East Zone Teaching for Conceptual Understanding in Geography

The team started its journey as far back in 2017 with 4 members team led by MTT Mdm Lim Puay Yin. In our earlier sessions, the team started with lots of reading and brainstorming sessions. From 2018, the team moved to the enactment phase where we started to plan lessons based on the various tools on teaching conceptual understanding. There was a lot of discussion, reflection and refinement and this resulted in the creation of lesson packages. In the second half of 2018, the team moved to transfer phase where we started to conduct a series of workshop for our cluster schools in the East and we managed to complete all our workshops in the East cluster by end of 2020. Our objectives are two-fold: student-centricity in the first objective and teacher/curriculum innovation in the second. We want to create learning experiences to engage the students in deeper learning by providing opportunities for students to collaborate and co-construct learning through Inquiry Process. The main outcome of the NLC is to support East Zone schools in the planning and enactment of the new Geography curriculum.

Thus far, through our sharing, we managed to attract new members to come onboard our team and as a result the team now has expanded to 15 members team. The current team is now at its application stage. Various teams shared how they have used the 7 tools to engage students in meaning making.

Looking forward, with the implementation of new Geography syllabus, the team may want to look at how we can co-construct a unit targeted at developing conceptual understanding and probably with integration of e-pedagogy and DI.