10 Weeks Teaching Practice at Ping Yi Secondary School (PYSS)

• Attached to Sec 1E Mathematics and Science class
• Attached to Sec 2E Science class
• Attached to Sec 3NA Biology class
• Voluntary attachment to Sec3NT Form class

My experience at PYSS was wonderful as the school has a strong focus on character education, holistic development and restorative practice. I had kind, nurturing mentors who were skilled in their craft, knowledgeable and had a big heart for their students. As a Sec 1 Maths and Science teacher, I had the privilege of starting off my journey in Ping Yi with them, as they shaped my experience while I shaped theirs. I enjoyed the latitudes and freedom I got to design the lessons, weaving together guided discovery worksheets, argumentative group work, tasks on the nature of science and differentiated instructions. For the Sec 2E Science class, I was not with them often due to timetable scheduling but I designed and conducted many practicals with them, building upon my skills as a facilitator of knowledge, apparatus and people in the laboratory. I also had the chance to teach my first Sec 3 NA class biology, conducting simulations using skittles, agar, water beads, and making lessons fun using games like bingo and jeopardy in addition to theory lessons.

My experience at PYSS was the first time I had entered the school in Term 1. I was both excited and nervous as I knew I had to set good classroom routines and be consistent with my expectations of them to ensure that I had a positive classroom culture, managed behaviour well and built good rapport with the students. I had enriching experiences learning how to engage with restorative practices with the students, participating in circle time as well as after-school activities such as Project Enjoy, Mother Tongue Fortnight and CCA.

I am thankful for the great learning experience that I have had at Ping Yi and I hope to continue learning more and developing myself as a better teacher.

Knowledge Building: Cells

One of the key lessons I conducted was in using knowledge-building to kickstart the topic on cells by asking students their ideas of "What is Life?" and the questions they had about life. Through KB, students form a community of knowledge builders, linking their ideas together and improving on their existing ideas to lead the class into a discussion on life, cells and whatever they wished to know. I enjoy using the knowledge-building pedagogy as it places the subject at the centre of discussion and students' voices to be heard. We talked about abiogenesis, how the first cells came about, the evolution of complex cells which is not something a Sec 1 science lesson would typically cover. By creating space for students to contribute and interact with the information, they were more engaged, motivated and excited about what they were learning.

Euglena Argumentation Activity

I attempted to conduct an argumentation lesson in the spirit of the nature of science and in conjunction with students' current topic on cells. The lesson was planned meticulously with the lesson flow going from an individual task, to a group task and concluding with individual reflection. The main objectives were to empower students to make their own decisions individually and collaboratively on the identity of Euglena, exercise critical thinking, make inferences based on evidences and their knowledge on the different parts of a typical plant and animal cell, practice articulating their thoughts to their peers and recognise the importance of collaboration in science.

I am thankful that the reduction in assessment allows for the opportunity to conduct such activities where students learn soft skills such as in respectfully debating with one another whilst applying their scientific knowledge in a new context. Humans are social creatures after all and a well-planned group activity enables students to build on their own knowledge by learning from one another and enjoy the process of learning (joy of learning!). When I designed the activity, I first considered having roles for each team member to ensure that everyone is invested in and responsible for the success of the team and on task. Next, I set guidelines and introduced students to accountable talk using discussion sentence starters, encouraging them to respect one another, be active and responsible, just like scientists. To keep their hands and brains occupied and active, I used categorizing evidences as the main activity as students had to debate where the evidences should be categorized under. The outcome of having a product that showcases their thinking process also helps students be more engaged and involved in the group activity. Lastly, I provided a scaffolded argumentation sheet where students could pen down their conclusion based on their claim, evidence and justification. Throughout the activity, I walked around to facilitate student discussion and encourage them to use the appropriate sentence starters and be active learners by noting down interesting questions and pointers.

The group work session went successfully and students were engaged as the scaffolds and structures in place allowed them to exchange ideas, learn skills of explaining – making things clear for their friends to understand, linking evidence with inferences and weighing different points of views. The fact that there was no obvious answer was also an appropriate challenge and stimulus for students to be motivated to come up with the best answer based on their knowledge. At the end of the lesson, I applied what Mrs Yeo suggested to me previously, on concluding the lesson by getting students to share what their group was discussing about or any interesting things they have learnt. As one objective of the lesson was also to enable students to monitor and assess their own learning, a class sharing of what was done helps bring the class back on the same page to consolidate their learning and to remind students to take ownership of their learning experience. To show students the differences in their decisions before and after collaborative group work, I used Plickers to conduct a survey and ask them why their opinions changed and how they think the entire activity mimics science.

Numbers

On the topic of Numbers, I focused on tying the entire strand together with an organisational chart. Throughout the strand, I interspersed stories of how Numbers can about. Guided discovery worksheets were experimented in this strand to help students achieve relational understanding of "Prime Numbers", the "Multiplication and Division Rules of Negative Numbers" and "Rational and Irrational Numbers". I also conducted a differentiated instructions lesson based on readiness when I realised that my students were not as proficient in subtracting negative numbers.

Approximation and Estimation

For my Sec 2s, I mainly conducted practicals with them as I did not have many periods to spend with this class. I designed a practical on measurements and density which was a great learning experience for me as I wanted to create resources that enthuse students in the learning, meet the learning objectives and are within the limitations of a school laboratory. I had to make multiple trips to the laboratory to figure out what materials I could use, test the layout and features of the laboratory for my instructional process and try out the full practical myself to make sure it works. It took some creative juice but the results were worth it as I felt that the students were engaged and it met the learning objectives of the practical. I also considered my students’ profile and planned a problem-solving planning question for them as I felt that they are keen in exploring science and the activity could be used to develop their communication, reasoning and analytical thinking.

I enjoyed teaching my 3NA Biology class the most despite it being my first time taking an NA class. Week in, week out, we would spend some time doing fun activities together such as the skittles experiment, water beads or agar agar activity. I have also established a culture of pop-quizzing because students need practice for writing down keywords and spelling them accurately. The end of topic review quiz is a culture that is currently being established in the class. Students look forward to the topical quiz and it is also an avenue for me to build teacher-student rapport. In the first topic, students played Cell Bingo as a consolidation quiz. This time round, for movement of substances, they played Jeopardy.

https://jeopardylabs.com/play/movement-of-substances-2