T2W7

Other classes which are struggling with learning include 2N, 3N & 4N1. I feel that whatever strategy that we can use, it still depends a lot on teacher-student relationship. Pupils must have the trust in the teacher that the teacher sincerely wants to help them and that the teacher is patient and approachable.

I am confident to say that I have won the trust of a few pupils who started off to be very disrupting but now they are more attentive and eager to answer questions I raised in class. These pupils may still be a little noisy at times but they will automatically stop or even apologise when I turn and stare at them. Guess they just want attention from the teacher. In fact, they were made to stay back during recess time to finish up their seatwork with me at their side guiding them to complete the work. After a few staying back sessions, they have actually managed to complete their work in class within lesson times and handed them up to me immediately.

Praises worked well with this group of pupils as well. When they tried to answer questions and got their answers correct, I praised them (some praises used are "Very smart!", "I know you are good!") and that made them very proud of themselves. And this could be one reason why they were always very eager to answer questions (to show off to the rest of the class).

Of course there is also a group of pupils who are not disrupting in class and rather attentive but due to their weaker ability in Mathematics, they are struggling with two mathematics subjects. However, my teaching policy is not to give up on them even though sometimes I feel that they just "cannot make it". This is due to one year when I was teaching the weakest class both E Math (half of the class) and A Math (whole class), a few pupils proved to me that I made a wrong judgement on them. I tried to persuade them to drop A Math and to concentrate on improving their E Math as they just passed E Math exams with C6 and failed A Math exams badly with a score of 30+. They objected and assured me that they would do their best to improve. Hence, they persevered and I tried my best to help them. Eventually they obtained B3 for both Math subjects in their O Level exams. Maybe if they had dropped A Math, they might be able to obtain an A grade for E Math. But no matter what it was a great achievement for them and a great relief for me too :)

T2W6 - 3E2 (cont'd)

Went through class test with pupils on Wed. Surprisingly, all pupils were very attentive as I went through their common errors that they had made in the test (even the very disrupting pupils). This showed that though some of them are very irritating, they still want to learn. Hence, I feel that there is still hope for this class. Only thing is that they will only mature when they are in Sec 4 when they will be more focussed as they will be taking their O's. Now, most of them are just playful and easily distracted.

After a short discussion with their E Math teacher, we agreed that it will be good to split this class into 2 groups so that more attentive can be given to the weaker pupils (quite a number of them). But this is possible if there is enough resources to split them into 2 groups just like the 4E1 this year. Hence, for next term, there is a plan for splitting them but only for E Math. The splitting will be based on their Mid Year Exam results and they will be banded then so that the better ones can be stretched and the weaker ones can build on their foundation.