Visiting a Special Needs School // 10 Nov 2014

Probably one of the most meaningful experiences I can ever have, a short acquaintance with children who suffer from cerebral palsy and Down syndrome, wondering if our presence made a lovely little difference in their day. I recalled how ignorant and affectless I used to be during an old folks home community service in secondary school. It was merely a task to be completed to get good grades. However, this visit was utmost different from the abovementioned, in other words I’d say I have grown up and I know what to care.   

Together with 4 of my classmates, we visited PDK Semenyih (Pusat Pemulihan Dalam Komuniti), a community-based rehabilitation centre for those who have special needs. The idea of the centre is to involve the local community especially parents and guardians to provide assistance for the disabled to acquire skills in order to adapt to the societal life. In view of this purpose, it can be deduced that the centre subscribes to essentialism but at the same time, also adopts progressivism because the involvement of parents and local community is weighed heavily in their education. The members of the centre are addressed as “trainees” (pelatih) instead of “students”. They are accompanied by their parents to work hand-in-hand during the lessons. The centre, albeit appeared to be rather small and poorly funded, yet consists of a little computer lab, an awesome “Snoozeleen Room” to stimulate sensorimotors and a decent swimming pool for water therapy. We were also shown the resource room where teaching and training materials are stored. With my limited knowledge on special needs education, I’d say the materials are well-designed to suit the trainees’ needs (stimulate their sensors etc) but some are quite out of date. Notwithstanding, the lady in charge pointed out that they are constantly in the need of innovative ideas to develop better materials. Case in point, Play dough is inedible but the trainees wouldn’t be aware of it and they will start chewing it which might also shallow it. Therefore, the staffs came out with an idea to use flour to make dough to ensure their safety (edible). Frankly, I wouldn’t have thought of that but if I ever (hopefully) spark a brilliant idea such as, I’d love to contribute! J As the saying goes when the going gets tough, the tough gets going!

As scheduled today, trainees with cerebral palsy will be attending to the centre for physiotherapy, mouth exercise and group singing. As the trainees gradually arrived to receive physiotherapy, 5 of us were absolutely clueless about what we could do but it would be rude if we just stand and stare so we decided to split ourselves to join different staffs to help out. We were offered a chance to massage the trainees as well. One particular trainee who I had worked with was a girl with severe cerebral palsy as a result of fever during childhood. She was constantly in a posture as if she was in pain. She couldn’t relax her joints, therefore her legs and hands were always bending at (more or less) 60 degree and she clutched her fist very tight. I was so afraid as if I had hurt her because I don’t really know how to massage in the way that will make her feel comfortable. The staff encouraged me to use more strength because it wouldn’t hurt her, she wasn’t in pain. Her mother was, likewise, very friendly and willing to give me the opportunity to massage her daughter. She couldn’t speak, I wouldn’t know her exact feelings, but she can hear and seem to be able to comprehend a little, therefore throughout the session, I kept singing until I ran out of songs and realized I suck at memorizing lyrics (initially I was just showing her photos from my phone which didn’t seem to be a good idea so I started giving her a solo concert). Sometimes she would stare at me with wonders (I am a stranger after all) and sometimes she would reply me with the brightest smile in the world. If only I am a mind reader then I would know if my songs had made her day. I wished I had brushed up my memory of nursery songs and of course other pop songs before attending this visit. Where words fail, music speaks J

Besides, I got to know a brief story about this girl and understand that she had a surgery previously to straighten her joint by putting metal bar in her. Unfortunately it didn’t work and worsened her condition. I could sense a trace of lament in the mother’s tone and yet she is able to reconcile herself with the fact that her daughter is disabled. Their presence at the centre is the best proof. By the very least, the girl gets to view and socialize with the outer world instead of staying home. Throughout our conversation, there were a lot of moments when our eyes reddened and almost couldn’t hold back our tears. This is when a mental epiphany struck me, I restored my faith in humanity! I see sympathy and love in this centre therefore it was rather saddening when a senior observed and asserted that the staffs were not attempting to establish proximity with the trainees. Luckily the others explained immediately that the staffs might be restless due to the competition hold yesterday. I guess that senior was equally disappointed for not being able to receive the sort of emotion like I did. If only the staffs can maintain a consistent level of performance would make them less a human but a robot … (?) It is good to observe this situation because it would most likely happen on us as well. Dying passion and wrongly perceived attitude… but we are no one to judge their attitude on their job because we had only met once. It would be less prudent to be judgemental without any sort of prior knowledge about them. I suppose we are living in the world where mistakes are not affordable. A doctor’s misdiagnosis could cost a live, a chef’s bad cooking might ruin a person’s day and a teacher’s one less appropriate word or behaviour would influence the future.

In short, touching lives of others remind me how fortunate I am and therefore, hopefully in the future I can instill a sense of benevolence in my students so that they feel obligated to take care of these disabled students. Moreover, I shall educate them to take any form of community service with appropriate attitude (unlike myself of course) and hopefully I can execute and coordinate that activity in the manner that will not merely serve as a task. The true mark of a civilization lies within how the society treats its vulnerable members (not sure where I came across this quote, prolly Time Magazine but apologies I had forgotten which issue). That is the very essence of what I desired to educate my future.  

➳ Day 2 (17 Oct) & Campus Tour (31 Oct) ➳

17th of Oct, Day 2 @The Tamil School

Before we go...

Due to the shortened period of contact, my teammates and I need to forgo and revise some of the activities planned. All of our activities were structured to meet the 3 focuses of the theme - My Primary School Memory, Qualities of Secondary School Students and My Ideal Secondary School. One of the activities would be a reading passage and worksheet, with an aim to compliment with the students' respective topic of presentation. My partner, Syeera and I had written one passage but improvement in terms of the content and coherence was requested by the seniors. Some elements of Harry Porter adapted in the passage were required to be amended simply due to the assumption of a lack of western influences on the students. Naively, to clear my confusion, I asked, "Well, why couldn't we just introduce Harry Porter to them?" (Great book isn't it?) The reply I received was "that's not the point.". Frankly, I was quite upset about this response. Well, albeit given the autonomy to design the teaching materials, there are still some considerations needed to be taken into account. Maybe this is the whole intention of the project, the students from different cultural background, what to do? *evil laugh in the background* Consider this video on how a teacher manages the classroom by giving spoilers of Games of Throne (and I was inspired to adopt this in my future classroom, WAHAHA).      

Besides, it is a must to pre-teach vocabulary before distributing the passage to the students. The seniors encouraged us to use the elicitation technique i.e. to give hints to the students so that they can guess and come up with that particular word themselves instead of passively accept and therefore learn a new word. The principle of teaching vocabulary was also shared by the seniors - Hear, Say, Look, Write. I found the elicitation method really problematic because of two reasons - first, some vocabularies are difficult to give hints (eg. imagination, awesome); second, how could a student elicit a word that he or she hasn't learnt previously? However, after reconciled ourselves with the rationale behind this approach, Syeera and I decided to rewrite our passage - Harry Porter was replaced by the common fairy tale setting whereas some vocabularies were substituted by the more suitable ones.

Hello, kids!

On the road again in the chilly  morning, going to be the teacher of the Tamil School kids for the one last time. We started off the day by recapping what the students had learnt last week, elated to observe the students being able to recall the previous lesson. Next, we divided the students into 3 groups to play a Hangman game and scores will be jotted down. The group assigned to Syeera and I were falling behind the score which enraged Syeera because we were losing the game. It was thought-provoking to witness this situation. Reminiscing my personal experience, teachers have been imposing a certain degree of competition cultural within the students and I couldn't agree more on  this little recount of a man on triumphalism as all the limelight of public interest has been converged on how a person succeed instead of how he/she fails (*people like Bill Gates who failed High School but succeeded in the later part of his life doesn't count!). p/s: Our group didn't win in the end and I think it shouldn't matter. I just hope that I won't participate in the enforcement of triumphalism by influencing the students with less appropriate attitude on competition. We shall educated them to enjoy being in a competition where they can meet like-minded people to upgrade themselves and winning a title shall just be a by-product, not the focus. 

Afterwards the students were given another 30 minutes to finish drawing their presentation poster, followed by a pop quiz. Again, the pop quiz was conducted in groups and each group was given a mini whiteboard and marker to display their answer. It can be observed that most of our activities were structured in the manner that encourages group work as stated in one of the learning outcomes, students will establish cohesive group dynamic and interpersonal skills. What a progressivist approach!

The next activity is reading comprehension, particularly a passage on "My Ideal Secondary School" for my group. In this activity, I was the main teacher whereas Syeera was my co-teacher. Before distributing the reading passage, I had given the students a scenario.  (*the passage is in the form of a letter)

"Dear students, I had written a letter to Syeera but she can't understand what I wrote. She said some of the words are difficult and asked if you all can help her?"

The students agreed in excitement which met my expectation that they are able to draw some meaningful connections instead of merely taking this activity as another task. As I found this approach viable, I did some further research on scenario in education and found this interesting piece of article -  Microsoft's finding on scenario planning and future of education. Besides, scenario-based learning, as promoted by the UNSW Australia is proven an effective learning approach, especially on medicine and engineering courses. Then, as advised by the seniors, I taught some vocabularies that might be new to the students. Again, the elicitation method is troublesome as I included phrases like in the pink of my health, time of my life in the passage. Nonetheless, I managed to think of using pictures and flashcards to facilitate the teaching process. For instance, to teach the phrase "in the pink of my health", I painted a pink flower and shown it to the students. 

Questions that I used to prompt the students were as such:

"Students, what color is the flower?"
"Do you think the flower is healthy?"
"Therefore can I say pink is the color of healthy?"
(*show flashcard)
"So next time, when somebody ask you how are you, you can answer, I am in the pink of my health!"     

A pink flower drew by myself to teach "in the pink of my health".

Moving on, in order to teach the verb "motivate", I created another scenario for the students. Play the below video to find out more.

Likewise, I used the same method to teach the word "leisure time".

The students shown positive response as they were able to acquire new words. As this method is found to be practicable, I shall not be afraid to teach words like 'imagination' and ' awesome' in the future. Since the passage is actually a letter, I had put it in an envelope to give it more a tangible form. The envelope also acted as a container lest the students misplaced the passage and worksheet. Just want to keep this sentence simple, the students love it! (and I self-servingly salute myself for coming up with this idea!*I am able to come up with this idea is because I am an old-school letter sender. I have never known that what a teacher does in daily life will have an impact on his/her teaching!) Therefore, I'd say the recruit process of teachers is important because what kind of teacher a school recruited determine what kind of future the children are heading to. 

The reading passage is enclosed in an envelope. 

I guided the students through the passage by reading it together and I felt pressured to ensure the precision of my pronunciation. How important a teacher is! Basically everything we do will have an influence on a student! Later, we proceeded to answering worksheet, when Syeera stepped in with an extremely important role. The teacher-student ratio was 2:7, which was beyond optimum to take care of every student's need. Syeera was rather vital as she went around to establish close bond with the students and provide extra guidance. As the students receive greater teacher attention, they learn more effectively. Therefore, to have a co-teacher is even more important in an inclusive classroom setting.

It terrified me that the students struggled to answer question 5 as that particular information is rather implicit. Albeit this was my intention to examine if the students possess the so-called Higher Order Thinking Skills (or perhaps it is just a problem of language?), the overwhelming number of them who failed to answer is indeed alarming. I attempted to clear up their confusion by using another scenario.

"I am going to play football later, hopefully it doesn't rain."

"Do you want it to rain?"

"No, because you want to play football!"

"Therefore, if Rynnie says hopefully there isn't much homework to do, do you think she likes homework?"

Some students were fast to understand while some still struggled. Hence, Syeera stepped in to offer another examples to help the students. It is less burdening to work together with a co-teacher, and I certainly will be mindful not to take it for granted. I am also glad that I had managed the allocated time well. By the time we finished discussing the answers, the students had 5 minutes to take a rest before we proceeded to presentation demonstration and script writing.    

Teachers' demonstration on how to do a presentation.

Writing the script for students.

Making sure the students know the sequence of the script.

One question jumps into my mind during these 2 activities - where is the fine line between scaffolding and spoon-feeding? Sugrue in his book Complexities of Teaching: Child-centered Perspectives suggested, scaffolding is to equip a learner with methodology - how to think of a solution. Notwithstanding, "structures and communication routines may become sedimented" which will prevent a student to think and it is likely to take the form of spoon-feeding instead. It is appropriate to provide a demonstration for the students to observe but during script writing, we teachers provided the lines. This was actually a little miscommunication. I thought since we had gone through all sort of activities that were related to their presentation topic, in other words, we scaffold the students really well and suppose they are to draft their own script. But the senior of my group just decided to write the whole script for them. In this situation how could I assess if the activities worked and whether the students had learnt something? But, alas, I didn't ask for clarification from the senior at that moment. I just hope that events that carry the nature of "a means to an end" will not happen again. 

After several practices, the students were asked to have a little rehearsal for their coming presentation whereas we teachers gave advice and corrected their mistakes.

Try-out session!

Lastly, as time allowed, we played the Kim's Game. The students were shown this diagram which contains a list of vocabularies for 1 minute and will be given 2 minutes to write down what they remember. Syeera who prepared this diagram is thoughtful to use different colors as supported by this study, color enhances attention and memory performance. However, of 23 words, most students can only come up with an average of 10 words ...... well, maybe 1 minute is not enough to memorize. If we were to justify the study we shall increase the time limit next time. Speaking of, will colorful materials appear childish to the students after elementary level?I guess might cause them to lack interest in study... anyway, the focus of this game was on spelling, we were delighted to observe the students spelling words correctly.

The Kim's Game

My fellow groupmates! (Not in the photo: Chin Yang)

Here the bell rang, we dismissed the class and gave a pat on each other's shoulder that we had done a great job dealing with the kids :D

 31st of Oct, Campus Tour & Mini Presentation

Campus Tour

The students arrived the University early in the morning with excitement. We began the campus tour from the lake with Sonia and I as the tour guides. I attempted to incorporate spelling check (ask the students to spell the venue where we arrived) throughout the tour but as amphitheater was after the lake, which was too advanced for the students to spell, I forgot to maintain my effort. Also, I had seen Sarah's group prepared mini indicator flags which my group didn't. Hopefully I will remember these two aspects for other upcoming campus tour. Notably, we constantly had a headcount to make sure the students didn't get lost in our compound.

Hello kids! 

After the campus tour, we assembled at the great hall for a short break and rehearsed again before the presentation began! We can tell that the students were nervous as they tended to chatter at times. Syeera and I did our best to soothe their anxiety by giving encouragement nonetheless.

Special thanks to my partner, Syeera!

Apologies for the bad video quality as Blogger limited the file size to be lower than 100 MB. It can be observed that the students were really nervous and didn't seem to be well-prepared. However, the students, during rehearsal shown their effort by reciting the script perfectly, therefore it was a bit disappointing that they weren't able to show it in front of their peers. I believe it is the lack of contact time and the foreign environment made them feel uncomfortable. Hence, hopefully if there is a similar project in the future, we can be assigned more contact time with the students so that we can achieve our desired goal :) Nonetheless, it was rewarding enough to have their presence at UNMC and witness their courage to stand in front of the crowd. Hopefully this mini presentation can prepare them mentally for their future challenges.

Then, Dr. Ghana was invited to give a motivation speech. It was valuable to observe how Dr. Ghana structured his talk in the language that the students will be able to comprehend which unlike myself who struggled to switch from academic English to a more everyday English.

Motivation talk by Dr. Ghana.

He used the 3 true 1 false game to deliver a message related to friendship. Scenario-based learning was again proven useful as the students were able to associate the game to their real life experience.

Little activity - 3 true 1 false.

And we had gradually come to the end of this project. In the closing ceremony, the principal of the school conveyed her utmost gratitude to our effort and bestow us a pen as a token of appreciation. Besides, the students were busy asking for our contact and signature, some even presented me a gift. I wonder where is the ethical boundary between a student and a teacher? I found it less appropriate to give them my contact number therefore I replace it with my Facebook account instead. Also, it was joyous to receive a little present from the students as a sign of their appreciation. But I don't feel good at the same time because I still find it less suitable. 

The atmosphere resembled a graduation ceremony. The sense of thankfulness and adieu diffused in the air. Albeit our short acquaintanceship, I value them as my students and hopefully I had inspired and influenced them in a positive way. As I have always aspired to be an inspirational figure of good will and the pursuit of dream, may my passion lasts.

Conclusion

To sum up, this project has allowed me to gain an insight into developing teaching material that is suitable for students from a different cultural background with flexibility. I had learnt to view things from a student's perspective so that I can deliver my lesson more effectively. Thank you the School of Education for providing me a platform to obtain all these meaningful pieces of information. I look forward to the next project.    

✈ Day One! 10 Oct 2014 ✈

About this project

The idea is to improve the English proficiency level of post-UPSR students in SJK(T) Ladang Semenyih and to introduce them some concepts of a secondary school, aiming to inspire the young minds to look forward to the new chapter of their life.

On the process of designing and discussing.

Of newbies and seniors, we formed a team with an impressive dynamic, free flow of opinions and creative lesson plans. Provided the age group of 12 years old, we had brainstormed a number of activities that is able to bring fun and at the same time,academic. We had also thought of adopting Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligence and various learning style models in our activities so that the students can not just work their brains but also their bodies.

I was appointed to conduct the introductory session by sharing my personal feelings and experiences of secondary school life. Initially I planned to incorporate global issues in my talk, just as an inspiration for the students to take education seriously because by that, they are able to make changes! One of the successful examples is that of Ryan Hreljac, who learned the hardships of African people to access clean and safe water in his first grade class and therefore, with the help of others, built a well in an Ugandan Primary School in 1999 (he was only 7 years old). His effort prevails and a foundation was established to conduct more clean water projects in African countries.
 However, the seniors pointed out that this idea might be too overwhelming for the students, hence the focus of my speech was shifted to friendship, allowing the students to draw immediate relations.

Moreover, I was assigned to work with Syeera in particular, we were to lead an activity called "My Ideal Secondary School" which is also one of the presentation topics. A problem had arisen when we were writing ICQ. Due to the indeterminacy of the students' proficiency level, we found it difficult to lower the sophistication of our language. Nonetheless, we came to a consensus that we should keep it as simple as possible in view of the status of English in their Indian background. (Issues of ethnicity jumps into mind!)

Furthermore, we had encountered technical constraint due to the absence of projector in classrooms (Aha!Issues of funding in vernacular school!). Often a time we were in the need of displaying pictures in order to deliver our lesson, but we managed to overcome this impediment by using traditional methods of drawing and print-outs.

After weeks of intensive meeting and rehearsal, we were all well-geared and ready for the excitement!

Off to work we go!

Day 1 @The Tamil School with my partner - Syeera before work! We matched, LOL.

Teachers and students were to wear name tags to establish proximity in order to facilitate the teaching process. The name tags were available in different colours and students were encouraged to decorate their own by drawing embellishments. Now that we had kept the students interested by this little task, we kicked start the day by playing ice breakers.    

My name tag! :D

We played two games in total - Catch The Ball and Chinese Whisper. Both games required the students to speak and listen which enabled we teachers to gradually determine the students' proficiency level. One remarkable issue was observed while playing Chinese Whisper - students were unable to pass the message correctly. 

Previously in our discussion, we planned to use tongue twister for Grade 3 students as the message.

1. Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore.

2. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Likewise, these two sentences were found to be too overwhelming which were then altered to the following.

1. Little Red Riding Hood visited her grandmother.

2. I am going to secondary school next year.

Unfortunately, it still posed a certain level of difficulty for the students but on the other hand, we managed to familiarize ourselves with the students!

While I was teaching about bond...

Up next was my introductory story-sharing session, instead of printing out pictures which is extremely un-eco-friendly , I prepared my secondary school magazine to offer the students a better insight into their upcoming campus life. My talk was mainly about advising the students to pursuit friendship instead of "relationship" and discover their interest. I had also attempted to conceptualize the idea of friendship as atomic bonding (Form 1 science here).  The objective of relating my talk with some scientific knowledge which they will soon be learning can be traced back to my personal experience of post-UPSR lessons. My teacher had given my class a month of lessons on Form 1 science and mathematics in order to give us a brief idea on the syllabus (I was from the "elite" class). Nevertheless, the students didn't seem to grasp like how I did and likewise, my teammate commented on the level of difficulty. Therefore, the moment when I found out I actually went overboard, I knew instantaneously that this group of students aren't from the higher ability class. I had also mentioned about drawing being my interest and showed the students some of my artwork. Last but not the least, I sang Auld Lang Syne for the students, just to diversify my speech (and Multiple Intelligence here!) but disappointingly, they shown no memory of the song during the final recap of the lesson which led me to deduce another implication.    

My school magazines and sketch book.

Best activity of today's session! Colorful memo pads!

The following activities were more interactive as students were able to engage in the lesson by providing their respective answers on memo pads and most importantly, we reviewed their answers to show that we valued their ideas. The students were actively participating in the discussions too. Notably, the classroom layout assisted our activities because the students were sitting in groups instead of being an individual or in pairs. Additionally, we could further recognize their level of proficiency by observing their spelling and sentence structures. It was worth mentioning that some students attempted to answer in complete sentences. Still, they demonstrated low mastery of vocabulary and grammar, for example, one student wrote "I weaknesses is..."  Sincerely, I'd like to apologize for explaining and correcting their mistake in Bahasa Melayu. I wonder if we can learn any second language without having to translate it to another language of our mastery. However, the means of translating has been long adopted in countries like China and Japan, where the students will need to translate an English passage into their native language and vice verse. Well, even I used to do that during my infancy stage of English development. So is it teleologically acceptable?

Second half of the day - discussion on presentations.

After the break, we proceeded to the last activity of the day - introducing their ultimate task - presentations!

At this stage, we had divided the students into 3 new groups after identifying their respective proficiency level. Previously in our discussion, we planned to do ability grouping for their presentation but we later agreed that we should opt for mixed abilities so that the students can learn from their peers. Three topics of their presentations are:

1. My primary school memory (lead by Chin Yang & Derrick)

2. Qualities of a secondary school student (lead by Tiffany & Stella)

3. My Ideal Secondary School (lead by Syeera and I) 

Example of an ideal school drawn by Syeera.

Before Syeera and I gave the students more detailed instruction, we made sure if the students understand what is a presentation, what are the things that they should do and what does the word 'ideal' mean. The word 'ideal' appeared to be a big word for them but as soon as we used the word 'dream' to replace it, the students offered the signature "aahhhh" expression as an indication of understanding. Syeera stated some of the characteristics of an ideal school - swimming pool, Gothic architecture (note: we used the word castle to substitute Gothic!Self-awareness much!) and a lush of greeneries. Together with the students, we brainstormed a list of features of their dream secondary school and sketched a draft before transferring it to a piece of mahjoong paper.

The girls weren't involving initially.

It was noteworthy that the girls were being passive in this process. The drawing was mostly done by the boys. (Here comes gender issues!) Not to mention the use of Tamil throughout the discussion.

Successfully prompted the girls to get involve as well.

Finally, Syeera and I managed to encourage the girls to take part in the task by instructing them to color the drawing. I noticed from their drawing that the school architecture resembled the example provided although the students did offer other fascinating ideas. This struck me to contemplate about creativity, imagination and influence. Let me summon David Hume for this!

Due to time constraint, they were unable to complete the drawing within the time limit but they will be given an extra 30 minutes to finalize it on next Friday. To wrap up the day, we had a recap. It can be seen that the students struggled a little coming out with answers and only those who possesses higher proficiency level of English were ardently rising their hands. (Sigh, typical classroom huh. Oh ya, more boys put up their hands than girls.)

Some Musings.

In relation to culture.

In view of our perceptions on the Malaysian Indian community (they are deemed as the lower tier of our social strata) and the absence of prior knowledge on the students' proficiency level, we assumed, therefore labelled the group of students as lower intermediate when designing our activities. Correspondingly, we presumed their exposure and access to English speaking culture are limited due to their socioeconomic background. Is it valid for me to attribute their failure to recall the song Auld Lang Syne and the use of Tamil among themselves to restricted exposure of English speaking culture? The song might just be too old for them and the transition might be unease. The lack of knowledge on the Indian kids subtly hampered our design of activities. We who come from a more privileged background can effortlessly take cultural elements for granted because we all have access to it. Doubtlessly we know about Lord of The Rings and Harry Porter, such mainstream novel series that all of us worship. How about the kids from a less privileged background where going to school is considered as lavish? When I was teaching in a Chinese primary school, I can easily talk about Korean pop culture with my students because they are blessed with such access. This really aided my teaching process because I know the interest of my students and I can make amendments based on it. In this case, even when I talked about the term "level-up" in gaming, it didn't ring a bell. I feel ashamed for not being able to include elements of their interest and concern in the designation. (p/s: But I did manage to determine during our contact!) However, is it appropriate to stereotype the students based on our mere preconceptions (e.g. assuming they don't know about Harry Porter and LOTR due to their economic background)?

On Classroom Participation.

Taking Theory of Multiple Intelligence and Learning Style Models into account, we designed the activities to be visually attractive and provided hands-on tasks to stimulate the students' sensorimotor to facilitate their learning. We received a very positive response using memo pads as a learning instrument. Besides, an interactive classroom dynamic was formed. Notwithstanding, it was thought provoking to observe that the boys engaged more actively than the girls in this particular classroom. Findings reported on the underachievement of boys and their lack of participation in the classroom. Studies also found that female students are adept in linguistic abilities whereas male students in STEM subjects. It is very narcissistic of me to use my own video production to support my argument but check out  my video on gender difference in educational attainment. This contrast really struck me in amazement. This situation remained unchanged although the students were assigned into different groups. For this time being I shall not make any assumptions until the next meet-up. Another issue that I pondered upon was the determination of a student's ability based on his/her participation in the classroom. Research did suggest a student's academic competence is related to his/her classroom participation due to internal motivation and learning-goal orientation (Find out more on this study ). Yet, speaking from a personal experience, my secondary school classmates had always been very passive and reluctant to engage in a lesson because we were too frightened to provide a wrong answer. It 'd be challenging if we encountered this kind of students, too elite to be involved.

Of Hume, Creativity and Constructivism

One observation that annoyed me was that the students drew another similar school after viewing the example provided. This reminded me of Hume's argument  that our imagination is in fact "confined within very narrow limits". To quote from Hume, "all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones"; we are restricted to "compounding, transporting, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience".  Given the impression of a castle-like school, the students just modified it into a kid's version. This then led me to cite the limitation of constructivism. Our whole designation was made in a constructivist manner - student-centered (therefore the memo pads). However, we don't seem to be able to forgo instructional tools, in this situation, the example of an ideal school. Nevertheless, it can be destructive as I further speculated upon this issue because seeing beyond might mean over-analyzing. The students could be fond of a school in the form of a castle too. Despite context does matter, we shall sometimes inspect a matter in isolation without specific expectations of any kind which in the language of Matthew Arnold,  "to see an object in itself as it really is".

Conclusion.

By the end of day one, I am able to conclude that, teaching is always about considering different aspects from the students' viewpoint so that necessary adjustment in terms of language and content can be amend to cater to different needs. To evaluate and reflect on my performance, I hope I can be deft at switching my language style to meet the level of my students. To be professional doesn't always mean to be sophisticated. What I am in the need of developing is the sense of flexibility to poise between the two.

To Be Continued

We shall expand more on our discussion on multicultural education and constructivism in the next reflection!