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There goes the last lesson.... I left the centre with mixed feelings.... For one, I was really happy, and very proud. It has been such a joy teaching the children, and understanding them. Hearing them out, guiding them, laughing with them, even playing with them. Every time we went for lesson, I would be rather reluctant and worried before the lesson, in fear that we are not readily prepared. But once the lessons started, I couldn't help but enjoy them. =) And when i smiled during the lessons, they were true smiles, even those exaggerated =D smiles were from the bottom of my heart. It has been such a pleasure to teach them. =)

Also, I couldn't help but be so proud. Proud of them, and proud of ourselves. Proud of them, for having tried their best for all that we have done. Proud that Boy X from Jon-Hann's post was able to do his work and talk about it well too. =) So proud that they all left with a smile, carrying their certificate and art-folios.
Also, I am so proud of you guys! Rattanin for his great contributions, especially in the arts aspect. The first few lessons, the marking of work, and the super nice certificate! Thanks dude! Jon-Hann for doing up the powerpoint presentations, dealing with the worksheets and sorting their work, and of course, bringing your projector. Most importantly, you always keep the mood light! =D Thanks buddy! Shaun for getting to the point, increasing our work efficiency, and well, your smoking skills helped too! =D Thanks man. And Shi Jian for bringing your laptop, and always doing what i assign to you, although you may put up an 'I don't care' front. The effort and the heart just touched me. Thanks for giving it your best dude. And thanks to Mrs Lim who helped use print the many many worksheets and certificates and providing us with our needed resources. Thank you all. =D
And lastly, I must say I am really proud of myself too. To be able to make a difference, however small, in the children's life. Being friends with the children, and helping them to speak up, interacting with them, motivating them, learning with them. I tried my best, and I am really glad it all worked out well. I have never really had such an opportunity before, and this one will definitely leave a lasting impression. I never thought RE could be so fun, so satisfying, and so great! =D I am glad I made this choice to come for RESL. And once again, thanks everyone for making this journey possible.
Although we most probably would not get to see those children again, which breaks my heart, but i hope that we have somehow or another help them and touched their lives. Leaving all those happy faces, curious minds and pure hearts gives me great regrets for having only 8 lessons, but well, all good things come to an end, and at least it ended with a happy note. Personally, this journey has made me know more about everyone. Our group members, Mrs Lim, Mrs Tan, the children, and even the teachers and staff there. I have learnt a great deal, and I really hopw that in the future, we would be able to embark on a similar journey together too. What do you say? =D
Perhaps I would reflect deeper on what I have learnt, and how I could have done better in the future, but as for now, I think we all deserve a little break, don't we? =D Haha. It has really been a great pleasure working with you bunch, so thanks again, and enjoy your break. =)

For the previous lesson, we worked on trying to get the children to use their 5 senses to describe objects around them. For this lesson, we decided to bring it a step further and get them to talk about the emotions of the object that they are talking about as well as their characteristics (we didn't use this phrase, broke it down to simpler terms). During planning, it actually sounded like quite good an idea, and I thought that it was already a very good change from our previous idea which was way too complicated. However, when we went down there, though we did sufficient preparations, I still felt that we were rather careless in tying up the loose ends and making sure that we knew EXACTLY what we wanted to do.


Actually, the concept of our lesson was quite straightforward, and is actually quite practical- it should have been simple enough for them to understand, yet it would be tough enough for them to feel challenged when doing it. Most of them were quite responsive and enthusiastic and tried their best to keep up with our lesson. But I felt that we were still spoon-feeding them with the information, and that they required too much prompting before they could answer. And I think some of them were still unwilling to speak up in class, though we were trying to be as friendly as possible to create a more conducive environment for free-and-easy classroom discussions.

And so because of this, we had to waste unnecessary time trying to get them to answer some of the questions, which we already had gone through and did before. Also, I think that the crux of the problem is that they are unable to do phonics, so spelling of words are mostly done by us, even though we had already helped them and prompted them quite a deal. Even so, I believe most of the words that are in the sentence are like 'given' to us in a sense. e.g. I asked what is the boy like, then they do not reply, then i have to change it such that it goes is the boy tall or short? so in a sense, I would be indirectly pointing it out to them...

It is a little worrying, especially when our next lesson is targeted at asking the kids to talk about their favorite animal, write it out and drawing it. I'm not so worried about the drawing part, but rather it is the writing that concerns me. Today, each one of us took a group of children, and as it was, it was rather tough to convey what we wanted them to write. And it was actually already quite simple because we were all teaching them to write about the same things. In fact, some of them do not really understand the rationale of writing things a certain way, because when I made a mistake unwittingly, they copied blindly. So we have to be really precise with what we write to show them.

So as for the next lesson, I am really not sure which direction in which we should head towards. I am worried and quite confused as to which direction we should be taking ... :( hopefully we could try to meet up during the weekends or something...

Oh and a last thing, I think I might have been a little hard on one of the boys today. Let's call him boy X. All the while, we knew that this boy has been rather playful and has a short attention span. But I know for a fact that this boy is actually quite good, but he just has a very bad learning attitude. He gives up before he even tries. So today, I said, "boy X, today promise me that you try ah, don't say you cannot do." he pinkie promised me. And he broke it. While I was explaining, he just refused to listen and said oh i can't do it. too tough. We were running out of time and so if he was not interested, I just chose to teach the others. Once we finished writing out all the sentences, he realized that he was way behind and tried to copy all that I wrote, but he did it all wrong! And we were already dragging the lesson 10 mins past time. So I was extremely disappointed in him and kind of said, you see, refused to listen so serves you right. Then he got really quiet and seemed kind of down. May have been the tone, but I was really upset about it. I just really hope that boy X doesn't go home to complain to his parents or because of this incident, not want to come for the rest of the classes. And I really feel bad about it...

So I'll promise not to go down that hard on him again and to try to control my temper with these kids for the remaining lessons, no matter how testing the situations may be.

It was the style, really, the change in the plan. After we finally decided to go with the idea of guiding them instead of telling them, we had yet another great lesson! I am so happy that we managed such a fruitful lesson, and kudos to Ping Chong for conducting the lesson. I guess this lesson will go a long way in helping us conduct future lessons. I have to apologise here to everyone for not conducting this lesson, though i was scheduled from it. So sorry! ;)I must say that there were some difficulties, which i will not mention here for fear of embarrassing myself.
I guess this goes to show how we should not focus on the content of what we are to teach, but more of what we can do to help the children learn themselves. So that means less meetings and discussion and planning (jk,jk), and more just having fun, being comfortable with the children. I think I must enforce here that we are not teachers, our role and purpose is to teach the children at Little Wings, but teaching them is not the way to go about it. I know this is may sound contradictory, but we must as Ping Chong puts it, "facilitate their learning". As they work, we guide them towards what we want them to learn. Then only will they be more receptive to what we have installed for them.
A major setback in our project was that we overestimated the children's ability. So now, we will have to focus more on the oral aspects, developing what they know instead of teaching them how to spell and write. Yes, people, read and understand the reason behind not teaching them to write.
Firstly, we should leave the teaching to the teachers. We are not trained professionals, so no point trying to teach them phonics or something only to mess it up for their young little brains. Our purpose is to have a 'lesson' that they enjoy, something they look forward to, and not something the children will be and can learn from school or even by themselves. That would really just be the easy way out, cheapening the RESL process for ourselves as well. How much easier would it be for me to just stand up there lesson after lesson slowing writing out the letters of the words only for them to copy and not understand? Moreover, we don't have the benefit of time, which the teachers do and need to for them to reinforce the intricacies of language. Language cannot be learnt in a day (as with the building of Rome, in all its splendor), and we should instead focus on what they know and try to build up on that while letting them enjoy themselves. Therefore, I propose that we do drama, and improvisation, falling under both art and language. Details to be explained on my 50,000 word write-up on my upcoming lessons thesis. More on that later...
To conclude, I feel that we should not work on Public Holidays as we should rest ourselves mentally for next RE for more energized activity, and it is a public holiday for a reason :) (I don't know...like erm...Vesak Day anyone? Any takers? no? - its the coming tuesday btw...ring any bells). And to all those who get to celebrate Vesak Day but resting at home, (which would not include any of you) a very merry Vesak Day to you! Not forgetting Mother's Day which passed recently, all you wonderful moms out there! :):):)haha

It was the style, really, the change in the plan. After we finally decided to go with the idea of guiding them instead of telling them, we had yet another great lesson! I am so happy that we managed such a fruitful lesson, and kudos to Ping Chong for conducting the lesson. I guess this lesson will go a long way in helping us conduct future lessons. I have to apologise here to everyone for not conducting this lesson, though i was scheduled from it. So sorry! ;)I must say that there were some difficulties, which i will not mention here for fear of embarrassing myself.


I guess this goes to show how we should not focus on the content of what we are to teach, but more of what we can do to help the children learn themselves. So that means less meetings and discussion and planning (jk,jk), and more just having fun, being comfortable with the children. I think I must enforce here that we are not teachers, our role and purpose is to teach the children at Little Wings, but teaching them is not the way to go about it. I know this is may sound contradictory, but we must as Ping Chong puts it, "facilitate their learning". As they work, we guide them towards what we want them to learn. Then only will they be more receptive to what we have installed for them. A major setback in our project was that we overestimated the children's ability.

So now, we will have to focus more on the oral aspects, developing what they know instead of teaching them how to spell and write. Yes, people, read and understand the reason behind not teaching them to write. Firstly, we should leave the teaching to the teachers. We are not trained professionals, so no point trying to teach them phonics or something only to mess it up for their young little brains. Our purpose is to have a 'lesson' that they enjoy, something they look forward to, and not something the children will be and can learn from school or even by themselves. That would really just be the easy way out, cheapening the RESL process for ourselves as well. How much easier would it be for me to just stand up there lesson after lesson slowing writing out the letters of the words only for them to copy and not understand? Moreover, we don't have the benefit of time, which the teachers do and need to for them to reinforce the intricacies of language.

Language cannot be learnt in a day (as with the building of Rome, in all its splendor), and we should instead focus on what they know and try to build up on that while letting them enjoy themselves. Therefore, I propose that we do drama, and improvisation, falling under both art and language. Details to be explained on my 50,000 word write-up on my upcoming lessons thesis. More on that later...

To conclude, I feel that we should not work on Public Holidays as we should rest ourselves mentally for next RE for more energized activity, and it is a public holiday for a reason :) (I don't know...like erm...Vesak Day anyone? Any takers? no? - its the coming tuesday btw...ring any bells). And to all those who get to celebrate Vesak Day but resting at home, (which would not include any of you) a very merry Vesak Day to you! Not forgetting Mother's Day which passed recently, all you wonderful moms out there! :):):)haha

We had, in my opinion, the best lesson so far at Little Wings! =D And I am so proud that we managed to conduct this lesson so well in spite of the MYCTs! Good job guys! More importantly, I think it was really the way the lesson was conducted that made it such a huge success. We spent minimum time on the technical things, recapping and emphasizing, and spent the bulk of the time facilitating them in their work. The powerpoint slides could only capture their attention for the first10-20mins, but after that, they would tend to lose focus. So I think it was much more effective that way, as working in smaller groups allowed us to help and teach them better.

However, we need to take note of how we help them when they are doing their work. Firstly, we have to prompt them. The children have a wild imagination so we have to constant;y prompt them so that they remember to relate back to what we have taught. For example, you ask them, "How do you draw this? What shapes do your see?" So you prompt them to use shapes to draw. Or "How do you draw the tree trunks? Do you remember which letter looks like the tree trunk?" Always prompt them to relate their work to what have been taught, and do so with questions.
Secondly, I personally felt this lesson was a success for me, as i got to know the kids better. Now i know most of their names and i remember their faces. Most importantly, I got closer to them, especially one child, whose name I shall not say here. She was very quiet in the past few lessons and therefore i did not really notice her. However, as i was facilitating her during the lesson, I realised that she was actually a very smart and neat child. After a little prompting, she was able to accomplish the work assigned and she was also to open up more to me. She started opening her mouth and talking more often, and expressed herself well. For that, I am very proud. Therefore, I urge you guys to get to know each of them more personally, because in that way, not only would it be easier for us to teach, i am sure they would benefit more from the lesson too.
As for certain more active or mischievous kids, I think we have to spend more time with them, and patience is the key. As you get to be their friend, I am sure messages would get through much easier. However, having said all this, we would not be having any buddying system due to the uncertainty of the attendance. Just split up the partnering reasonably for each lesson, and if you can, go back to the same group so that you can get them to know them better and vice versa.
Having said so much, I think we are doing well, but let's strive to do even better for this RESL experience. =D

Ping Chong

After a break of 3 weeks, we finally return to the Little Wings center for our 3rd lesson. Honestly, I think we were rather prepared for this lesson, at least more prepared than the previous 2 lessons, and the content that we planned to cover was simple. Much preparation was done and I was confident that it was going to be a good lesson...

Entering the classroom somehow lifted our spirits, and we had tons of time, since we were 30 minutes early (thanks to the fast cab!), and we took our time to prepare for lesson. Then when the kids finally settled down, we started lessons. To be honest, I was quite worried as Shaun was going to deliver the lessons. No offense but I felt he wasn't too familiar with the new edited slides. Or what if the kids could not understand him? But after the first 10 minutes of lesson, I just couldn't help but sit back and smile in relief at how Shaun delivered the lesson. The way he interacted with the kids was brilliant! He was able to capture the kid's attention and deliver the content with ease. For that, I really admired his performance today. Well done, Shaun!
However, things just had to go haywire at the second part of the lesson... With 40 minutes to spare, we have gladly proceeded on the the worksheet, which we estimated would take 15- 20 minutes. But it took the rest of the 40 minutes and we barely managed to do 2 out of the 3 parts of the worksheet...
We had overestimated the children's English standard. This is, however, a fault of our own, as it shows the lack of prior research and even a test to know the children's standard of English and drawing. And with this, the rest of our lesson plans will have to be abandoned....
This is a lesson that we have to learn. To do our prior research and not jump into building on unjustified assumptions. Here, we assumed that the children's standard of English was of a certain level that allowed them to write out their own little story. Why didn't we find out the English standards of the children beforehand? Why were we so sure the children would be able to complete the task we give them? I think we should reflect deeply on this, and make sure that it would never happen again...
However, this is not the end of our RESL journey! (Of course not...) Now, the most important thing is to re-craft our lesson plans for all the subsequent lessons and decide on what is it that we want the children to be able to produce after all the lessons at the finale. This calls for yet another long RE-meeting... However, the Mid-year Common Test are just around the corner, so let us just draft up lesson 4 plan, and leave the rest till after Mid-years. Okay?
I think today was not really a setback, and I think we did reasonably well! So, let's not be disheartened by the realization of our mistake, but try our best to work around it and deliver the rest of the lessons just as well. WE CAN DO IT!!! =D

Ping Chong

As we all know, lesson 2 was a disaster. It was not well done at all, and we made many mistakes. This is completely unacceptable, especially since we already made the same mistakes last week. This is the fault of the entire group, and definitely not of any individual. We all should have chipped in more extr effort and time to do up the lesson for the children. And I think we all owe Rattanin and apology for pushing all the work on art to him for the previous 2 lessons. I feel like crying, it's so sad, so tragic.


How now?


Well, we definitely have to pull up our socks and work harder. I think we have already scrutinised our lesson and found out its innumerable mistakes, so i will not go on the expound on them further. But looking ahead, I think the most important thing is to have sat down to have a rehearsal of our lesson, which we will do countless of for the next lesson to ensure that we have hope of doing better. I want everyone to know that we can do it, but many sacrifices have to be made.


I remember when I signed up for RESL, they asked us to explain what Service-Learning meant to us. And looking back, I now see how much sense this made, and that the more we serve, the more we learn. I think what we need to do now is to look ahead, at what we can and should do. What I mean by this is that we plan our next move. This is for the children, and their parents, and the kindergarden, and it is serious. We cannot afford to waste a minute of their time by having a lousy lesson, as this is would be instead, a disservice. This would in fact harm the young children, and they would then have been better of without us. Since we are already here, in RESL, why not give our best, our very best, our all.


And we must. If we do not perform well for the next lesson, we will have to evaluate ourselves, is there a heart issue that we have to do with? And are we ready for the responsibility and duty of teaching children? The burden is heavy; the price, costly. If not then, why continue this meaningless activity. I am sure Mrs. Lim will not hesitate to remove us from SL, fail us, and let us be retained for another year. Why waste the children's time, their parents' time, the school's time, and our own time? Why continue such a disservice?


There is work to be done...


Like the old saying, "don't cry over spilt milk", we cannot let our previous lesson crush us any longer. We must come out victorious. Do we cry when we can work on it? No, obviously. What failed, failed. Let us look ahead, and work. This is not about redemption, or trying to improvre, this is about doing what should have been from the start. Starting now.

I guess only the next lesson will show us whether we are ready. And if we are proven unsuited, then there is great still a price that we must pay.

I'll start with a very honest statement:lesson 2 was a disaster. And I certainly did little to help.

First, on the lesson. Only 10 of the 20 chirldren came probably because it was raining. We later learnt that most of the children had forgetten what we taught. What we taught wasnt very good either. Using complex words like 'background' to teach complex abstract ideas didn't work. The children simply didn't understand it. We also ended up dragging for 15 minutes. Well in plain words, the lessons were just too complicated as we are so used to interact with people of our intelectual capicity and overestimated the children. Well, we have to make the words simpler. First, we could trade our wordy ppt slides into ones that was filled with pictures as children can understand them. Secondly, i think that we could actually lower our expectations of the children or, in other words make: other lessons simpler. They take a much longer time than us to learn. We could focus our lessons on one point instead if teaching multiple things(teaching background trees........). Finally, we should either make our lessons shorter or ask for a longer time period.

Now, time to reflect on myself. I wasn't very helpful, lying down at the back of the class and doing almost nothing. I was stressed from the CTs, SYF and was sick..........but thats only part of the excuse. I simply wasn't bothered that day, maybe because only ten children came. But then, I should have know better to behave well and at least help the children by clarifying stuff with them. I also should be better behaved in public as I am wearing the shcool uniform. This shall not be repeated.

Enough bad things sad, so let me end on a lighter note:our group has adopted a better plan to make the lessons easier. I am opimistic that lessons will be better, with Ms See reminding the parents to send their children to lessons and us relising our mistakes.

がんばって!

Hey everyone,

I just sent out an email. Please take a look and change a bit if you think that there is a problem. The latest changes are removing of the osascomp and making the whole thing as simple as possible, so that they won't get confused like last week.

But there are still a few other things that i think need to be done:

1. please make a table containing descriptors for all 5 senses (i think that we should give this to them for reference, in case they are stuck).
2. come up with things that they can possibly draw.
3. a worksheet that they can attempt in class, to try to use 5 senses to describe things.
4. ways to make it more interactive so that it's not just all about us talking.
5. letting them try out by themselves in between the power point presentation so that they won't be bored.

Ping Chong, could you delegate the work. I may be a bit busy tomorrow, might not be able to do anything tomorrow until really really late at night. Thanks!

Jon-Hann

Review

Posted by Name: Junior (Rattanin) comments (0)

I can't help keeping quiet anymore. I know the previous lesson's failures were largely my responsibility and I sincerely apologize for that. @Ping Chong : You said there wasn't enough preparation and it was late didn't you? If only you look back a little, you'll realize that the 2 art lessons were entirely on me alone. All planning and preparation were done my me with your help from time to time. No body bother to check or try to help in any ways with the actual preparation of the lesson and simply brush it off saying that you guys knew nothing about arts, and that I'm the only 'art guy'. To be saying that the instruction on the email I sent our were unclear when most of you didn't even bother to download the attached ppt is simplistic nonsense. I wouldn't go as far so as to humiliate you guys for this, but mere a point that I wish to raise about our teamwork.

At any case, as for the previous lesson itself, I'm pretty sure we more or less felt the same way about it and since Ping Chong and Jon-Hann have already pointed out all the shortcomings, I wouldn't have anymore to say regarding the issue.

As for the future preparation for the lessons, I proposed to have all the lesson tested out in advance, with every single members knowing exactly where the lesson is heading towards, the objectives for each and every activities planned and how to execute them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that lesson 3 & 4 focus largely on descriptions. If so, possible artistic aspect to incoperate is very restricted. In fact, it is only likely that we'll have descriptions <----> actual implication on objects. At any rate, inform me of the rough plan of actual lesson 3 and 4 and I'll see what I can do.

P.S. Don't jest around by sending me the lesson outline. お前を殺す （　ﾟ Дﾟ）•！

Hey all,

Like Jon-Hann has mentioned, the second lesson was like a lost battle. I think the main problem was that we were not meticulous enough in our preparation. Even though we had our lesson plans done early, we did not start with our actual lesson preparation right after that. I think that led to the rather last minute preparation, which led to the disaster on Thursday. Also, we were not careful with our the how we wished to teach the children. We mainly had a rough idea of the things we wanted to teach, but we failed to anticipate the problems that we may face with conducting our lessons. We failed to analyse our own lesson from the perspective of the children and craft our lesson at a suitable difficulty level. Using words like 'landscape' and not being prepared to explain it to the children was a great setback already.
Thus, for our subsequent lessons, I think we really have to learn from our mistakes and to ensure that we do not repeat them anymore. I think this are the precautions we have to take:
1) Be done with preparation of lesson, like ppt, a week before the lesson.
2) Alter the ppt to ensure it is of suitable difficulty
3) Be prepared to explain every detail of the lesson
4) Have a dry run before the lesson
5) Anticipate problems and think of ways to counter them
6) Everyone to know what must be done as a group, and how to present ourselves in the lesson.

That being said, I really hope we are able to bring up the standards of our lessons and ensure that we do better next time. That being said, I need Shi Jian to stop lying around in the classroom during lessons, and we would also have to discuss about whether we want Shaun to be springing us with questions as if he were one of the children. Whatever it is that you wish to do during the lessons, please confirm it with the group before doing anything silly. I think Shi Jian can most definitely be helping the children and checking if they understand, during the lesson instead of just lying there. I think we should set some standards here as we are after all representing our school, and being role models to the children.
With so much to be done, I think we would first need to look at preparing for our subsequent lessons. Jon-Hann and Shaun, please work on the next lesson real quick. We definitely want to be over-prepared for our next lesson. Shi Jian, reflect upon your conduct for the last lesson. You ought to be ashamed. I need you to help the team look at how our lessons should continue to progress. Has our lessons been useful so far? How can we still lead up to our final activity of the story? Rattanin, please review our previous 2 lessons. I figured that you should add in artistic aspects for Shaun's next 2 lessons too, so that they would not be so boring. Please think of the things you want to do, and work with Shaun to add them in. Jon-Hann, I think we should also start preparing for your dramatization lesson. So, here is the structure breakdown of work:

Ping Chong: Review structure of lessons and altering future lesson plans. Work with Jon-Hann for the lesson preparation of Lesson 5.
Jon-Hann: Help Shaun with preparation of Lesson 3 & 4. Start preparing for Lesson 5 with Ping Chong
Shuan: Prepare for Lesson 3 & 4
Rattanin: Review previous 2 lessons and work with Shaun to add in artistic aspects for Lesson 3 & 4
Shi Jian: Reflection on personal conduct (In form of blog post or send me an email or letter). Review structure of lessons and altering future lesson plans.

For the coming week, myself and Shi Jian would be missing out on RE period due to SYF. Do finalize the lesson plan during that period (Which means you would have to be prepared with the ppt before meeting on Wednesday). Hope we can all do our part for our RESL and make it a success!

Ping Chong

On the previous week when we went down to Taman Jurong for our first session with the kids, I remember that we were, by large, quite prepared for the lesson. We were kind of nervous at first, and for me, I just wasn't sure whether our lessons would be good enough, interesting enough, or simply good enough. The first lesson is certainly very important as we are not only getting to know the children whom we will be working with, familiarize ourselves with the surroundings and to test the water, to see whether we have set the lessons at the right pace, or not. I could see that all of us were trying our best to create the best lesson we possibly could, and to kick-start our RESL with a bang.

I found that the kids were quite receptive to our teachings; they were largely attentive and were surprisingly enthusiastic about our lesson. However, there were a few things that we might have unwittingly cast aside.

1. No matter what we do, we still have to keep in mind that we are dealing with young children here. Even if we want to teach them challenging things, we have to bear in mind our methods of teaching (less theory, more practical), our method of explanation (short but to the point) and other little details.

2. We had to better manage our time. 1 hour is certainly not a lot, and we had to maximize the time that we spent i.e. we should cut down time on explanation and give them more time to try it out

3. Logistics were not well planned. We were kind of haphazard at time, and more often or not, we began asking each other, so how now...

But all in all, I believe that last week's lesson was a SUCCESS! We did manage to warm up with the children, understand the shortcomings of our lesson plan and knew how we had to make the appropriate amendments so that we can fine-tune the next one to perfection. It was relatively well executed and I believed that they managed to take something away with them after our lesson.

Or so it seemed...


Today's the 14th of April, and today we set off for our next lesson with the little ones.

To begin off, we had left the school a little late, partially because I was released late from class and delayed everyone and had to get some food to ta-pau (sorry team) for lunch. That already put us in quite a frazzled state. Furthermore, we had difficulties trying to find a taxi and once we did, all 5 of us squeezed into that single taxi before setting off. Throughout the journey, we were all relatively quiet, immersed in our own thoughts, trying to catch a short breather and to compose ourselves before lesson.

When we got there and scrambled to set up while the children started streaming in, we realized that there were many things that we did not consider properly, like the seating arrangement etc. It was quite messy.

Throughout the lesson I realized a lot of things. Firstly, many of them did not appear and the dismal number of children was quite disappointing. Secondly, the children completely forgot and wiped clean what we taught them in the previous lessons. Thirdly, our lesson crafted was way too advanced for them, and many of them had difficulties understanding. Fourthly, we did not prepare ourselves in advance. Our explanations were haphazard and confusing, our teaching was draggy and boring for the children and our whole lessons didn't seem anything like what we would have hoped for it to be. At one point, we looked at each other. "How should we explain ah?"

That was a question we should have asked each other long ago.

After we finished our lesson, I personally felt as if it we were fighting a losing battle. I felt quite inadequate actually. Apart from not learning from our previous mistakes, we added to the long list of shortcomings.

Frankly, I have to admit, I did not look through the PPT slides that Rat sent to all of us last night, even though Ping Chong did remind me. And for that, I am sincerely sorry. If I had looked at it, I might have realized some of the things that we could change to make some last minute amendments to improve it. Also, I feel a bit guilty, I feel that I have not been putting enough effort to this project. I will strive to increase my contributions next time.

So the mistakes that we discussed we made on the way back were:
1. Poor time-management
2. Poor co-ordination
3. Too high a level of difficulty for material taught
4. Students unable to remember stuff taught
5. Did not dissect and reinforce properly
6. Draggy lessons, too much teaching, too little practical

So yeah, with that, I really think that we (myself included) should strive to put in more effort, to make our next lesson a greater success than the first! :)

1st Art Lesson

Posted by Name: Junior (Rattanin) comments (0)

It was a mixed feeling after the lesson was done.


Most of the students were indeed, bright and were able to understand our lesson with ease. I cannot helped but grinned at their cheerful faces and the heartwarming response we received from them.


Nevertheless, the lesson itself hardly fulfilled any objective. It was a mistake on my part to misjudge the suitable learning method and approached the students through Ppt slides in attempt to appeal to the students. Without much first hand-experience learning to the students then, they were not able to meet the expection in the given task, albeit they largely understood the fundamental concept taught. I reckon I have to understand a little more about their behaviour before making any baseless assumption.


Though the lesson was not very fruitful, I was very glad that we as a team had cooperated very well. Everyone was in action, covering for each other shortcomings. With more careful planning of the lesson, I believe we can achieve much more progress as well as ensuring that every students enjoy our lesson and at the same time, find it enriching and practically useful.

Shapes! That was first word on Rattanin's powerpoint slides on the 1st lesson at RESL. When we went down to Little Wings Taman Jurong on the 7th of April 2011 at 3.00pm for our 1 hour lesson from 1500-1600, we were anxiously anticipating meeting the children and teachers at the Little Wings kindergarden.


Now that it is over, I can definitely say that it was, overall, a great lesson for all 5 of us, and i sure hope for the children as well! I felt that the all the children were very different and unique individuals. Some were very chatty and friendly while others were more reserved and preferred to talk among their friends. However, everyone was eager to draw and share! One thing that struck me especially what reiterated by Mrs Lim was that our team was very eager to help one another. We were all trying to add on to what each other we saying as we all wanted to make sure they understood what we were trying to teach them. I definitely helped that the children were extremely cooperative and attentive, as we feared that we would not be able to hold their attention. This enabled us to get alot of teaching done, but this is also partially because Rattanin's slides were very cute and colourful. It was so great to see the children with such big smiles and such laughter as they went through our lesson.


There are many ways for us to improve and I hope that we will be able to have an even more fruitful lesson on the 2nd lesson on the 14th of April. What I will be striving for in the next lesson is to be able to remember the names of the children so that much more meaningful interaction with them. As of now, I'm contented with running through in my mind the sweet memories of what I learnt more about...Shapes!

Today was our first lesson with the children at Little Wings! Before mentioning anything else, I'll like to applaud all the members for your effort today, and I think despite facing a few unexpected situations, the lesson went on quite well. Here are some things which I think we did well today:

1. Teamwork, helping each other out both in teaching and facilitating.
2. Powerpoint presentation was well done. Effort goes to Rattanin for preparing the slides, Jon-Hann for his projector and Shi Jian for his notebook.
3. Demonstrations of the task, everone took initiative to help demonstrate and explain.

However, there were also a few areas in which we could have improved on:
1. Our presentation may have been to draggy. Should teach more through facilitation of their task.
2. Logistically unprepared. This however, was due to our unfamiliarity with the lesson venue itself. Groupings however, should be made from the next lesson onwards.
3. Unsuitable use of words: firstly, some of the words used were a little to advanced for their level. Secondly, please mind whatever you say as they would be observed by the children and even imitated by them.
4. Time. We are a little rushed for time as we spend too much time on the ice-breakers and introduction.
5. Carelessness. I, myself, am guilty for forgetting to bring the activity sheets along and I sincerely apologize. Hope that we can all be a little more careful next time.

Even though it was only the first lesson, I think we all learnt a lot from it, and I believe that with this new knowledge, we would be able to pull off greater lessons in the following weeks. Let's work towards that!

Ping Chong

Lesson has been pushed back by yet another week... However, that should allow us to be more prepared for the lessons ahead. Rattanin would prepare his lesson materials by Friday so we would have the weekends to familiarize ourselves with it. Meanwhile, the rest of us ought to embark on another part of our research.

Like all researches, we need our own literature review. And by literature review, I do not mean merely listing related literature, but doing an analysis of the articles or reports found. Thus, as Rattanin works on his lesson materials, the rest of us should get started with it. I have came up with a word document to summarize how the literature review should be done so do refer to that which has been sent out via email.
I hope that we can all take this literature review seriously as it would be a pillar of support for our research throughout the course of our project. Thus, do get started with it. Here is the work distribution for the weekend:
Ping Chong: Search for articles for literature review, doing up of lesson plan 1 in details with Rattanin
Rattanin: Finish up the Preparation for Lesson 1 and send them all out by Friday night
Jon-Hann: Work with Shi Jian on the Literature Review
Shi Jian: Work with Jon-Hann on the Literature Review
Shaun: Search for articles for Literature Review

Hope that we can make as much progress over the weekends and please start preparing for individual lesson that you are in charge of so that by that time, we would be adequately
prepared. Also, I understand that sometimes the workload may seem unfair but we all have times here we end up doing more work so don't be too petty about the workload.
Hope you guys have a nice weekend.

Ping Chong

Dear Group members,

The meeting yesterday was quite a big mess. I admit that we weren't really prepared and ready to produced that completed lesson plan at that time, it was more than that which prevented us from accomplishing what we aimed to. Perhaps I should have reminded everyone of the goal the meeting yesterday, which I did mention in previous emails, but I think everyone was very distracted yesterday. We sort of lost focus and wasted a lot of time doing nothing. I think given the tight schedule, we cannot afford to do so anymore. So, I implore for everyone to stay focus during the upcoming meetings and be prepared for them.

Now however, we would have to deal with some matters of utmost importance and urgency. WE NEED TO GET THE LESSON PLAN DONE! So we'll split up the work and everyone would be in-charge of one lesson. Thus, I need the details to be included in each of your lesson plans and we would need this done by tonight.... Please refer to the email ive sent out to you for the allocation of lessons.
Another issue is the schedule. Here is the schedule I propose:
Lesson 1: 31st March 3pm- 4pm
Lesson 2: 14th April 3pm- 4pm
Lesson 3: 28th April 3pm- 4pm
Lesson 4&5: Day 1 of the 2-day program during the June Hols 2pm- 5pm
Lesson 6: Day 2 of the 2-day program during the June Hols 2pm- 3 30pm
(Parents may be invited to be present at the showcase during lesson 6)

What do you guys think?

So much being said, I really wish that the same amount can be done, and although each one of us has other commitments, I wish we can all set aside some time for this extremely meaningful project.

Thanks,
Ping Chong

Another meeting passed and our idea and proposal has yet again changed. As much as this shows that we are striving to do our best and make the most out of our lessons with the children, it also goes to show that we have not been able to settle down with a confirmed project proposal. That being said, I think this new idea sets a much clearer path and method as to how the lessons would be conducted, so hopefully we can piece everything together soon and start our lessons!


For the benefit of Shaun and Shi Jian who missed much of the meeting on Thursday, here is what we have decided on:
Our new idea overthrows the previous one about using books as a storyline. We would now dramatize a story, set in the neighborhood, and allow the children to observe. This storyline would provide chances of interaction where the children may decide on certain actions of the characters. There would also be scenes were the actors freeze in their positions and vocabulary cards are introduced to explain the action and meaning of the word. The story would revolve around a main theme of 'Consideration in my Neighborhood'.
Next, the children would be asked to rewrite the story they have witnessed, in their own way, guided by photographs of scenes, and the vocabulary cards used.
Lastly, The children would be asked to illustrate the scene(s), with the help of the photographs of scenes, and also the arts lesson which shall be planned by Rattanin.
That is the brief overview of the idea we have discussed about and most probably decided on.

Hopefully, no massive changes to our project idea have to be made again. In this light, everyone would need to do your part to ensure the success of this idea. Here is the current distribution of work:
Ping Chong: Reconstruct the project proposal with the new idea. Email should include the new idea, justification, draft of storyline and art segments of the lessons.

Jon-Hann: Create a suitable storyline which includes theme of consideration in neighborhood and include possible vocabulary words to be introduced. Add in the scenes to pause at for flashing of vocabulary words and also points where the children get to decide on the storyline. About 5 to 10 minute story, considering having to speak at a slower pace.

Rattanin: Provide detailed lesson plan for the art aspects of lessons. Cover the different aspects of art and elaborate on the details of procedures of teaching or providing the different art types.

Shaun & Shi Jian: Find out more about the education of language, in fields of Grammar and Vocabulary, and justify our method of conducting lessons. For example, vocabulary cards allow the children to link the words visually, to the action and thus meaning of word.

Find out more about Dramatization, especially having children as the audience. Link how dramatization is a good way to present our story, and how it helps to teach the language and arts, linking back to our lesson objectives.


Please refer to the Meeting minutes sent out recently for more details. We would most probably be meeting on Thursday again.

Hope everyone has a happy, meaningful March Holidays!

Ping Chong


Basically, today's meeting was to distribute the work that was to be done over the weekend.
Here is the rough guide:
Ping Chong: 1) Email Mrs Tan about Friday's program
2) Fill up RESL Contract form
3) Edit others' tasks

Rattanin: 1) Draft out our lesson plan
2) Look through RESL Contract and feedback

Shi Jian: 1) Draft out 'test' for the children on Friday.
2) Look through RESL Contract and feedback

Jon-Hann: 1) Research on relevant topics of early childhood theories, foundation language mastery, arts and social trends to substantiate and support our research.
2) Look through RESL Contract and feedback

Shaun: 1) Research on relevant topics of early childhood theories, foundation language mastery, arts and social trends to substantiate and support our research.
2) Look through RESL Contract and feedback

Basically, everyone should get their parts done preferably by Sunday afternoon, so that we can take a look at every thing and edit accordingly.
With all this prepared and familiarized with, we would need to confirm the following on Wednesday's meeting:
1) Lesson Plan - more details
2) Friday's program - every single part
3) A date to meet up to head down to a library/ bookshop to search for materials.

So that's all for now.

Draft outline of the lesson~

Posted by Name: Junior (Rattanin) comments (0)

Since I'm early and Ping Chong have yet to send me the template, I'll just post it here for the time being.


Lesson 1
- Ice Breaker ( 15min )
- Data Collection
English ( 20min )
Art ( 10min )
- Introduction to simple illustrations of stories [very short text] ( 15min )

Lesson 2
- [Short Text] x Illustration session ( 15min )
- Lesson : Adjectives x visual pictures of objects + expression of character's emotion [through facial/actions] ( 20 min )
- [Text] => Illustration [Art Focus] ( 15min )

Lesson 3
- Introduction to landscape + outdoor session [observation] ( 30min )
- [Text] => Illustration : Indications and signs of movements, positioning of objects in landscape scenarios [Art Focus] ( 30min )
* Homework : Key vocab for the following lesson

Lesson 4
- Recapping of words ( 10min )
- Lesson : Formation of simple-structured sentences ( 20min )
- [Illustration] => Text : Usage of connectors and correction of grammatical errors/misconceptions [English Focus] ( 30min )

Lesson 5
- Recapping of adjectives <=> application on objects ( 5min )
- Recapping of sentence structure, usage of punctuation and proper syntax ( 10min )
- Activity : [Illustration <=> Text] - Students given both words and picture of objects and they are supposed to come up with a short story and its illustrations ( 40min )
- Debrief ( 5min )

---- This outline is very susceptible to changes -----

Starting off..

Posted by Name: Junior (Rattanin) comments (0)

After our first actual visit to our partnership place, I really thought that we can get through this together. Our initial worries that the students' standard of english may be too poor for us to communicate with them were completed lifted and it's reassuring to know that the staffs there, especially the Principal herself, welcomed us and are willing to give us their fullest support.

With much more about the students learnt, we are now able to start off on our detailed planning of the lessons. More research will need to be done with regards to the progress of a child and their artistic (aesthetic) capabilities and expectations. Our outline of the 'illustration' idea pretty much highlight most of the concerns in the field of language but there are much more we can do to ensure the best out of our lesson. Above of all this however, I still believe we lack fundamental knowledge on how to interact/communicate effectively with young children. More works to be done, so to say.

P.S. - Link for the art development of children
http://www.learningdesign.com/Portfolio/DrawDev/kiddrawing.html

The LW visit on Friday is very meaningful and useful for both myself and the group. We learnt many things, e.g. structure of the kindergarden, how to handle kids and things to take note of. We finally decided on the module we are going to do- teaching english through illustrating and caption of picture books. I am aware that a very difficult and stressful, but I am sure that it will be a meaningful and fruitful experience, both for the children and ourselves. Now, we need to work hard to prepare a good lesson plan that need to go through many people and I am honestly
afraid. However, I will not lose hope and try my hardest, hoping for the best.

Yang Shijian/User:Ysjzysn

The weekend has passed and nothing much has been done, except for the meeting minutes. Just sent it out and hope everyone can read it before our meeting on Wednesday. As Jon-Hann mentioned, I think the previous visit to Little Wings was a fruitful one and we somewhat decided on our project. Now, the dry part begins.

There are a plenty of things to be done before we can jump into teaching the children. Firstly, we need to plan and finalize our lesson plan. This includes how we are going to conduct lessons, when we will conduct the lessons and how many lesson there should be. That being done, we shall proceed to selecting of suitable storybooks to be used for our lessons. That however, would have to be done only after we received details from Mrs Tan such as the list of core words that would be taught and also the topic/theme of English lesson for Term 2. After that, we would need to plan out our lessons to the smallest details. All that would have to be done by Term 2 Week 1, so let's all do our best for now!
First things first, we would need to clear the first stage of planning during the meeting this Wednesday, 2nd March. Hope we can keep up with the pace of our project!

PS: The previous post by Jon-Hann should have been posted on 25th February...

Ping Chong

Today was the group’s first trip down to Little Wings, and I could definitely sense that the rest of the group was feeling nervous yet excited, just as I was. Though we came prepared with our proposals and having in mind roughly what we wanted to ask, we did not know what we were going to be in for. And we all understood, which made us all the more tense, was that first impressions do count.


As we walked into the kindergarten, I began to notice that compounds were extremely clean and there was a very conducive learning environment. So we began our discussion with Mdm. Bettina Heng and we explained our proposal. We were pleased to find out that she liked our ideas, and she willingly shared with us all that she knew, so as to facilitate with our project development. But what I remembered most vividly was the mini test which she conducted with us, the one requiring us to draw a house and a tree. After we drew them, we compared our pictures and it dawned on me that most of our houses were largely similar! They were just drawn plainly with a large door, windows and a chimney. Why did we draw them this way? It was because when we were younger, we were taught that a house would have to look like that and so we copied that image. The point that she was trying to drive at was that she did not want us to tell the children that we were going to work with, that an object must not be necessarily drawn that way, or things must be done in a certain way. Essentially, they do not want us to suck out the creativity out of the children, but rather, let them develop and grow. Our jobs would just be to provide them questions, to understand why they did certain things certain ways, but not to dampen their creativity.


We also talked with and explained our ideas to Mrs. Tan, the principal, and after some minor changes and editing, we refined our idea, and now got a feel of where we were to direct our project towards. She also brought us into the classes and we got to see their classrooms, ‘study’ corners and the pieces of work that they did. I noticed that the students were actually quite well behaved, and I was quite impressed by their capabilities, and they brought back many fond memories of when I was in kindergarten as well! Suddenly, I felt much more at ease. I thought, this would not be as an ‘impossible’ as task as Mrs. Lim had portrayed it to be!


After this first trip down to Little Wings, I have a good feeling. I am not so worried about our project’s prospects anymore. I am more confident that if we were to stick to our schedule and planning, coupled with our hard work, we can definitely make this a success! At the same time, as I get a better understanding of who our target audience are (the children whom we will be working with), and it is of utmost importance that we learn to think from their perspectives so as to create appropriate lessons. Time would also be of the essence as we would have limited time to go down to conduct the lessons. I do understand that this will be a challenge and would require each one of us to put in lots of work. Though all of us are bound by our own personal commitments, I believe that we will all set aside some time to give back to the society, something that is of higher order.


Yeo Jon-Hann

Hey all,

As the new year arrives, we embrace new challenges to set greater boundaries to our limits and to better serve our community. This year, as part of our RE-SL initiative, we have decided to conduct a research about the learning styles and methods of 5-6 year olds from Little Wings Kindergarten. Conducting several fun and exciting activities and allowing the children to learn from them, we wish to not only research on effective learning methods of these children, but also help them in their learning.
This being said, we do not set out to teach them, but to learn with them. We believe that serving the community is not a bore, but an opportunity for us to seek new knowledge through aiding and supporting our fellow citizens. Even though we may just be a group of Secondary 3 students, we believe that making a positive change, however small, to our society matters.
As we set out to achieve, we expect hardship. Being students, our schedules would be packed. Pressure from academic work and CCA may hinder our progress in serving our community. However, we shall not yield. With the passion to serve, we would put in our very best to improve the lives of those children. It may be tough,but in the quest to serve, there is no elevator. We have to take the stairs. As we climb to seek greater heights, we wish to garner all the support from our family and friends, and with that, we would be able to do the impossible.
As our journey in RE-SL begins, we hope to stay focus and committed, and strive to do our best for the upcoming challenge. Auspicium Melioris Aevi.

Ping Chong
RE-SL group leader

Testing Post

Posted by RE-SL Group 39 comments (0)

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About this blog

RE-SL Group 39
Mentor by :
Mrs Lim Yoke Tong
• Yeo Ping Chong (Leader)
• Yeo Jon-Hann
• Rattanin Siripornpitak
• Yang Shi Jian
• Shaun Ming Choo

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