Dear 2E1,
Welcome to my blog..
I am really looking forward to using this page for our lesson discussions and reflections. Please feel free to view my posts and comment if necessary. Once I have added all 41 of you, we will try a test lesson in the comp lab so that everyone will be able to navigate around this blog. Who knows in future you might be interested in creating your blog page and when you do that remember to add me. Have fun learning science with me....
Love
Mrs Jarina
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Bits from the senior teacher (ST) accreditation form
Focus on the teachers, Students will succeed
Competent teachers form the foundation of schools, and improving teachers’ skills and knowledge is one of the most important investments of time in education. In the earlier years, the education system focused primarily on “generic” teaching skills, such as allocating class time, providing clear classroom demonstrations, assessing student comprehension, maintaining attention, and grouping students. Studies showed small to moderate positive effects on students’ basic skills, such as arithmetic operations; in a few cases, reasoning skills were also improved.
In the later years, a second wave of research developed deeper into student learning, focusing on students’ reasoning and problem solving rather than only on basic skills. It suggested that professional development can influence teachers’ classroom practices significantly and lead to improved student achievement when it focuses on (1) how students learn particular subject matter (2) instructional practices that are specifically related to the subject matter and how students understand it and (3) strengthening teachers’ knowledge of specific subject-matter content. Close alignment of professional development with actual classroom conditions is the key.
To be effective, professional development must provide teachers with a way to directly apply what they learn to their teaching. Research shows that professional development leads to better instruction and improved student learning when it connects to the curriculum materials that teachers’ use and the assessment and accountability measures that evaluate their success.
Our changing goals for learning, coupled with shifts in curriculum emphasis (like now thru emphasis to values driven education) and a deeper understanding of teacher learning and student thinking, have led to new findings about the impact of teacher professional development and how best to sharpen teachers’ skills and knowledge. What matters most is what teachers learn and it would enhance their understanding of students thinking in that subject matter. By building and enhancing the capacity of the teachers, we can then impact a wider population of students rather than those I interact with. Ultimately, the most important outcome any school is looking out for is that students find their school experience meaningful and beneficial and they have grown and developed to be confident adults, critical thinkers which will put them in a better stead in life.
Competent teachers form the foundation of schools, and improving teachers’ skills and knowledge is one of the most important investments of time in education. In the earlier years, the education system focused primarily on “generic” teaching skills, such as allocating class time, providing clear classroom demonstrations, assessing student comprehension, maintaining attention, and grouping students. Studies showed small to moderate positive effects on students’ basic skills, such as arithmetic operations; in a few cases, reasoning skills were also improved.
In the later years, a second wave of research developed deeper into student learning, focusing on students’ reasoning and problem solving rather than only on basic skills. It suggested that professional development can influence teachers’ classroom practices significantly and lead to improved student achievement when it focuses on (1) how students learn particular subject matter (2) instructional practices that are specifically related to the subject matter and how students understand it and (3) strengthening teachers’ knowledge of specific subject-matter content. Close alignment of professional development with actual classroom conditions is the key.
To be effective, professional development must provide teachers with a way to directly apply what they learn to their teaching. Research shows that professional development leads to better instruction and improved student learning when it connects to the curriculum materials that teachers’ use and the assessment and accountability measures that evaluate their success.
Our changing goals for learning, coupled with shifts in curriculum emphasis (like now thru emphasis to values driven education) and a deeper understanding of teacher learning and student thinking, have led to new findings about the impact of teacher professional development and how best to sharpen teachers’ skills and knowledge. What matters most is what teachers learn and it would enhance their understanding of students thinking in that subject matter. By building and enhancing the capacity of the teachers, we can then impact a wider population of students rather than those I interact with. Ultimately, the most important outcome any school is looking out for is that students find their school experience meaningful and beneficial and they have grown and developed to be confident adults, critical thinkers which will put them in a better stead in life.
At last found my blog
Wow it has been ages since i visited my blog. I thought i have lost my gmail account userid and password. I am in the midst of preparing myself for the senior teacher interview. I have to gather information for my portfolio from the years 2009-2012 and while doing that, stumbled upon my userid and password in one of the folders. Thank god... Now I dun have to create a new blog from the start.
Friday, December 5, 2008
A brand new ending indeed!!!!!
WOW! We have come to the end of our module. Even though I am happy that I can enjoy my holidays from now on, I felt a sense of missing. These two weeks would be a very short time but I feel I have learnt the most and became much closer with my fellow coursemates.Firstly I would like to thank Dr Quek for being such an awesome instructor. Kids would have loved you in school I guess. I loved your personality and warmth in dealing with us teachers. Even though we were very concerned about our assignments, assessements and report writing you would always tell us not to worry and not to be stressed. SOOOOOOOOO CHOOOOOOWEEEEEEEEET. Thank you so so much from my bottom of my heart for all those treats and making sure we all well fed before giving us more work to do. (Just Joking)
Secondly, would like to thank and applause my group members Brian and Queenie. Brian is such a funny guy and he always reminds me of Elvis. His sense of humor always liven our group work. And Queenie what can I say. You remind me of the sea, calm and serene. I would love to work on future group works with you guys. All the best and maybe we could embark on a research and our Dr Quek could be our supervisor. HAHA!
Yuen Han our monitoress. Think I should appoint your monitoress for the rest of the modules also. You were such a beloved and never failed to to render help when needed. Apointed Monitoress for PDCM (Sec Y08).
Suhaimi is a darl. We are in the same area for NPCC but didnt talk much till we started our masters. All the best aka datang OC unit.
Karen the beau. Always sweet in her dealings but dun make her mad pls and all the others, Sakun, Thiilagah, Kelvin, the 2 Chongs, Airong, Sharon, Peitong (have I missed anyone out) thank you for being such a wonderful bunch. All the best and freak ooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttttt.
See YYYYYYYYYYaaaaaaaaaaaa
Session 6: Coming back to Lewins field theory
Todays session starting off with the investigative project where we had to sit in groups to complete our report on the data we collected using the SPSS from the previous session. Dr Quek went thru all the elements neccesary to complete a proper report. The report should include the abstract, introduction, the research questions, literature reviews, methodology, procedure, results, limitations, discussions and conclusions. While doing the writeup as a group, the problem my group faced is in the part of the literature review. We had to decide what we want to put in the part on the literature review. And after a bit of contemplation we decided to go back to Lewin and Murray's Needs press model the big picture.
My Reflections
While doing the writeup as a group, I realised the important of literature reviews. We have to comstantly read journal and conference papers to increase our knowledge on what has been done so far and what can be done further in any kind of research. I also realised the importance of lewin's field theory that states that Human behaviour is a function of personal characteristics and environment (See the cropped version of the Needs Press model). From this basic theory alot of other theories were developed that supported Lewin's field theory.
I also feel that there are merits in combining qualitative and quantitative research methods in a research to maximise the potential of a research.
Thank you
My Reflections
While doing the writeup as a group, I realised the important of literature reviews. We have to comstantly read journal and conference papers to increase our knowledge on what has been done so far and what can be done further in any kind of research. I also realised the importance of lewin's field theory that states that Human behaviour is a function of personal characteristics and environment (See the cropped version of the Needs Press model). From this basic theory alot of other theories were developed that supported Lewin's field theory.
I also feel that there are merits in combining qualitative and quantitative research methods in a research to maximise the potential of a research.
Thank you
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Reflections on session 5
Oh my what a stressful session it was. The only time I got to breathe was during the lunch break. And yes we shared a bit of laughter when we got into groups to work on the SPSS software !
a) Web 2.0 environment framework
Dr Quek took us for a ride with the web 2.0 environment framework and I was pretty overwhelmed with the number of softwares available for content sharing and social networking. Commonly used ones are the Blogspot, Ning, Myspace, Flickr, YouTube, Wetpaint, Zoho and Goowy.
My Reflection
Dr Quek said something that really triggered my brain cells that is as practitioners we should always think of better ways to improve our teaching and engage students interest with such learning environments. Being able to use the Blogspot and Wiki comfortably after these sessions, i would introduce these learning environments to my students or maybe embark on an action research with my department.
b) Case study on the use of the CPS and improving learning environment
We also looked at a beginning researcher who used the CPS in his classroom and used a modified version of the WIHIC to assess his student's learning. He only used 4 scales in the WIHIC. They were the Teacher Support, Involvement, Student Cohesiveness and Equity. One additional scale the material support which is not a scale found in the WIHIC was used in the modified version of his instrument. Modified instruments scales can come from different instruments and after assessments done and results obtained as researchers we have to work on the followup actions. We can conduct interviews or focus group discussions with our students to get feedback on the learning environement with problems and design interventions and improve.
My Reflection
a) Web 2.0 environment framework
Dr Quek took us for a ride with the web 2.0 environment framework and I was pretty overwhelmed with the number of softwares available for content sharing and social networking. Commonly used ones are the Blogspot, Ning, Myspace, Flickr, YouTube, Wetpaint, Zoho and Goowy.
My Reflection
Dr Quek said something that really triggered my brain cells that is as practitioners we should always think of better ways to improve our teaching and engage students interest with such learning environments. Being able to use the Blogspot and Wiki comfortably after these sessions, i would introduce these learning environments to my students or maybe embark on an action research with my department.
b) Case study on the use of the CPS and improving learning environment
We also looked at a beginning researcher who used the CPS in his classroom and used a modified version of the WIHIC to assess his student's learning. He only used 4 scales in the WIHIC. They were the Teacher Support, Involvement, Student Cohesiveness and Equity. One additional scale the material support which is not a scale found in the WIHIC was used in the modified version of his instrument. Modified instruments scales can come from different instruments and after assessments done and results obtained as researchers we have to work on the followup actions. We can conduct interviews or focus group discussions with our students to get feedback on the learning environement with problems and design interventions and improve.
My Reflection
I have used the CPS in my school during a staff contact time to get intsantaneous feedback for survey questions. But personally have not tried it in my classes. CPS can be another means of getting the assessment done immediately than putting the instruments like the WIHIC online or administering the instrument before and after certain types of learning environment. Modifying the instruments to suit the needs of the research question is crucial and items do not have to neccessarily come from one particular instrument but from other validated instruments. After the assessment is done what is the next step? Are there gonna be any follow up actions or interventions? In the improvement process, after the problems in the learning environment is identified, intervention is neccessary. Planning and tracking of the intervention would take 1 to 2 months and the instrument have to to administered again to see if the problem had be solved.
c) Use of the SPSS software
We had the oppportunity to use the preferred and actual forms of the WIHIC and then keyed in the results into an excel sheet, transferred them to the SPSS and data tabulated. We obtained the item, scale means, standard deviation and the reliability coefficient calculated. We also compared the means using the paired sample T test. Using all these data, we can find out which items are significant and had to be intervined and improved.
My Reflection
SPSS is an wonderful creation to obtain all the relevent data needed for analysis. Its gives us the ease of calculating the means, standard deviation and cronbach's alpha then manually using formulae to calculate these values which would take ages for a very large sample.
Thank you
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Japan's Mount Aso
My darling and me!