Stories of me and myself

One less week for practicum. It's a mixture of happiness and relieve mixed with unwillingness.
Relieve cos I can finally take a good break, say byebye to some irritants, etc.
Unwillingness number one, cos I'll miss my cts, fellow trainees and bubbly kids.
Unwillingness number two, cos the going will only get tougher.
Aiyah, whatever... bring it on.... I can take it! Haha! (Yaya papaya....)

So how was the week? It was an interesting week.

Lots of rushing to the very very last minute cos I am such a procastinator. So much so that my fellow trainee had to help me go to class and set up the computer, help me staple my notes and all. Cos I was either busy printing, getting the key to the room or informing students of the change of venue. Hee. Thank God for the help!

I experimented with different ideas, for the fun if it all.
Here's some sharing.

1) I got the kids to use plasticine to make landforms. Then they were to slice them up and outline them, one layer after the other. Then they were to identify what they had just drawn. From there, they would understand how contour lines originate from, and would have a better understanding of how to visualise the landform from contour lines. Really creates quite a visual image. Just try with simple landforms like hill/plateau. If anyone figures out how to create a valley and obtain its contour lines easily, please let me know.

2) I made a volcano eruption. It's not easy to conduct an outdoor lesson. P-in-P should know. Haha! But I did it after school, so even if they were chaotic, it was ok cos I was laxed and also no one would complain. I work on the principle of interest. I will conduct an interesting lesson. It's up to you to whether you wanna pay attention and benefit or not. If you don't care, I also don't care. Cos what I am doing is actually outside the basic syllabus... just an extra activity to help students understand better.

I had forgotten to bring down the materials needed for the volcano eruption, so I got this little boy to go to my table to get it. He came down with an empty paperbag. I was like, "Huh? You mean there was nothing on my table?" So I had to go up with him. Guess what he did? He had removed all the materials from inside the paperbag and brought down the empty paperbag!
Should I have laughed or should I have cried or should I have scolded him? Heh. Of course I laughed. I laugh at everything! Hee. Have to give him credit for following instructions to the very core of it lah. Hee. "Bring down the paperbag."
Yep, there are instances where we must assume zero knowledge, and thus give SPECIFIC instructions. "Bring the paperbag from my table, with ALL its materials in it, down here. Thank you very much."

The funny thing is that, the volcano was so UGLY! They had wrapped the plasticine around the bottle... thus producing a skinny-looking volcano with figure! EW! And I had added too little red colouring. So guess the colour of the lava? It was PINK! EW EW EW! Hahaha! So it wasn't too successful an eruption. But at least I tried it. If I had not tried it, I wouldn't know where to improve rite? Hee. Excuses excuses excuses....

And I also had another big class role-play with my Sec 2 class. This time for the race riots. More experience now, and the kids are more used to the procedure... so it was less chaotic and more systematic. But I still think the previous role-play was better. Hee. Though of cos the kids still enjoyed it cos they get to whack each other upside down! Heh. I wish I was a kid in the riot too! But it was different this time cos my fellow trainee was LKY and my ct was Tun Razak. So it was a fun time.

Teaching is fun.