week 2 professional experience

Wow what a week!!
My Professional Experience has been taken place at preschool located in Malaysia ,Kuala Lumpur .The school Physical Education department also supports a number of students with special needs through the Special Education and Early Childhood Department called ‘Perceptual-Motor Development’ program which works to improve student’s physical and academic performance.
Class and school ICT environment and processes
The school has a number of ICT resources shared among the whole school including, 4 IPads, 15 tablets, up to 4 computers in each classroom and a computer lab with approximately 20 to 30 computers and each classroom is also provided with an Interactive Whiteboard. Within the school is an ICT coordinator, who is in charge of all the ICT resources and deals with any ICT technical issues. The school also designates a technology class for a composite class  which offer students the opportunity to learn more with ICTs.
However, in the Physical Education Department ICT’s are very limited and my mentor is not a comfortable or proficient ICT user, and therefore when approached about ICT capacity for practicum lesson planning, my mentor was somewhat reluctant to allow use of ICT’s. Therefore as a result of this, we had come to an agreement that in our Non-contact time I would take small groups of students out and do activities, in which revolved around integrating ICTs into lessons based on physical activities/ games or would use simple ICT tools that would not interfere with the lesson such as using an iPad as a timer or recording students’ performances.

teaching practice week 2 reflection

Let me share with you about my reflection on one of my lesson plan in week 3. I implemented this lesson by allowing children to record the online weather chart game using IWB. Once everything completed, children were asked to make a bar graph by using laptop; they were also need to do it in a small group and make comparison about the four weather conditions (sunny, rainy, cloudy and windy). I explained what bar graph is all about with the children before they make the bar graph.

Overall, this lesson was carried out quite successfully as children’s attention were caught when they get involve the weather game session. They enjoyed playing with the online game and asked to play it again second times.  However, the lesson was carried out 10-15 minutes longer than expected as some of the children spend too much time in making the weather bar graph. Apart from that, most of the children were able to compare the four different weather condition by counting how many times were sunny, rainy, cloudy and windy. They also enjoyed using the ipad to draw their favourite weather; and they were able to tell teacher (me) what’s their drawing is all about. I could say that, Skitch software is a useful tool for children to use it as part of their learning. Fun and interesting!

Professional experience

I, like many others, had their first day on practicum on Friday.  I have visited the classroom 3 times now and am getting more confident with students names although I still mix them up sometimes and say their name as a question.  I am in the middle of planning for my first lesson and I am procrastinating.  I am in a prep class.  All of my other prac were upper years and I thought it prudent to experience prep as I could be put in a prep class after graduation (in 2 million years – or it feels that long).  Personally I don’t think prep would be my ideal class but who knows as the weeks progress I could change my mind.

Anyway I better get back to my lesson, it isn’t going to write itself…

Reflection regarding to Teaching Practice (part 3)

I always learned about constructivist theory, however teaching practice allowed me to apply what i have learned from ‘book’ into ‘reality’. These are my learning and understanding about the constructivist theory as i used this approach on my planning stage.

According to von Glasersfeld  (1990) constructivist theory of knowing, “knowledge is not an iconic representation of an external environment, but a mapping of ways of acting and thinking that are viable to the acting subject in attaining experiential goals” (p. 37). Von Glasersfeld explains that knowledge is the result of, “an individual subject’s constructive activity, not a commodity that somehow resides outside the knower and can be conveyed by linguistic communication” (p. 37). He asserts that, “language is not a means of transporting conceptual structures from teacher to student, but rather a means of interacting that allows the teacher to constrain and guide the cognitive construction of the student” . Vygotskyclaims that a child’s mental functions need to be fostered and assessed through collaboration with a teacher. He proposed that through collaboration, the teacher is able to determine the distance between actual development and the potential development of the child, that is, a child’s zone of proximal development. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is “the discrepancy between a child’s actual mental age and the level he reaches in solving problems with assistance” ( as cited in Fraser, 2006, p. 58).

The child functions on any given task or tasks with the teacher’s aim to work within the continuum of the zone to help the child move forward. A child’s zone is not static, but instructionally sensitive. It must be recalibrated constantly to accommodate a child’s new learning. Children learn most easily when the teacher provides experiences within the zone of development. Interaction and direct teaching are important aspect of intellectual development; whereby children’s own thinking is ‘stretched’ in term of adding details or clarify concepts.

Young children are easily motivated into discovery by teachers asking open-ended questions that pertain to the child’s own interests as well as encourages critical thinking by challenging children’s assumptions. For instance, teacher poses open-ended questions for children that lead them to suggest a hypothesis such as what might happen if you do that? Children are encouraged to evaluate their own work and learn to defend and explain their creations to other.

Teaching practice -part 2

Finally, missions completed!

Before I really ‘ close files’ about my teaching practice and get ready for another challenging journey. I would like to share how I felt at times when my colleagues come into my classroom to observe how I integrate ICT into children’s learning. “I know they are thinking that I am just too ‘ambitious’ in using ICT in early years setting. However,  I am finally feeling that I can defend what I do, explain why integrate ICT in children’s learning is so important. I learnt that integration of ICT in the lesson involves teachers in careful planning and preparation, both inside and outside the classroom. A program that involved ICT needs teachers who enjoy being spontaneous, involved and creative, as well as reflective and analytical.
By clicking the NAEYC position statement and this website, you may know more about the importance of organizing for children’s learning.
You may also read my course mates   learning experiences during teaching practice. They provide me some encouragements and motivation in continuing integrating ICT into children’s learning.

practicum reflection week 1

Reflection regarding to Teaching Practice week 1

After reading some of  the students learning experiences during their teaching practice, I started to think if integration of ICT in children’s learning is necessary, how it is the lesson developed? I always ask myself: How does a teacher foster literacy,  thinking and other concepts, dispositions and skills valued in early education? How does a teacher address and integrate standards in a meaningful way?

This was my first time that I had tried to ‘incorporate any ICT as my part of my lesson’. With the little opportunity to visit other programs, I started the teaching practice feeling that I was sinking as much as I was swimming.

I took a week to set up an environment where my children could have choices and sustained time to involve ICT through their leaning experiences. I needed to read and observe enough to convince myself that integration of ICT in classroom is beneficial to children’s learning.

I concluded: “This has become the most intellectually challenging years for me. I am learning how to plan for ICT and how to use ICT to reinforce student’s learning. I like the concept of an emerging curriculum, but it takes patience as well as creativity to work it out each day. Things don’t always work out as I had imagined. Because I am an experienced teacher, I sometimes feel that should be able to do this right way. But it does not work out that way. It involves a major shift in the way I am thinking as well as in the way I structure the lesson: a paradigm shift.”

Candy Crush

Candy Crush

With the old hit game, Bejeweled which stormed the world in playing this addictive puzzle with it's own challenges now comes the latest hit Facebook game called Candy Crush Saga (CCS) by King.com has 12 million likes on Facebook and more than nine million daily active users.
This game looks like this generally and you are to swap the came colour candy to get 3 or more in a row. The fun thing about this game is whereby you are given a certain number of moves and in some levels time limit or an objective to fulfill in order to pass the next stage with only 5 tries per 30 minutes. The game also encourages you to Facebook your friends for life or extra moves if you finished your 5 tries per time. Below are the info-graphics of the game.. quite interesting.