Professional Development Lesson 2

Apparently I was on Medical Leave on 23rd Nov. Feeling weak but apparently was more concerned about missing out on valuable info during this very last meet-up class session with my wonderful fellow coursemates...not forgetting Dr Yeap of course!

Fortunately, great friends of mine took down some notes and was able to read up on Lesson Study and its characteristics. Quite a bit of reading and digesting required. Well..nothing beats being there in the class myself!:)

On reflection, I feel that the trip down to NTU has been well worth it...and there will be many, many, many more of that trip...hehehe! Feel energized and recharged!( Mentally..)

Many thanks to Dr Yeap for the invaluable lessons and the time you spent in preparing and designing all the interesting and fun activities for us! Learnt a lot I do hope to try them out in my classes in 2011! Look forward to attending your classes in the near future!

Professional Development Lesson 1

v    Professional Learning Community

PLC…the IN-thing… interesting! Having read the article on PLC, I found it to be familiar in a couple of  ways, to stuffs that many of us  have been practicing. In the name of sharing and learning, we call it. The culture of collaboration has long been practiced by many, though they are others who would prefer to remain quiet in terms of ‘sharing’. The fact that one of the features is to ‘make public’ what used to traditionally private, is a welcoming and refreshing element of PLC. It captures the real essence of sharing since everyone in the team “has access to the ideas, materials, strategies and even talents of the entire team.”  Everyone will benefit , teachers and pupils. It’s a win-win situation! :)

3 essential take-aways…

1) Focuses on learning

2) Instills culture of collaboration

3) Accountability for results

Initiatives in Assessment 2

Marching out of our classroom…to measure the height of a pillar!!! Dr Yeap gave a simple instruction – measure the height of the pillar using whatever way  we can. We brainstormed amongst ourselves…little laughter was heard once in a while…probably laughing at our unorthodox ideas of trying to find the height of the pillar! Very interesting and entertaining indeed…

Eventually back in the classroom, we shared our different approaches and Dr Yeap put in down on the whiteboard for discussion and sharing. From the direct measurement method to those that are beyond direct measurement. Some methods were rather sophisticated and enlightening to know that they are workable. Great work guys..really learnt a lot that night!

Dr Yeap reiterated that assessment is tool that must be emplaced – whether is a formal, informal, formative or summative- assessment is a must! Assessment is useful to help a child develop further. The challenge for us teachers, is to identify the most important things which we want to assess, prioritize them and craft an activity or the traditional pen-paper test to measure what we intended to measure.