4th Lesson - Little Wings

Not much time to do the reflection, i'll make it quick for real.

I think we did reasonably well today. But I doubt, with varied goals in mind for the future (for our project), reasonably well can't quite cut it.

I think we need to polish some areas in our lessons, because we usually don't foresee these problems until they actually happen. Like today, when some students finished faster than others, and didn't have anything to do while waiting for the people who were not done yet. The only way we could entertain them was to tell them to do another collage.

The plus point of today was that (even though it took a while), the kids understood the concept of a collage in the end and everyone was able to complete a collage... even me and brent.

Last lesson of the term... Next lesson we have ALOT of time to prepare for so hope we make the best of the time.


"www.shapecollage.com"

Reflection for vase-making

Finally found the password which hoel still has not changed after searching through like 5 chat logs.

I felt that today’s lesson went quite well, as the lesson was conducted smoothly with no major hiccups and the children all seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly. The children were enthusiastic about making their vases, and seemed to like the flowers that we gave them very much. During the story-telling, we received a very positive response from the children and they actively participated in reading the story and answering our questions. We also managed to take some photos to document our experience in the classroom.

However, I feel that we should prepare more for our lessons next time, as today I spent quite a lot of time during the lesson taping the flowers to the stalks, and cutting the bottles up, which we managed to complete on time because we arrived early. Next time, we should prepare all our materials earlier, and perhaps ask the children to bring their materials 1 week early so we can bring them home and make the necessary preparations.

-Benjamin

Reflection on Lesson 4 - Timothy

Today's lesson was reasonably successful. The children managed to grasp the meaning and essence of Mother's Day/filial piety and recycling. The children also enjoyed the story even though we should use a larger book the next time we attempt using storybooks as the ones at the back are unable to see the book's contents. They enjoyed the process of making the vase and liked receiving the paper flowers as gifts.

On the other hand, we should reflect our approach towards this project. We have to be more prepared beforehand and not conduct the lesson without any/little planning. Moreover, if we know that anyone of us are unable to do what is assigned to him by the deadline, he must have the responsibility to inform the others beforehand and not a couple of hours before the day itself, setting everyone else back and causing a lot of inconveniences. Besides, the rest of us should be more active and be ready to help each other when they are unable to accomplish the tasks assigned by themselves.

Reflection on Lesson 3 - Timothy

This Tuesday's lesson has been quite an interesting experience. Before this lesson, we only needed to conduct some icebreakers and get to know each other. This lesson was slightly different as we were required to teach them how to do art and conduct the actual hands-on activities. Firstly,it was comforting to find that the children finally got our names right and even recognised us. All we need to do now is to attach the names to their faces instead of simply having a name list.

There was some slight misunderstanding in the lesson. The teacher did not know that we would be conducting the lesson that early and threw some of the tissue boxes away. Fortunately, there were enough boxes for the children. To prevent such incidents from reoccurring,we got the teacher's phone number so we can contact her directly. Furthermore, we can also share our lesson ideas with her as she is experienced and likes to help us with our lessons.

During the hands-on itself, we should have no problem managing the children. However, in case there is a problem, the teacher is always there to help us resolve it. When we conduct hands-on activities, it is important to have everybody engaged. Some of the children were bored waiting for their turn to draw and decorate the boxes. We must also be aware of them and understand that they can be sensitive or shy or emotional and we should learn how to approach them.

Hello

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

K i have very little time to do a post, so i'll make it short.
Today we had our third lesson with Little Wings for our RESL project. As usual, there are pros and cons to everything, and this lesson was no exception.

Before that...
I made some kewl observations about our class. (This regards Brent's and my class only) I think the drama that my class provides is more that what mediacorp has tried to churn out for many years. Today we witnessed a !@*!@)(!*@#load of drama that did defer us from our task. I'll save the small talk and not list out the many hilarious things that they did. But then again I myself was once a young kid, I'm very sure that I had done more foolish stuff when I was a kid... Like eating the hairs from a paintbrush lolol

So anyway what went well today was that we managed to remember all their names today, despite the fact that week in week out there are random absentees in the class... like syafiq for example, the cheeky kid from our class. This is attributed by the photos we took of them, that helped us remember their names with ease. Truthfully, Brent did a better job of it than me.
Next, we managed to establish a program for future lessons, but I am quite doubtful if it will work. We split the class into groups of two and let them do group work....

NOT




Of course it wouldn't work. Group work generated like 95% of the drama today. What we needed to do was to ensure that there are 15 items of each required item for each lesson (which I failed to do). If i learnt one thing today, it was that we shouldn't assume that Little Wings would 100% prepare what we requested. From the next lesson plan on, we need to bring 'emergency materials', which would surely be used. (technically I was assigned this job but I forgot but HEY everyone makes mistakes (clefable hurhurhur inside joke) forgive me plox)
We didn't lack preparation, we just wrongly assumed that Little Wings would have gotten everything ready for us. In order to avoid group work and allow every kid to create a wonderful art piece of their own and less importantly, have more stuff to show case during the art exhibition. (ew i just realised little wings is PAP endorsed... that means if we have art exhibition we will have white guys there? weird shit)


What went bad today, was our helplessness to react to the drama. When a kid goes into dao mode and ignores everything anyone says, WTPONG DO YOU DO

ahha, I don't know.


Bottom line: Learn how to deal with pesky arrogant kids, and learn how to appeal to kids who are more reserved, and also bring emergency materials and even bring video cameras to record the drama. Lol jk




I LIED ABOUT A SHORT POST! NOOOOOOOOOOOO


Yishu

Edison Reflection on Lesson 1

The lesson did not begin very well, as we were not used to dealing with kids of such a young age and hence we could not reach out to them. Most of them were afraid of responding verbally except two or three students. We also tried to tell them our names but as our names all contained three syllables, they were unable to remember and pronounce our names. However, after I managed to stress Benjamin's name, they could remember it well. I then tried the same on me and Timothy. However, when we played the icebreaker, the only name they knew was Benjamin and hence the game was not really a success.

Another problem was that we did not know their names and this greatly weakened our ability to reach out to them and get them to respond. Furthermore, we were unsure of the characteristics of each child. This was very evident when Timothy attempted to ask one of the girls a question and she simply stared at him, and the teacher at the side mentioned that she would cry if we had insisted.

The story was going quite smoothly as I started, with Timothy drawing out the images on the whiteboard provided. I believe this part did not go too badly as although I was not able to get most of them to respond verbally, they did respond with a raise of hands when I tried to interact by asking simple questions. However, it did not go very well as Benjamin overly quickly transitioned into the ending, making the children confused.

Also, when we attempted to explain what was recycling, we did not succeed as we were unable to simplifiy our language enough for them to understand. Afterwards, the teacher attempted to help us and kind of succeeded, but I believe it did not really leave an impression on them as we had to repeat several times previously before they could undestand.

Overall, I believe that this lesson was not very successful. Thinking about what we could have done better, maybe we should have also re-translated the story into a simpler form so that we did not have to do on-the-spot translation which was a little tough. We should also have attempted to learn their names before hand as this would enable us to reach out to them more.

Reflection on Vase-Making meeting (Timothy)

Regarding Tuesday's meeting, I am feeling fairly disappointed. We were not prepared for anything during the meeting itself. We did not prepare the necessary materials for making the vase and had to have the materials given to us on the spot. We should reflect upon this and improve upon our approach towards this RE-SL project. We need to consider all possible situations and be readily prepared for them so as not to waste everyone's time. In addition, we also have to manage our project properly and plan ahead so that we have to time to face possible problems we might face. Research is also required to understand what is needed for the lessons to run smoothly.

Timothy Reflection on Lesson 2

Even though we had decided to conduct the actual lesson on Lesson 2, the lesson had to be delayed to the next lesson due to the lack of communication. While we informed the principal of the date of our lesson, the teachers of the K1 class did not know we would be going over that day. We were then unable to teach the children as they did not bring any of the materials needed. This has caused a setback to our actual plans and we need to change our lesson plans to fit in this lesson. From this incident, we can understand the importance of communication and that we need to be clearer in articulating our thoughts. We should learn from this and make sure that this never happens again.

On the bright side, we had an hour to bridge the gap between the children and us and let them familiarize themselves with us. We finally obtained a response through the games that we played during that one hour. We even managed to learn their names so that we can reach to them more easily in the next lessons.

We can say that this lesson was successful to some extent even though the mistakes made has lead to a lot of problems for the next few lessons.

Yishu - Reflection for Lesson 1 and Lesson 2

Lol i postponed my reflections mainly because i completely forgot to do it... but since it's too late to turn back time I might as well use that as an advantage to do my reflections.

Today concluded Lesson 2 of our RESL project to educate a group of kindergarteners from Little Wings about the beauty of art. We made significant progress from Lesson 1, in the way that we were able to control the children better. From Lesson 1, I personally felt that the children were not under our control at all during the lesson. It felt as if the class were divided into several groups, each of them in their own world. There was a small minority who were super super shy, and would not utter a word if not prompted. There were the rowdy children who were fighting, running around, whatnot. It was quite a mess. Only when our teacher-mentor came in and talked to them with diction did we realise what we were doing wrong.

From the second lesson, we decided to appeal to the natural instincts of the children, and to enforce way more discipline with the children. As our teacher mentor was not here today, we were up against a formidable challenge to engage the children with our 75 minute lesson plan... We got mixed results. First, we had an improvement in controlling the kids. Letting them know who's the one in charge by speaking with force and diction enabled us to command the children's attention and elicit certain responses from them. The Sing-a-long session was quite successful, as the perpetually-linked peer pressure spread like bonfire within the class; as a few people sang along with us, everyone began to sing along and it was our first taste of success with interacting with the kids.

Another plus point was that the kids were interested in dealing with art. They were enthusiastic and responded with positive decorum.

HOWEVER. BIG HOWEVER.

Due to lack of spick-and-span preparation, we did not anticipate certain events. Firstly, was the making of the tissue box guitar itself. We did not expect the hassle in wrapping the tissue boxes, and had to settle with 7 tissue boxes, with just 1 box to be shared among 2 people. It was the best way to deal with our situation as we dismissed the idea of helping them to wrap the boxes as we thought that we would teach them to be independent. However, time constraints forced us to do otherwise.

Other than that, we managed to convey our overall message to the kids, that art can be found easily, only if you look hard enough. A huge improvement from lesson 1, as we managed to finish all 7 guitars.



Now looking forward to lesson 3, which we hope will be a step higher than lesson 2.