During MYP collaboration, we discussed about ATL Skills and Bloom Taxonomy that we focus on in the lesson.  For Malay Language Phase 1&2 this quarter 1, we focus on Communication Skills, Research Skills and Thinking Skills and use Bloom Taxonomy when planning the class activities.

During MYP collaboration, we discussed about best practices of handling difficult students in the class. As for me, I always try to improve and use interesting activities to make the students more engaging with the lesson.

During MYP collaboration, we discussed about IB Learner Profile activities in the lesson. For BM Phase 1&2, the chosen IB Learner Profile is knowledgeable and caring. The topic is about the roles of family members and pet owner. The students do discussion, research, sharing of knowledge and experiences, graphic organizer and conclusion from the discussion.

During MYP collaboration, we discussed about integrating the Global Context into the lesson. For Malay Language this quarter, our global context is Fairness and Development. The topic of the lesson is about family relationship and pet. The activity involved is the students doing discussion, research , graphic organizer and the exit task is the encouragement essay.

How can we ensure that students have opportunities to develop conceptual understanding for all key concepts?

We can ensure that students have opportunities to develop conceptual understanding for all key concepts by giving detail rubric for the tasks. The rubric created should include very detail criteria that will be counted for the assessment. State the key concepts that we want to focus on in the rubrics so that each students can get clear picture and guidance for completing tasks given with quality and up to standard. Teacher can also show some examples of good and bad during the lesson.

In this session we discussed about the New American Lecture and the connection to the Kath Murdoch’s Inquire Cycle. There are strong connection between them. The stages of the New American Cycle can be map to the Inquire Cycle. There are 5 stages in New American Lecture, which are identify the topic, design the visual organizer, develop review questions, design the hook and develop a synthesis task. I have used graphic organizer in my own classroom. For example, I explained the grammar component of Imbuhan Men- using the matrix organizer. This is to visualize the concepts and make it simpler for better understanding of the topics. I also ask review questions to assess the students’ understanding.

In this CPE session, we focused on how to give effective feedback. We learnt that there are 4 levels of feedback:

1. Task level – feedback usually focuses on task or product. Feedback is meant to ensure that students built accurate surface knowledge about the task and is hoped to develop deeper learning
2. Process level – feedback at this level talks mainly about how students are using their new knowledge of content, or skills. It facilitates immediate correction of errors.
3. Self-regulation level – feedback that gives comments on how well students are planning, monitoring and evaluating their own work. This encourages students to work on evaluating how well they are performing when carrying out a task.
4. Self level – the least effective of all the levels. This feedback almost “attacks” students on a personal level with comments based on the child and not the task. 

   The main aim of feedback is to close the gap between what students do not know and do know as well as propel them forward.

   I demonstrated giving feedback to my own students on their Formative Assessment. They are supposed to do slide presentation about Special Occasion or Festival in Malaysia and one other country. They need to compare and list down the similarities and difference of the topic.

   I realize that most of my feedback focuses on the task and process itself. While these are not the worst levels of feedback and do help in making them aware of errors and how to do better, I need to practice giving more feedback aimed at self-regulation in order to propel my students forward and make them more independent learners.

In this session, we learnt about the roles of a teacher as a teacher, facilitator and coach. We learnt about the traditional roles as a teacher, which is basically to impart knowledge, and the roles of a student in the traditional classroom, which is to retain the information. We also looked at the teacher’s role as a facilitator, which makes use of the theory of constructivism, helping students form their own knowledge from the prior knowledge they already possess. This is a two-way process, unlike the traditional approach, which is one way. However, we also agreed that in order to have a successful teaching and learning session, it is not enough merely to be a facilitator. There are instances when it is necessary to teach the students, for example when we are introducing new concepts or skills, or when the student is going up the wrong path in the conclusions he or she is making about the lesson.

I have experimented with teaching students a new topic or grammar component, which was how to understand the concept or formula.

I think this worked very well to get them to understand how to analyse the question. Since there were concepts for some topics of formula which they have not quite gotten a hang of yet, it really helped them make sense of the lesson.

Three things that you find helpful today is the effective communication skills prevents misunderstanding. It gives clarity and direction. The concept of negotiable and non-negotiable. Non-negotiable can refer to a term or condition that is not open to negotiation. Apart from that, the healthy lifestyle will be reduce the stress level.

Two things that you’d like to change in the way you deal with things to reduce stress. The first thing I would like to do is to let go of the things that can not be changed or controlled by me. Second thing is to exercise to reduce my stress level. It might seem contradictory, but putting physical stress on my body through exercise can relieve mental stress.

One strategy to manage stress that I started practice were prioritizing. I increase spending time with my friends and family. Social support from friends and family can help me get through stressful times.

The CPD session on 26th April 2019 discussed about special need children (SEN) and intervention steps that can be taken by teacher or parents to help these children. Not all parent have the ability in accepting their child disability of learning. They will go through stages or level in accepting their children lacking. Some parent will be in denial phase where they can not or will not accept that their children need a special intervention in their learning. There are also parent who will bargaining in accepting their children lacking by doing something they hoping that will change the child.

There are few interventions procedure that could help students or children with special need but it will need to be implemented as a routine so that the children could participate and it become their routine. For teachers, intervention can be done in classroom but it will need to be prepared well and implemented as a routine. One of the intervention steps that appeal to children’s is rewarding system. In the school, we have the color coded system, students’ behavior is being monitored by color, and at the end of the quarter, the students are being rewarded based on their color.