Have a cuppa and hop Downunder

Hi hi,
2 great micro-teachings today! Coffee fanatics will find SJ's Geography of food something close to heart. And KF's Tourism must have moved travel bugs to secretly wish they were in Australia, instead of having 3 assignments/presentations/microteachings due per week. :) And for both teachers, I am impressed with their ability to mould popular 'materials' found in our daily life into what they are teaching. :)

SJ's St. Arbuck's
Getting students to guess Food X is a good strategy to get the class started on the topic. The clues became more and more obvious as we went along. I also think it a novel way to get Singaporean students acquainted with things around us which they take for granted. Most students would not have known how coffee plants or coffee cherries (the fruit) look like.

Although Sec 3 would not be acquainted with economics, the basic principle of demand and supply, and the balance between them which in turn affect prices, should be quite easy to grasp. I guess we were able to follow the lesson because we were no longer Sec 3. So, for real Sec 3 students, SJ could have explained the basic principles to the class before going into group work.

And I like her handouts which were quite easy to understand. And she drew a margin for students to note down the main points! Wow! That is a great tip.

Just that SJ has prob teaching while standing (did I hear that she couldn't sleep the night before?) and finally settled into sitting on a table with her leg propped up rather high.


KF's Colour of the Rainbow
Hmmm... this tune has been hummed by numerous people when the ads appeared on tv some months back. My students sang it to me once when I mentioned Australia. :) So, it was really wonderful that KF used it to start off the lesson. The song was mersmerizing and the sights as captivating.

As mentioned in class, some parts of his teaching content were a little too challenging for Sec 4s. I have to agree that KF will make a good tertiary level teacher! :) But personally, I was so so happy to be able to sit in his lesson because I really missed attending Geog lessons at tertiary level. Sob sob...

And KF is really an expert in handling students' responses and moulding them into what he wants.

Disneyland in Ubin? What a daring idea! Students may actually welcome the idea and be more than willing to explore it. But I don't think most students in Singapore have sufficient knowledge of Ubin, unless they have been there and toured the whole island. Perhaps internet search, as mentioned by KF in his handout, can help a little here and there. But nothing beats seeing the real thing for themselves, because the scale and spatial arrangements of all that Ubin can offer cannot be easily represented on websites or with pictures or write up.

And oh, the peanuts thing had better not turn up in an actual class, although all of us can appreciate the humour at our level.


Okie, got to hit the sack really early today. Another long day tomorrow. Hope to be able to clear some nitty gritty assignments tomorrow during the free time in campus. Oh, another pict to share.







Cirque and tarn







SW