Name of Student Teacher: Mr Timothy Joshua Ong

CS1: English Language

Subject: English Language

(1128)

Class: 106
Secondary 1 (Express)

Date: 2nd March 2016

Wednesday (Odd Week)

Time: 11.00am 12.20am

(80 minutes) 4 periods

Class Size:
40 (23 F, 17 M)

Learners Characteristics:
Mixed ability (Average to high ability learners)

Unit: Situational writing skills

Topic: Format of personal emails and task

fulfilment

Reflections (Choose 1 aspect of the lesson to reflect on- positive or negative

one. It can be written in point form not more than 1 page)
1) What happened? (What did my students do? What did I do?)
I introduced personal emails using a real-world example of a personal email that I
wrote to a friend of mine living in Dublin, Ireland. I showed the class a screenshot of
the actual email and also incorporated some photos and pictures of my friend and I.
This was to bridge the social distance between my students an myself and also
served to showcase the relevance of the writing skills that students are learning. I
pointed out specific aspects of a personal email and led students in a guided
discovery approach to figure out for themselves what elements constitute the format
of a personal email. Students appeared much more engaged and the days learning
was indeed value-added and made more meaningful.
2) Why? (Why did I think things happened this way? Why did I choose to act the
way I did?)
I did not want the lesson to be one where the teacher would present yet another
format for students to commit to memory. I wanted to inject a sense of reality into
their learning such that they would clearly see the relevance, purpose and functions
of each component in a personal email. Factoring in these instances of real-world
examples also made the learning of PACC more concrete for students.
3) So what? (What have I learnt from this?)
I have learnt that classroom materials can in fact originate from any real-world
instance of communication. This seemingly day to day occurrences can be tapped
upon to make learning more personable and relatable to students. In addition, posing
prompting questions to students along the way affords their learning with a process
orientation approach that is more constructive than mere rote learning.
4) Now what? (What do I want to remember to think about in a similar situation?
How do I want to act in future?)
I will continue to infuse personal and real-world examples in my future lessons. This
aspect gels well with the learning attitudes and styles of students in this class and it
also serves to build rapport with the students. Students will certainly see the
relevance of language and get to know me more as a person and teacher.