RE-SL Little Wings

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...

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! :)