Practicum went up a gear today as I received my teaching time table for the next 9 weeks. It has become more exciting as the coming weeks finally became clearer as to what I have to do and who I have to teach. This has relieved some of the unease that I have felt over the last few days.

Today, I observed a J2 tutorial conducted by Jamie and a J1 lecture done by Nanda.

The tutorial was with the J2s who were clearly more well grounded in addressing essay questions While some of their introductions are still rather weak, it is clear that the students are still able to verbalize their critiques towards their peers' introductions. The problem is probably how they can translate such thoughts and ideas into writing under a very constrained environment such as an examination context. I thought that this was probably something that the Innovians have yet to master in terms of coping with the time trial during an examination. It is essentially pitting the pace of your thought process and the speed of your handwriting against the hands of time.

What I witnessed was perhaps the faster and better class of J2s for when I reflected with Jasper, he revealed that the group he observed was a slower and more passive bunch. While my group managed to finish off 3 sample introductions, his group barely made it through one. Once again, this hammered home the reminder that the abilities of students in this school come from a very wide spectrum. Being a teacher here, we must be aware of this and tailor our lesson plans according to individual classes' needs.

Nanda's lecture went on without any major hiccups. However, it did brought home the point that one's own content mastery must be adequate. This came from the fact that there were students who asked questions during the lecture, all of which Nanda answered well. I was imagining, however, that if a teacher does not know his or her stuff well, it could incur unnecessary embarrassment for the teacher or worst, the respect of the students should such a flaw persist. Hence, it is a critical necessity that a teacher constantly updates his or her content mastery all the time.