Skip to main content

2024 Hums Dept Reflections (1 Nov)

Positive thoughts, positive outlook

What are 3 things I have done well this year?

- Practising self-care by carving out more personal time for myself. Besides yoga, I've also resumed jogging at least once weekly. I've also read 2 more books in Semester 2.

- I have tried out AI tools and will in fact be sharing on the use of Tome AI 

- I felt that I've prepared the 1st cohort of Full Geog students and my new SS graduating class well (I hope I'm not being delusional). For that, I've overcome the steep learning curve of picking up the teaching of SS again this year, and I'm really grateful for all the support given to me by Ms Tang, Cryst and Nabs along the way whenever I pester them questions on SS.

- I am also grateful for Feline for helping me look after History side and our shared deadlines for EXCO, and Cryst for helping to look into PD.

- I'm grateful for all the support our dept teachers have shown one another, as simple as making sure one another has food, to sitting down to mark together, eat together, chat together. In my many years of teaching, the interactions amongst colleagues are always what make weary lives of being a teacher much more bearable. And I'm thankful that we have an abundance of that in our school.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ExCEL Fest Live: Empowering Students in Geographical Investigation through Virtual Reality Technology (A Sharing by Theophilia Yong / Teck Whye Sec)

 Sharing a series of screengrabs from the presenter's sharing, just to give an idea of how the GI was constructed. CoSpaces allows students to upload 360 environment photos and then drag and drop characters/elements to create 'scenes'. Presenter's suggestion to adapt CoSpaces project into assessment rubrics What have I learnt from this sharing session? The greatest takeaway from the sharing is the introduction of the apps Google Tour Creator and CoSpaces EDU .  Google Tour Creator  allows the students to create their own 360 photos (though presenter did warn that stable and patient camera skills are paramount to getting a good 360 view), while  CoSpaces EDU  allows the kids to upload 360 photos to create their own virtual 'scenes', before making use of their creativity to modify these scenes using character/item templates and annotations of their own.  The use of these 2 apps definitely provides a valuable opportunity for students to enliven their presenta...
Post a Comment
Find out what else I've written »

ExCEL Fest Keynote Address: Educating The Whole Child: Why All Learning Is Social And Emotional To The Brain by Professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Source: https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/how-to-make-learning-relevant/ Emotions may be automatic responses to situations, but we need to "learn how to feel". Strangely enough, I can actually connect to the analogy she gave when she shared on how her daughter had written a song for her brother, putting together her drawing, writing and song-writing skills to present this gift to her brother, because of her love for her brother. I see the same thing happening at home. - My child K1 is fascinated with marine creatures and marine biology nowadays having watched Octonauts on Netflix. He was able to use his love for the cartoon to extend reading and information search on his own to find out more about marine creatures he learnt about from the show (thanks to the Google Home mini in the living room). - He was also able to combine his love for drawing and his love for the cartoon to transform them into 'character hats'. He basically used his free play time a...
Post a Comment
Find out what else I've written »

[Dept Meeting (28 Dec 2020)] Reflections

What were the main things I learned today, and how will these be useful to my work in 2021?  Today, we revisited the Pedagogical Scaffold 2.0 and spent some time to discuss about designing different LEs for a similar content area. Click here for details of each Learning Experiences on the PDLP website. To me, this process is no much different from our traditional roles as classroom teachers. Why do I say so? We are still planning for students' learning in a mindful way, from outlining the learning outcomes, to designing the activities suitable in scaffolding the students' learning. Akin to teachers with varied teaching styles, those of us who have tried designing LEs tend to have our preferred LEs (e.g. my preferred is Acquisition , because it is the most predictable way for me to organise my lesson stimuli and lead the students towards the intended lesson objectives). For 2021, I would definitely want to go beyond my comfort zone and opt for Inquiry  and Discussion  LEs...
Post a Comment
Find out what else I've written »