yourself: How can I achieve this? How can I inspire people to change? Good speakers always try to make an emotional connection with the audience. By this I mean, you evoke interest in the audience from the moment you take the stage. You can do this by sharing a story, some statistics etc to grab attention.
3) Remember: IT’S GOOD TO BE NERVOUS BECAUSE IT SHOWS YOU CARE FOR THE AUDIENCE. In fact, someone once said that, If you are not nervous, something is wrong! You might be so relaxed that the speech falls flat. Nervousness is actually a form of energy. Put it to good use in your speech. I often take a deep breath before I start to calm myself down. I also remind myself that, in any presentation, the spotlight is on the audience, not me. I’m there to ensure that transfer of knowledge takes place.
4) Nothing beats practice. Practice, practice, practice. As you practice, imagine yourself in front of the audience, giving a great speech. This is called ‘visual imagery’. Even if you haven’t delivered the speech, you can trick your mind to believe that you have done it before (this is supported by research).
5) The audience doesn’t know if you have forgotten some lines. In case you did forget, just act normal and proceed as usual.
6) On rushing – pauses are very important. A dramatic pause at the right moment helps the message to sink in. Remember this if you find yourself going too fast.
7) I guess the speech is probably less than an hour long. You can’t squeeze too many things in an hour-long speech. Decide what your main points are and elaborate on them.
8) A note on jargons. Unless your audience consist of only university professors, stay away from technical terms that can confuse people. A good speech is direct and easy to understand. The best way to engage people is by using simple terms that they can relate to.
9) If you can, try to inject some kind of humor. It helps to spice things up.
10) Last but not least, the more speeches you give, the better a speaker you become. So don’t worry too much 🙂 Enjoy the learning process!
No Comments// Posted in e-classroom, writing by Nor Fadzleen Sa don on 05.03.10.
Slideshare is a great Web 2.0. learning tool where you can share PowerPoint presentations with practically everyone around the world. Based from the positive
feedback, I believe knowledge sharing and collaborative learning would immensely benefit our Malaysian teachers and students as the knowledge that one possesses is not limited within the small community of educators in the same school.
Here’s a good PowerPoint presentation that highlighted the essential essence of good writing. Sharing is caring 🙂 Do check it out!
No Comments// Posted in e-classroom, teaching by Nor Fadzleen Sa don on 04.28.10.
Need creative ways to jazz up your lesson but no time to dabble with complicated application?
Fret not!
I would like to introduce two wonderful educational sites that coincidentally share the same name, Teacher’s Pet.
Teacher’s Pet
It offers freeware and teaching resources for all teachers. I love the fact this website provides user-friendly teaching tools to create crosswords, bingo cards, jumbles, word search puzzles, flashcards, cloze tests, pair-matching puzzles and much more. Rather than heavily relying on workbooks alone, trying to create our own worksheets might be a better alternative to cater to our own students’ needs. Everything is easier, thanks to Teacher’s Pet.
Teachers Pet
Teachers Pet is a resource site that provides free printable PDFs that are very useful in our English Language classroom. It also provides interactive resources created using Flash application, which definitely appeal to the young learners. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is also very appealing. If you are interested, you can follow the
blog for latest updates on the teaching resources.
