WII

WII... i'm not a computer game person, but i love planning the WII after my brother bought it. I should say it's quite addictive and after hearing about the presentation from Mr Koh, i wonder what kind of magic will WII do for the Chinese Language? Which kind of game can we use for the chinese language? This is not an easy tasks but to find a suitable game we will need alot of innovative ideas and lesson planning. I plan a simple game based lesson plan when i was doing my contract teaching in secondary school, I asker my students to revised all the words that we have learnt for the past 5 lessons and I design a crossword puzzle for the class. I did this in groups of 4 and I will flash the question on the powerpoint, my students will discuss the answer and write it out on the crossword puzzle that i have provided for them. It takes some perfecting, as when i did this for 2 different classes and I have different response. On to the drawing board for more inspiration......

Different Pedagogies

I have seen teaching of a few pedagogies that was mentioned during our class... I have used game based learning for 2 of my classes, of cause i didn't know that it was called game-based learning then... I should say i had very different responses from my 2 classes it was an eye opener. I told myself then, even when using the same lesson plan for 2 different classes, i have to have different approach. How to incooperate different learning methods for classes of today? During my ESE, i sat in a class where my school's ST was teaching a 4NA class, she was using DI. From there i have read up about different pedagogies and i think we need a certain class environment and student behavior to achieve especially, research-based learning and inquiry-based learning. I feel that these 2 pedagogies will need students to be self directed in their studies and focus on their goal.
How to implement these teaching pedagogies when there is quite a difference in a class of 40?

Self Directed Learning

I feel that SDL can be done if the teacher gives a good frame work for the students to work on and the best combination will be with a student slightly more mature and focus then his or her peers. The teacher have to set up a good frame work for students to be able to direct themselves in finding out more with resources.

A Meaningful Learning Environment

Well... Being a child going to school in the 80s, i think the sort of learning environment is very much teacher centered. We all grew up sitting quietly in the classroom waiting for our teachers to give us the keys to the future. When i was contract teaching in school, i find the vast difference in the ways of teaching in class. Children now are taught to speak up, to have an opinion, to fight for what they want. I think the change is for the better and we should move with times, but being a teacher, we can better guide these young people towards a future that they want. I hope that I can fulfill this role and make the classroom a better and meaningful learning experience for the students.
I feel that my best studying years was my university years. I think we have to be of a certain age to learn to appreciate the value of education.