Wednesday, March 23, 2005
The First Observation
i never tot i'd be very nervous when the day finally arrived. i've always been the kind who would usually not feel the heat of the moment until the very last minute. so i was initially quite confident that my first observation would be fine.
thing began to turn a bit messy starting wif my lesson plan. my weakness was that i always assume that these express students would be able to catch up with the lesson easily, but i misjudged them coz they are in the last express class. i planned for a lot of stuffs within the given 2 periods. i wanted to go through their homeworks they did yesterday. then i intended to do revision on the first 2 parts of Coordinate Geometry that i've been covering for the past 2 days. then i would teach the new topic on "Gradient of a Straight Line", which actually consists of about 3 parts. finally i would want the students to attempt some questions from the textbook, hand it up to me n end the lesson by summarising the whole thing.
HOW WRONG I WAS! firstly, the professor mentioned to me that my lesson plan seemed to have a lot of things... i took that as a hint for me to "cut down" on the content, without compromising the essence of the lesson. so before the class began, i mentioned to my professor that i would not go through yesterday's homework as planned, but to push it to the end of the class if time would permit. i got a nod of approval.
i suddenly felt very nervous as i was about to start my class. i just informed the class that a professor from NIE was there to observe our class. i dunno wat went in their minds... as long as they didnt "sabo" me, that'll be fine! ;) after the customary introduction, i got very nervous. i started to fumble wif my whiteboard and OHP markers. so i started reciting the necessary and appropriate "doas" and carried on wif the lesson. Alhamdulillah, it eventually turned out very well. i managed to get the attention of the class by making them fill in the blanks in the worksheet given to them. it had better be, after i've spent such a long time and effort setting it up! i got to go around the class and help the weak students when i gave them the classwork. i also managed to stop the distractions that went around the class as i was teaching. it was irritating to see papers being passed around in class, for watever reasons i didnt want to know, dat made students laugh around while they were supposed to do seatwork! overall, i think i've done ok..
so here came the evaluation by the professor. as usual, i expected to see some Cs in the report. we are graded by A, B, C or F. therefore, it would be quite safe to at least get a C grade for any of the 6 items being observed. Alhamdulillah, i got most Bs, 2 B- and an A for the 6 items. the A grade, i think, is quite standard for all trainees, as it was meant for grading our professional attitude and appearance in class while we teach. my professor mentioned that it was fine for me just to teach 1 out of the 3 things i wanted to do, because of the time constraint, and for that matter, i was successful in meeting the objectives of the lesson. he also explained to me why i had B- grades for 2 of them, and suggested ways to improve them. he also gave tips on things that he observed but not mentioned in the official grading form.
phew, Alhamdulillah, 1 down. 1 more observation to go. may dat last one turn out well again, insyaAllah. ;)
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