Gorilla getup

You would have probably already seen this in fb. But just for the record, JC got gorilla after my lesson. I wonder what my lesson did to him.

what we did in NTU today

While all my students were hard at work fighting the MTL battle, the Lit team was at NIE/NTU presenting our Sec 1 Literature programme.  We were sharing on how we incorporated principles of Assessment for Learning in our school.  Here are the light hearted moments.  You won’t notice how our hands were shaking during the presentation.  We are just relieved that it is over.

our grp project from yesterday

For the record, I am so proud of working group yesterday.  We had subject experts who knew the places well and one techie iphone geek who googled anything in history to scrutinizing google maps to look for alternative  sites.  Relying on our caffeine-starved brains, we managed to have some themes encompassing the trail.  One principal gave us feedback that it was excellent work Like any other student, I crave for affirmation too!

what I did today in Toa Payoh instead of coming to school

It is the most boring title ever used.  I am pretty brain dead now after a long day out.  It is better for me to be succinct or nothing.  I spent the entire day divided at Toa Payoh doing a site visit cum trail and at New Town Secondary consolidating the learning points and designing another trail for our school.  Trails are what we use in our learning journeys for most of the subjects.

Compared to the rest of the 7 other trails, ours was the most urban and was full of creature comforts.  We had a bus tour and air conditioning at the HDB Gallery while others fought mosquitoes and monkeys in the wilderness.  Toa Payoh is a really old town with a lot of history in the kinds of HDB flats and amenities.  It was really nice to visit the old landscape garden that was really in vogue with bridal shots in the fast and to remember the kind of HDB flat set-up I grow up in when I was a kid.

Here are some of the shots I took that covered bits and pieces of the things that I liked.

and you thought punctuation was something minor

I am having so much fun with these this year.  This one is going into the slides for tomorrow’s 4NA cohort talk

 

this is so clever :)

Enjoy!

and then there was a moment of silence

One memorable point in today’s seminar was the hushed silence in the crowd of a few hundred of people when we watched this.  It was part of a presentation on the use of New Media.  I wasn’t really aware that this series existed.  Apparently, tonight is the last episode uploaded on Cyberpioneer TV’s Youtube channel.  But in those mere few minutes, I believe the clip touched everyone’s heart, including mine.

 

inspirational saturation

I am beating myself up & staring at everyone else with their computers in envy at every other break for the most part of today. I wish I brought my notebook to do my work!

It’s been a rather fruitful & inspirational morning discussing the relevance of NE in new media. One observation – Every other person around me is tapping on their iphones or ipad as we discuss stuff. Teachers are tech-savvy

One last session to go for the day, but brain is really saturated now.

new series of posts on teaching & learning

I’ve decided to broaden the scope of posts here.  Lately, I think it is bordering on self-indulgence which I am starting to find annoying.  Since it is the holidays, it is also time for me to rethink my teaching strategies and consider a couple of things for experimentation.

I chanced upon a couple of videos tonight.  Raising student engagement does wonders for teaching and learning.   But I am not completely sold yet because I can’t seem to think of a practical application for now.  I’ll keep working on it.

Comments please if you think I can really use it as a teaching tool.