Make Our Students Think

We attended the APERA Conference on last Friday. There was a group of teachers from Marsiling Secondary School to do their paper presentation on the use of Knowledge Forum (KF) in the teaching of D&T.

One point which the speaker mentioned in this presentation got my attention. He emphasized the importance of thinking process in the students' learning. And we should prompt the students to think, let the thinking process take place...

This made me think...

Do we give our students enough time to think, or we just pop up the answers by our own?

Do we create an effective learning environment to make our students think?

Do we deliberately to create the suitable moments to let the thinking process take place?

I doubt it...

It seems that we just do not have enough time to spare for thinking...

But teaching thinking is all the education about...

Psychologist John Dewey ever said: "All which the school can or need do for pupils, so far as their minds are concerned... is to develop their ability to think."

Robert Fisher pointed out: "The quality of our lives and of our learning depends on the quality of our thinking..."

Classroom research also finds out that students are better motivated and more engaged in classes they find intellectually stimulating. They like those teachers who make them think...

Do you want to be an effective teacher?

So please make our students think...

It Is A Happy Day!

Before the lesson started this morning, each one of us got a CD on the capture of our group presentations. I had never expected that I could get this... So it is really like a surprise gift for me...

Dr. Quek emphasized that we could not repeat the same teaching style in our daily lesson. Since the child learning style is different, we should present our knowledge in different ways...

She also introduced us some more internet environments. Using "google search", we typed in keyword "web 2.0 framework", so many logos appeared. I started to realize that there are quite a lot online learning environments out there... For most of the logos, I did not know them... I decided to try them out after I went back home...

Dr. Quek let us do case studies, and at the same time, we needed to use one online environment named "Google Docs" to complete our discussion powerpoint slides, and share it with friends...

I realized that there are a lot of online environments out there, but having one thing in common, they are all about connecting, and sharing... The internet creates a lot of platforms for people to use to communicate with each other, and share information, knowledge, thoughts... It is such a powerful tool for our learning, we should make good use of it, and introduce them to our students, let our students get benefits from it as well...

In the lesson, Dr. Quek talked about how to modify the instrument. Based on Moos' Scheme, the instruments share the same background, so we can pick various relevant items which we want to combine them together to form one set of instrument...

After lunch, Dr. Quek taught us how to read research paper, especially how to read the data analysis, the table, the number... and we had a hands on experience to use "SPSS" doing data analysis...

Since I am not a number person, and some new terms need to understand as well, so this part is quite tough for me. I tried very hard to figure out how to calculate the "Scale Mean", "Item Mean", "Reliability"...

The good laugh we got from Group 3 seemed lightened every body's day... Maybe this is the noisiest class we have, but this will be the best lesson I can remember...

I start to think that how we can create a conducive learning environment for our kids?

How we judge our classroom management? Discipline, we need! But what is the purpose of discipline? We want our kids to learn...

We need laughter! A lot of laughter! In a relaxing, enjoyable environment, our kids can learn even better!

As a teacher, how I can create this kind of moment to make our kids enjoy learning?

It is not easy, but I will try my best...

How can we create a conducive learning environment?

How can we create a conducive learning environment for our students?

Theae are some learning points which I drawed from our class lunch session:

1.Teacher will play a very important role in creating a conducive learning environment. A teacher is like a leader in an organization, she/he is the one to set the tone for her/his class. How creative she/he is? How friendly she/he is?... The character of the teacher will influence his students directly. It seems that what kind of teacher will have what kind of class. Do you agree with me?


2.Building the team, and create a sense of belonging for the students of the class.


3.Abolishing outworn concepts, striving to try new things. To bring new teaching concepts and methods into our daily lesson, try our best to create a new excited learning experience in our students' life.


4.Treat our students with respect, treat them well, treat them in the way we ourselves also want to be treated.


5.Build positive relationship with our students. Sometimes, the students learn not for subject matters, but for the teacher whom they like very much.


6.Seek balance between study and life, bring games into learning. Study hard and play hard. Game playing gathers people together. The people's true character will show in the game playing...

7.Create happy moments in our students' life...

These are some thoughts which I draw from our class lunch session. I feel that Dr. Quek is creating an unique learning experience in my life...

Teaching is about creating experience in one's life. This is what I learnt from this module. I will try my best to create a conducive learning environment for my students and creating some positive learning experience in their memory...

Thank you Dr. Quek for the learning experience she gave me...

Our Lunch

It is lunch time, this reminds me the lunch time I spent with my course mates and our teacher Dr. Quek. I miss the lunch session, and I think each one of us will remember the time we spent with Dr. Quek. After completing this course, the lunch session will become the most remarkable moment in our memory...

We are all in one class, Here is where we belong...

I call our lunch time is our lunch session, because this is really a session, every one in Dr. Quek's class will have lunch together.

I remember in our first day lesson, when the lunch time was coming, I did not finish my work, I wanted to use the lunch time to finish the work and catch up some readings. I did ask Dr. Quek if I could remain in the classroom to finish my reading. I got an answer: “No!”

Okay, I had to follow the class...

We were really moving as a class, Dr. Quek was leading this group of teacher students to the lunch place. On the way, we would take the same lift; if some one went to the toilet, the whole group of us would wait for that person... it is just like what Brian wrote on his Blog. Yes, it was a little bit like kindergarten kids, but the feeling which belongs to one group is just nice! After some days moving around, Karen was even able to point out who is not here with us at a glance... Amazing, yah?


I will bring you to a new place next time...

Dr. Quek would bring us to a different place to have our lunch each every day. Whenever we finished our lunch, Dr. Quek would say: “I will bring you to a new place next time...”

For some places, even the teachers who graduated from NIE would not be very familiar with. It seemed that Dr. Quek was leading us to exploring the food courts in NIE and NTU. The new eating place brought some uncertain into our daily life, it made everybody excited. For me, even just sitting in a new nice place, looking around, it is already enough to make me happy... We are really looking forward to our lunch time every day...

Oh, Please... Do not treat us too nicely!

It is just like what Brian wrote on his Blog, Dr. Quek even bought drinks, snacks, and the whole fish for us. I remember when the first time I got her drinks, I even asked around "why does she buy this for us?"... Nobody knew the answer of this “stupid question”. As the treat going on, our hearts also become heavier and heavier... I just do not know how I can repay her back... Some times somebody treats you too nicely; you will feel a sense of uneasiness... I am really worried that I can not do well in my study and disappoint her... “I will do my best...” I said to her in my heart...

Come, Let's Play Games!

After our lunch, Dr. Quek brought us to a nice cosy lounge to play games!

Yuan Han joined the boys' group to play table football match. Some others formed the group to play chess, the rest of us were happy to sit comfortably to watch others playing.

Yuan Han was really good at playing table football match. I just wondered how she could handle the little toy boys to shoot the ball into the goal in one kick? It was really cool!

And this reminded me the old days...
“Hi, hello, play properly, okay? I only have this one coin... We have to make good use of it. We have to play longer...” This is another table football game played by my old colleagues. Why I can still remember this, even the words they said I can still remember very clearly...?

Some one thought that I had a good memory. Is that all about memory?
From Dr. Seng's class we learnt that the memory very much related to the person's emotion. “Emotionally charged events are remembered better”; “Pleasant emotions are usually remembered better than unpleasant ones”; “It's the emotional arousal, not the importance of the information, that helps memory”; “The stronger the emotions aroused, the greater the effect on memory"...

So this is all about emotion...


This is the journal which I wrote about our lunch session, what are the learning points I draw from the lunch time we spent with Dr. Quek, I will write the learning points and some my thoughts in my next journal...

Do we need using computer to teach language?

I read Kelvin's Blog yesterday, and some points in his journal really inspired me to think deeply...

Some questions come across my mind.

"Do we need to use technology to teach language?"

"What kind of role the technology will play in teaching language?"

The world is changing, students change over years. This generation of youth is different from before. They are computer-savvy generation. Despite all of these, in terms of teaching, some teachers still prefer "Chalk and Talk" method, and they are more comfortable with "the Teacher-Centered" traditional teaching style...

Especially for language teachers, they argue:
The science teacher will benefit more from the technology. Technology can help them to interpret the phenomenon more directly and clearly, and can help them to simplify the theory...
But for language teaching, we teach students how to appreciate the words, they need to be creative, they need use their own imagination to feel, to image... the technology will limit their imagination. This is something like "Watching TV", you get pleasure and stimulus from watching TV, but it is a passive way to learn and to get information. Watching too much TV, you will become dumb... But reading books is an active way to learn and get information, it makes you think, reading makes you wiser...

So do we need to create a "computer-supported classroom learning environment" to teach language?
Some teachers also point out the outcome of using computer to teach language is not better than the traditional way of teaching language. Some times if the teacher is not very familiar with the technology, it will waste time to settle things down, and the technology will distract the students' attention...

I understand the concern which language teachers point out. And I also agree that maybe the traditional way of teaching language can get better results in some cases.

So which one is better, "using computer" or not?

I think this is all about the mindset; we can not use technology for the sake of using technology.
How we use the technology to teach language is very important!

If we only let students learn from the technology, we only use technology as a new tool to teach language, the mindset is still the old mindset, the way how we teach is still the same, the way how we think is still the same, then I do not expect we can get much different outcome compared to the traditional way of teaching, even worse.

But if we can let students learn with the technology, with so many Learning Platforms in the world now, “ Wikis”, “Blogs”, “Forums”, “Games”, “Ipods”, “Podcasts”... the technology can prompt the students to do independent learning, prepare them for the lifelong learning. Technology can create a conducive learning environment for our students. In this learning environment, the students can acquire the skills of collaboration, communication, and independent learning. From this point of view, the way of using technology to teach will be more meaningful than the traditional way of teaching.

Do you agree with me?

Our Group Work - "Create WiKi"

Last Tuesday, we got the home work to do the research about one GURU in the Learning Environment area, and create a wiki site to introduce this guru. Our group chose to introduce the contributions of Adolf Moos. He is the person divided the human environment into 3 dimensions, and based on these 3 dimensions, he developed different scales to measure various human environments, ranging from family to hospital to the classroom.

Since there are three dimensions in his theory, so the work allocation is just nice among the 4 members in our group. Pei Tong took the general introduction of Moos, he would create the home page, and for the rest of us, each one took one dimension to do the research and create the site.

The following Wednesday, I went back to school to do some CCA and other admin work. I found my edumail account can not get the invitation from wiki, after some SMS exchanges with Karen, finally I got the invitation from the trash box in my yahoo account. After finishing the work, I went back home, it was already quite late. I started to do my research online.

Who is Adolf Moos? This is a totally new name for me. I remembered that I even copied down a wrong spelling name at the first place. I missed one letter "l" in the "Adolf", this mistake gave Karen a lot of trouble when we were searching his name online. "How come there is no match result?" "It seems that he is not a very famous guy..." We joked.

Now, not only I have to know him, but also need to understand his whole theory as well, and create a site to introduce one dimension of his theory-"personal development". It is not easy!

I spent quite a lot time to do research and read articles, tried to figure out what was the Adolf Moos' "three dimensions theory". After that, I started to play around with the buttons to create the site. I found that I was the last one to put materials on the site. I was really glad that I could stay on to finish my part of work.

After the whole process, I started to think:"Why do we always emphasize the importance of the project work?"

In Bransford's book "How People Learn", He divided the Learning Environments into "Learner-Centered","Knowledge-Centered", "Assessment-Centered","Community-Centered" 4 different learning environments. All these learning environments must overlap to constitute an effective learning environment.

In my point of view, the project work is really a very good platform to combine these 4 kinds of learning environments together, and create a meaningful learning experience for the learners.

When the people are doing project work, every one in the group is an independent learner, they discovery and explore the knowledge by their own, from this point of view, the project work creates a "learner-centered" learning environment; and project work is also a knowledge driven programme, since people take initiative to search and get knowledge, and at the end of the project, the knowledge they have got is usually more than their initial expectations, so it creates a "knowledge-centered" learning environment; project work is also a task-driven activity, at the end of the day, the project work will be measured, so it creates a "assessment-centered" learning environment; and the group members work together to get job done, in this group, the members communicate with each other, collaborate, and co-operate, it creates a "community-centered" learning environment.

Through the whole project work process, the students learn the communication skills, the collaboration, knowledge application, and independent learning. Project work prepares our students for their lifelong learning...

This is what I get from the experience of our group work...

What kind of school we want?

We did a case study on Friday. For our group, we talked about "school A".
Is this an effective school?
We tried to use the Moos "three dimensions" (Relationship dimension, Personal Development Dimension, System Maintenance and System Change) to measure this school's environment. The conclusion we got is none of us wanted to send our child to this school.
It is true that it can deliver good academic results, it has good general discipline, the relationship between teachers, staff and management is good, and the leadership of this school is strong...But the school is too focused on the academic part, no CCA takes place, even PE has to make way for academic lessons, the teachers get high work pressure, and the students feel stressful about their study. There is no joy in the learning process. We all believe in the holistic education, we seek the balance between work and life. From this point of view, this school is not a "health" school; we won't send our kids to this school.
As a teacher, definitely I do not want to work in this kind of school.
What kind of school we want?
It seemed that all of my class mates wanted to send their child to School B.
Every one wants their child to be happy and at the same time can get a good academic result.
The school should be created for nurturing the whole child.
It should develop the child morally, intellectually, physically, socially and aesthetically.

My Second Presentation

It comes to my second presentation. It is all because of my group members. I thought that maybe they purposely wanted to give me more chances to try.
We did the case study on Friday. In order to avoid the last part of job "presentation", I rushed to the computer, volunteered to type the main points of the discussion. But our IT expert Karen said her typing would be faster, so I did not secure this job. To tell you the truth, we are really fortunate in having Karen in our group, after a couple of minutes, everything was done. I asked Karen to print one set of hand-out to me. When the copy came out, Pei Tong called my name "Airong..."
"Okay! Okay! Don't need to remind me. I know I will present" I answered.

I started to prepare the presentation. I even brought along the presentation materials for the lunch. I wanted to read the materials during lunch time. Only stopped when I realized this would spoil every one's appetite.

Despite all the preparation I did, the performance of the presentation was still poor. During presentation, I noticed that sharon's facial expression was very serious, this really made me more nervous. I thought maybe she was trying very hard to try to understand what I was saying. "Please, please bear with me 5 more minutes, then this torture will be over!" I said to her in my heart.

During the whole presentation, Dr. Quek smiled and looked at me, her warm smiling gave me a lot of encouragement.

I started to think: "what is the role that teacher should play to create a conducive learning environment?"

As the organizer of the classroom activities, the teacher must be sensitive about the students' needs, and know the characteristic of each student in his/her classroom, and create a sense of safety in each student's heart, support them to open up, speak up and succeed...

Thank you Dr. Quek for giving me this inspiration!

My First Presentation

For me, the oral presentation is always the most difficult part in my learning. Usually, I do not dare to try the presentation. But, in this course, up to now, I have done 2 presentations, I can not believe it! Going back 7 years ago, when I first come to Singapore, I even do not dare to image it!

What makes me daring to try? I think it is all about the Learning Environment...

When I knew we had to present our "wiki", I really felt nervous. I just managed to finish the site creation, but I did not expect we would do presentation on that day.
"Do we need the whole group present?" I asked.
Karen felt my nervousness, and asked: "Are you okay?"
I knew that, if I asked help, surely I could get. But I wanted to share my part of the responsibility. "Yeah, I am okay. I will present."
The presentation was not okay. For my part, it was more like reading out the notes than presenting the finial work. But I noticed that whenever I pronounced a difficult word, Karen sitting in front of me was always giving me a nod as a confirmation. Her nodding accompanied me finished my presentation. My presentation was poor, but I got a lot of encouragements from my course mates. What made me dare to try, because of their friendly, sincere smile.

What shapes a conducive learning environment?

The good relationship, the support which students get from the people around them can help them to overcome the obstacles of themselves and start to open up, speak out, and at the same time, will to try new things...

I Am Sorry, My Friends

For a quite long time I did not update my Blog. This is the first time I write the entry after the "break".
The first thing crossing my mind is I want to say a "Sorry" to my group members.
I did not do a good job for my group in my oral presentation. I really feel bad inside.

Reflection 1

Hi, this is Airong.

For almost 2 days, I have not updated my Blog. Because these days, I am busy doing my research and catching up some readings. Maybe because this is a full day course, so I really feel the intensity of the course. The pace of the course is quite fast. This course introduces me an entire new area. To this area, I know so little. A lot of new things need to learn, a lot of readings need to finish; all of these takes time. It seems that I do not have enough time to finish all. Learning is really a process. I said to myself, I would do my best to catch up with others. And after this course, I still can read the related books by my own, and digest the knowledge I learnt from this course, more importantly, I will apply what I learnt from this course into my subject teaching, and practice it daily. I will try my best to create a positive learning environment for my students. I just do my best to learn as much as I can... With this kind of thought, I felt a little bit better...

Based on the task of our group, I did some research online, and read some articles. I am jotting down some of my thoughts which based on what I read online as a reflection.

Reflection 1:

Learning environments research has roots in the study of psychological aspects of social environments and has become an established and internationally recognized field of educational research over the last 30 years. Learning environments research offers investigators insight into what goes on in school and university educational settings beyond the notation of student achievement. The learning environment has a strong influence on student outcomes and plays an important role in improving the effectiveness of learning from the level of the institution to the level of the individual classroom.

Classroom climate plays a major role in shaping the quality of school life and learning.

As teachers, we play a major role in creating a positive learning climate.

In order to create a positive learning environment, firstly, we have to understand what affects the learning environment.

Classroom climate and culture both are shaped by the school’s surrounding and embedded political, social, cultural, and economic contexts (e.g. home, neighbourhood, city, country).

Key concepts related to understanding classroom climate include:
Social system organization
Social attitude
Staff and student morale
Power, control, guidance, support, and evaluation structures
Curricular and instructional practices
Communicated expectations
Efficacy
Accountability demands
Cohesion
Competition
The “fit” between key learner and classroom variables
System maintenance, growth, and change
Orderliness
Safety
Rudolf Moos(1979) groups such concepts into three dimensions for classifying human environments and has used them to develop measures of school and classroom climate.

Moos' three dimension are:
Relationship-the nature and intensity of personal relationships within the environment; the extent to which people are involved in the environment and support and help each other.
Personal development- basic directions along which personal growth and self-enhancement tend to occur.
System maintenance and change-the extent to which the environment is orderly, clear in expectations, maintains control, and is responsive to change.
The concept of classroom climate implies the intent to establish and maintain a positive context that facilitates classroom learning. But in practice, classroom climates range from hostile to welcoming and supportive and can fluctuate daily and over the school year. Moos measured classroom environment in terms of the shared perceptions of those in the classroom. Prevailing approaches to measuring classroom climate use teacher and student perceptions, external observer's ratings and systematic coding; and naturalistic inquiry, ethnography, case study, and interpretative assessment techniques.

I am so sleepy, I will continue to write tomorrow...

zzzzzzz.....

Learning Is Fun

Hi, Airong is here!

I think I am crazy about the Blog these days. Since we have to create our own Blog, I have to learn. I browse other people's Blogs, see what they write and how they design their Blogs. I spent quite a lot time to go through all the functions Blog can give us, and tried most of the functions. It really takes time, but I have to say, it is fun. And at the same time, I learned a lot during the process. I would like to thank Dr. Quek to give us this opportunity to try some new things. Learning new things always makes me excited. Learning is fun and learning keeps me alive!

Do you know what I did just now? I even created a special personal Blog for my family. I want them to know what is going on in my life, I want them to know my feelings, I want to share my thoughts with them , I want... a lot of things... I want them to be in my life! I am so far away from them, thanks the technology, making it possible to bring them into my life again...

My Very First Entry

Hi, it is me! Airong. I swear this is my real name!

I will start blogging from today...

I did browse other person's blog before, when I was bored. But I have never thought that one day I have to write my own blog myself. I am not interested in writing blog. The reason is very simple: I have no time. I have too many things to do in the real world; I have really no intention to create an identity in a virtual world. Moreover, I do not trust the virtual world at all.

When I filled up my profile just now, I found that some people had the same like with me. My favorite song is “Stand By Me”. I like this song not only about liking its tone, it is all about the story related to this song, and about the people, the feeling; it is a long story... Maybe one day, I will write about it, when I am ready...

I found that there are 199 people out there like the same song “Stand By Me”. I am just very curious to want to know that what kind of people they are. They are very diverse in terms of gender, nationality and age. The funny thing is some people are already more than 1000 years old, they are older than tortoises ! ? There are 8 people have the same age. Guess? “252 years old”! I think that the number “252” must be a very lucky number...

Anyway, I will never do this! No matter in the real world or even in the virtual world, I will never lie!!! I am just sick of lying...

My rule is always to tell the truth! Maybe something you are not very comfortable to tell, then, keep it to yourself, no one force you to open up. But when you do tell people, please tell the truth! Even in a virtual world...

I say to myself, I will tell the truth always.... No matter what...