Panelist on Radio

I was on air on 9 March 2007.

Here is some deatils:

Dear Panel Members,

I hope this email finds you well.

Please find attached, the link to the Podcast of the programme on environmentalism that we did on 938LIVE last Friday. It is a rather sizeable file (33Mb) that exceeded the email server’s bandwidth. I apologize for any inconvenience in having to download it yourselves. (Please let me know if you encounter any problems with this.) I hope you find it a useful resource for future reference.

The Podcast can be accessed here: http://www.podcast.sg/rsi_english/9Mar_Opinion.mp3

Again, it was a pleasure to have your participation on the programme. Thank you all very much!

Sincerely,

Joel Chua
Producer-Presenter
Radio Singapore International

Last Day @ ZHSS

Mrs Wong Check Siew & I

Mr. Keith Wong & I

It is conincidence that ZHSS is having its prize giving ceremony today. I stayed till around 5 pm before leaving and it was the first time the staff room was empty when I left - all of them were in the hall.

The final session of the field inquriy on finding the coolest spot in ZHSS was held today. A big boo-boo happened in that the G-portal applet took forever to load. Eventually we only had 4 terminals workind and I had to resort to a "change of plans". Instead of getting all the students to investigate using the Gportal. I had to split the 8 groups into 4 expert groups with access to Gportal and 4 expert groups with access to the internet. This allows them to investigate using different tools. The first part of the session was spent on generating relevant and specific questsions to ask when researching and the second part was to answer those questions in an attempt to solove the task given in the first place. Although the session proved a little more messy than ideal, I was satisfied that most of them walked away with some understanding of the local factors affecting temperature.



I also made use of the opportunity to get 2N1 to give me some feedback of my teaching so far. I will post them in due course.








3E2 had their class test today and I forced them to take a farewell photograph with me. Here are the shots (see below).







In a few days when I settle back at my own office, I will write an extended reflection of these past 10 weeks at ZHSS. Do stay tuned.



And oh yes, one improvement to this blog is a simple tag board - upon strong recommendation from Gavin Lee who co-teaches 3E2 with me. Thanks Gavin.

Fieldwork with PDAs

Yesterday was really hectic day. At 0840, Rina and Yuan Yuan arrived with the PDAs, followed by Phay Fun who was videographer for the day.

3E4 arrived a little late and I spent about 20 minutes giving insturctions about what to do. I made the mistake of not reminding to take photographs of their site. In the end I had to run around all the stations to remind the groups individually.

The second run with 3E5/6 was not so bad. The procedure was smoother than the 3E4 run. It ended rather uneventufully but Rina dn Yuan Yuan will have to clean up the data for the students' use on Thursday.

For 3E2, Gavin had to take over since I was needed to run the 3E5/6 field data collection.

In 2N1, Robert Tan developed a high fever towards the end of the session, so I had to send him to the sick bay - first instance in the 10 weeks with ZHSS. Interesting procedure and a rather spartan sick bay to go with.

There is little to reflect about except that Ee Moi told me that Matthew (her son in 3E5) has intelligence that the students in my class like me..... I responded to Ee Moi that that is the least that I should achieve, and rightly so. But being the nice lady that Ee Moi is, she says she couldn't ask for more. Thanks for the assuring pat Ee Moi.

More this thursday as it will be my last day..... I'm sure I will have mega long reflections.

Two weeks lapse

It has been two weeks since I last blogged about my school attachement. Well, here is probably the last but one installment as the attachement ends next week.

Over the last two weeks, little has happened. The chinese new year break robbed the students of one full Monday of lessons. After the CNY break, 3E5&6 continued with their presentation but I heard some problem from Check Siew with them. It appears that a few groups were presented highly irrelevant stuff on their PPT. CS and I concluded that while the strategy worked very well with 3E4, the 3E5&6 group needed more scaffolding that what was given. This is a good learning point on differentiated instruction.

For 3E2, I tried something interested, I showed them a video on coniferous forests and then asked the class to list down some characteristics and adaptations of the trees in a TCF. I then asked them to create a piece of artisitc work based on what they have seen and listed and to present them yesterday (1 March) to the class. Here are some nice pieces of poetry they have written and some very nice cartoons.

As for 2N1, I finished off the topic on agriculture with a short passage about an Indain lady worker on a rubber plantation. The passage was an excerpt of an interview. I was naughty enough to assume a south indian accent when reading the passage and the class was just a little more lively then I had expected. This was good.

Yesterday, we also started another field based project on using PDA and the G-portal. The investigation is called: Finding a cool spot in ZHSS. Let's see how it works out next Monday.

http://www.chewhung.co.nr/podcast/coolspot.pdf