In this semester, our Mathematics module covered several grounds from assessment to teaching to metacognition and computational thinking. During the first part of the module, we learnt about traditional assessment in Mathematics and how to craft tests or examination papers. The key things I’ve learnt were with regards to the alignment of test objectives and test items, how to classify questions based on the cognitive demand and difficulty level as well as the common mistakes when writing test items. Through the assignment on writing a test paper, I realized that it was extremely difficult to set a reliable, comprehensive and purposeful test. I was unclear of what it meant to set a higher order thinking (HOT) question and realized that it involved setting a question in a novel manner that really tests the students’ understanding, and should be a question that students are not able to solve just by memorizing or being told the steps. Another mistake I made was thinking that I was testing a different test objective when I re-wrote the question in a more interesting manner. Another area we looked into was alternative assessment and problems in real-world context (PRWC). I learnt about how to prepare students for such questions in the future, strategies to help myself design some PRWCs and tried my hand at designing one question myself. Although I set out to design a question that was not regarding money, I found that it was rather difficult. Perhaps I would venture to do that in my practicum school and try once again.

Another key aspect of this module was on micro-teaching. For my individual micro-teaching session, I conducted a lesson on inequalities and through the process, learnt more about good lesson design and flow. For the group micro-teaching session, my group and I conducted a lesson on probability and through the process, I learnt about the specificities in language for a topic such as probability which is very apparent in the real world. In addition to these main staples of the module, my tutor Mdm Wong Lai Foong also went the extra mile to introduce and guide us on how to incorporate quality questioning, metacognition and computational thinking in the classroom. My favourite modules at NIE were the Mathematics modules and it is because every lesson was awe-inspiring thanks to Mdm Wong’s rich knowledge. I un-learned, re-learned and had opportunities to apply my learning in rich contexts. She was encouraging and allowed us to go for NLCs with her to learn more and always gave us good feedback so that we could feed forward and improve on our teaching and our understanding of mathematics.