Have you ever listened to a song and every words seems to be singing about you, every beat mimmics the rhythm of your heart and the melody leaves this fluttering feeling in your tummy. Just as the singer come to the chorus, the words reminds you of the words that used to narrates your life how it makes your heart tightens just to the thought of it as you force yourself to stay sane and ignore the brimming tears under the half closed eyelids as your brain trying hard to understand this strange feeling you're having right now
.
And then you realized
it was - - the song
.
The song both of you used to sing in the car
Before you go separate ways
And that's how even the sweetest song
Become a bitter poison that kills the soul of a heartbroken girl
Week 7, that means I have roughly 4 more weeks to go. Booking myself for a trip once this is over, like seriously I need a break.
This week, we focused on Literature ( essay questions ) , Language Skills ( 'wh' questions and report essay ) and Grammar ( diphthongs ) . Oh and did I mentioned the endless drama practice? Yeah.
Literature ( essay questions )
When I gave the students two essay questions last week and a bunch of them coming to me ' teacheeerrr how to start this? ' , I know I had to do something about it.We discussed on plot and character of the drama " A Night Out ' , with tips and tricks on how to answer an exam based questions correctly. Good thing, even some of the naughty boys have started asking me how to do the question, brownie points for the teacher!
Discussed questions :
1. Draw a plot diagram based on the drama ' A Night Out ' that you have learned. ( 10 marks )
- I had to relate this part to their own drama production and the narrative story that they did last week, as some of them seems to be really clueless about parts of plot ( really?! )
- I divided the students into four groups and each group discussed on important events that happened in each scene ( there's four scenes in the drama )
- They proceed to write down the events on the plot diagram that I have drawn on the board
2. Based on the drama ' A Night Out ' , choose ONE character that you feel is more noble. State your reasons. ( 10 marks )
- For this part, I gave them a step-by-step on how to answer an exam based literature questions. Again, some seems to be really clueless on this. For teachers, you can check the latest update of PT3 literature format from the net, there's plenty.
Language Skills ( 'wh' questions and report essay )
- Students find a news excerpt and extract the 5 'wh' questions from it, then they write a report based on their finding.
- This activity has been modified for three time before it finally reach its perfection, eceh.
2B2 - I did not include any language skills, hence it was a speaking based activity ( no concrete output was achieved )
2A2 - I included the 'wh' questions and asked them to present their findings. ( I couldn't really measure the rate of success for this activity as not everyone presented )
2A5 - Students extract the 'wh' questions and write a report based on it. I taught the format briefly and gave them 30 mins to write the essay. No presentation was involved.
Overall, I am quite satisfied with the end result. However, while marking the papers I am quite bothered with some of the headlines that the students chose.
' Man molested his two year old daughter '
' Mum killed her two sons due to stress from divorce '
' political news '
I don't know, maybe its just me but I feel some of the news are too extreme for a 14 year old. What do you think?
Grammar ( Diphthongs )
I have been anticipating for this topic for weeks, thinking of ways to make it interesting and fun for the students. I know learning about syllables, phonics and diphthongs can be little bit confusing especially for young learners. After a night of watching Jimmy Fallon's game show called ' Catchphrase' on YouTube it inspired a game I call ' Buzzer Craze'.
Buzzer Craze :
- Students compete in two pairs. They stand opposite to the competing pair around a table. A stack of question cards are placed in the middle of the table.
- Students pass around a buzzer ( I used my own phone for this ) ,after answering the question correctly.
- Students who are holding the buzzer when it ends, lose the game.
For the question cards, I prepared 40 pieces of random diphthongs with two examples beneath them. Students need to come out with ONE word based on the diphthongs written on their card.
And that is all folks for week 7, one more week to Drama Competition and four more weeks to the end of my teaching practical.
Here's the 'draft' version of trailer we did for 2B2 Drama Production. Teacher yang excited edit je ni hehe.
Student : teacher can you take a boomerang of us? We want to post this in our drama insta. You know how to use right?
Me : oh okay..Sure, I know boomerang.
*after few failed boomerang*
Me : hahaha okay guys. I give up, I have no idea how to use this thing.
Students in unison : hahaha teacher but you are so young meh, funny lah you.
What happened today,
I have two rules in my class,
1. Speak English, and only English.
2. You shall show respect to everyone else in the classroom.
For the first rule, whenever a student speaks in other language I would warn them by saying ' languageeee'. After a while, students are used to me shouting language language language everywhere. After 6 weeks, I realized I dont have to shout language anymore, since other students are helping me to do so.
Case one :
Me : *writing something on the board/ heard a student speaking something in Chinese* Aaronnn ( not his real name )
Other students : languageee
Case two :
Me : *still writing something on the board*
Student : * shouting in Chinese to a friend across the class for something *
Other students : May ( not her real name ) languageeee
Student : oopps sorry teacher
