Fourth Week of IP - Lesson Preparation and Implementation

Initially, when I discussed with my mentor regarding the content that I would be teaching, he mentioned that I could choose from 5 textbook topics that he has just taught so that students could revise and that he would like to experience a "Singapore-style teaching". He believes that his style of teaching would not cater to all the students in my class and a different style of teaching may allow certain students to learn better hence I should not attempt to replicate his style. When going into lesson preparation, I had two major concerns which is the content of lesson and the definition of "Singapore-style teaching". Regarding the content of lesson, I was unfamiliar with traditional Chinese and the "Zhuyin Fuhao" phonetic system as Singapore uses simplified Chinese and "Hanyu Pinyin" phonetic system. If I had to teach them textbook content, I felt that the lesson would fall short as my subject mastery is not in that field. Ultimately, I found a way to overcome this gap as I remembered a module in NIE whereby the professor mentioned that language could be split into content and skills. Content is infinite whereas skills are finite and as teachers, our goal should be to impart language skills to students so that they are able to use the finite skills to obtain infinite content. Instead of teaching students content which I am unfamiliar with, I could teach them skills instead which I have learnt. As for the definition of "Singapore-style teaching", I defined it as student-centered teaching and I did so by incorporating group collaborations and sharing in my lesson.

In the end, my 40 minute Chinese lesson was based on breaking down Chinese characters into smaller radicals. My introduction included a Chinese pop song which included many complex characters and I explained to students why is there a need to break down Chinese characters. I followed up by providing examples and teaching them how to break down Chinese characters and using these radicals to form a sentence to ease memory. Next, I had students form groups and practice the technique learnt using assigned words from their textbook topic. Lastly, students came up to share with their classmates what their group created.

Students focusing on group work (part 1)

Students focusing on group work (part 2)

Overall, the lesson proceeded smoothly and my mentor mentioned that it was a good lesson. He also provided feedback on how to improve such as certain examples could have been better made use of or changed slightly. I feel rather pleased about the lesson implementation and was glad that I overcame the initial hurdles to deliver a satisfactory lesson.