Week 6

The week saw two observations being carried out simultaneously by my NIE supervisor and by Jamie. It was also the week when we tried out the roleplay strategy for the classes. It was interesting how the first class that I taught put in the effort to dress up and play to the roles that they were assigned. It spiced up the class’s energy and atmosphere, bringing some humor and laughter to the lesson at the same time. I was quite thankful that the students did put in the effort and in the end, it was thanks to them that the roleplay worked out well.  However, I could not say the same for the other J1 class. The other class was a lot more passive in playing to their roles and they treated it like any other presentations.  To them, it was more of a hassle to fulfill their roles to the detail as compared to just preparing for a presentation as they have been used to.  As such, the strategy did not work as well as I hoped for.  That taught me that not all strategies can be applied on different classes and neither can similar outcomes or effective learning be expected. Hence, that reemphasized the importance of how a different approach has to be used for different classes, depending on their profiles.

It was also a week when we tried to incorporate some questions into the tutorial, questions that demanded more higher order thinking. On the whole, the students did welcome the tougher questions that we discussed.  While we discussed the questions, I made it a point to not emphasize too much on the questions or spent too much time on it. I also made it optional for the better students to write outlines or to tackle the questions in their own time.  I promised that I would take a look at their work and go through with them if they wished.  Thus far, that has yielded one student writing an outline and another three, who were from a different class, have seen me for consultations. That was a far better start than I had expected. My goal was to cultivate a culture where students take responsibility for their learning and would want to stretch themselves in their own time in the subject. It is certainly encouraging to see the better students coming forth to do so thus far. Of course, this may be an anomaly or an elevated interest in the topic that we are discussing at that point in time. However, if this persists and becomes a sustained habit, it might become a healthy culture among the history students, which I will be determined to build upon.

The week also saw Jasper and I giving our first lecture to the J1 cohort. We managed to give them the lowdown of what was to be expected for Southeast Asia history.  We also managed to finish what we set out to deliver on the dot so that was good in terms of time management.  Lecturing did not seemed as daunting as I had first expected before I even came to Innova Junior College.  One key reason was perhaps the fact that I had interacted with some, if not most, of the J1s and was comfortable with them.  As such, it was just another lesson that focused more on content delivery.  Of course, upon closer reflection, I could have inserted more enthusiasm and hype into my tone of voice in order to instil some form of energy into the students for Southeast Asian History.

To conclude the week, Jasper and I managed to show the students the historical movie, Thirteen Days, a film that we had always wanted to show since the start of the term. The film mainly depicts the Cuban Missiles Crisis from the American point of view.  While the start was a little boring, judging from the way some of the students were dozing off, the latter stages and the climax of the film did not disappoint.  Considering that this was an American perspective and a somewhat traditionalist perspective that the movie was adopting, some of the students were swayed towards sympathizing with the Americans in the issue of escalation of the Cold War. 

I was awed by the persuasive power that visual representation and films can have on people’s minds.  Nevertheless, I had to leave early, leaving Jasper and Jian Lin, who joined us halfway to watch the movie, to round things up.  It was unfortunate that they had to rush off since the lecture theatre needed to be closed.  As such, we will have to follow up on the movie during this week’s tutorials and touch on how the students feel and think about the movie.  On the whole, we were glad that we could show the movie because a video lecture works well, especially if it is a great film on history and especially if it is one that can engage the students’ interests as well.