Days 2 was spent observing and reflecting with our CT, Jamie. For Day 2, I shadowed her for her lecture and got my first chance to see the JC 2 students. The topic covered during her lecture was the Global Economy.
Jamie comes across as a very firm task-master. She is very firm with the students but she also knows how to balance between being firm and going easy on them. The lecture went through without much hiccups except a couple of students coming in late, forcing Jamie to ensure that they knew their basic manners such as apologizing for being late or interruptive.
Lesson Plan/ Strategies/ Pedagogies
On the whole, Jamie often filled her lecture with probing questions, asking several students to answer them. This provided the impetus for a more interactive lecture rather than a fully teacher-centric lecture. However, the lecture group was still rather passive and sometimes, none wanted to answer.
I was wondering what the reason could be but also deciphered that this might have been because the students were not entirely familiar with Jamie yet, seeing how it is only February. I also feel that these students also lack the self-confidence in answering to a big audience and the confidence to argue for their own answers.
Summary
More reflections were done at the end of the day, together with Jasper and Jamie. We sat down in her office and talked things through. We were concerned about the level of understanding and the amount of scaffolding we would need to provide for the students. We were told to lower expectations, in view of the fact that we ourselves came from top schools. Lowering expectations were never a problem. The issue that I was more concerned with was how to scaffold these students and how much to scaffold them so that I do not transgress into the area of spoon-feeding them as well. I gathered as much that this would have to be discovered through experiential learning when I get to teach next week.
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