Put thinking into actions

On the 4th of March, my group consisting of Haneitha, Lee Min and I were to do a team teaching on thinking skills in our tutorial. Being the first group to present always equals to anxiety, uncertainties and nervousness. It was a forty minute lesson and our target students were Form 4 students of average proficiency in English.

Briefly, below is the flow of the lesson:

1)Shows students pictures of different facial expressions, and asks them which depicts their mood the best and why. (compare and contrast)
2)Shows 2 pictures (sad and happy situation) along with background music and asks them what moods/events that lead to these situations. (making inferences)

3)Students transfer the main ideas of the poem (There’s Been a Death in the Opposite House) into mindmaps, the later present it in a role-play form. (identifying main ideas/ transferring information)

4) Students summarize the lesson by reflecting on what they have learnt.

When I was conducting the lesson, I could see that the students were really engaged in the thinking process. For instance, they utilized the skill of mindmapping along with the critical thinking skill (identifying ideas) in order to present the gist of the poem in the simplest yet most precise way. Then, before they performed the role-play, there were a lot of questions being posed to my colleagues and I. They asked questions such as “Is there any tools provided?” and ” How long should the role-play be?”. From these questions, I could detect the thinking processes that were taking place in their minds. In fact, they used the tool Consider All Factors (CAF) in order to make a conscious decision on how the role-play should be. (perhaps, without them realizing it!). Other than that, the sense of creativity in these students was really impressing! They were able to present themselves as a creative person by portraying traits such as humour, playfulness, willingness to try and openness.

Generally, i think both sides (the teachers and the students) enjoyed the lesson, gained some new experience and input. Nonetheless, there were some flaws in during this team teaching. The most obvious flaw, according to my tutor, the thinking skills that we were trying to highlight were not explicit enough. The approach that we used was more towards the “micro teaching” rather than focusing on the thinking skills. This aspect needed extra attention and I agreed with her very much.

Looking back at this team teaching, i think i have learnt a lot, formally or informally. In the coming blog, i will share my experiences of looking at my colleagues’ teaching from my perspective- to elevate or to denigrate?? Will be revealed soon…

“– When everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks–Bill Walton