Blogger Notes

The boy pupils from Year 3A. I've got my hands full whenever I'm with them. They are always 10 minutes early coming to class just sitting outside the Computer Lab. Eventhough it's break time.. they eagerly wait outside the door just to start the class early. Good boys these lot..

Me with the girl pupils of Year 3A posing..

Kids were so happy at the prospect of having their picture taken.

This week was the continuation from last week's topic i.e. inserting graphics into a word document. The computer connected to the IWB was not working so I had to present the work to be done orally and step-by-step followed by the pupils.

My Year 2A were really looking forward to naming their pictures. I reminded them to be creative in naming their pictures, not just simply because the pictures was of similar traits to a certain famous cartoon character it had to be of the same name. The lesson plan..
Lesson Plan 20/04/09 (Yr2A)

The lesson finished on time and for closure we had a photo session. I wanted to have a picture with my tp class so the pupils were more than happy to oblige..


My Year 3A's lesson was hectic because some of the computers started having problem.. freezing at the click of a button. This mostly happened when the pupils wanted to insert clipart. After typing in the search word and clickilg the "Go" button.. it just hangs. Hmmmmmm.... heavy load?.. But at least the class completed about 75% of the work though.. Good effort on the pupil's part.. what with the freezing screen and all. The lesson plan..

Lesson Plan 20/04/09 (Yr3A)

Some were frustrated when the screen keeps freezing up. I could see that the activity were to their liking.. maybe because they get to choose their own picture and type whatever they want.. Like my last class, we spend the last 5 minutes of the class by having a photo session..

Something that I've been hearing about a lot these days.. podcasting. Learn the basics of podcasting from Colette Cassinelli, a technology evangelist, who will teach you everything you need to know about using podcasting in your classroom.


Comments or critisms are welcome.. :)

This week both my Year 2 and Year 3 classes had more or less the same activity i.e. inserting pictures in to a word document. The only difference was for Year 2 they did not give titles for their pictures. Year 3 used WordArt to name their pictures.

My Year 2,
Lesson Plan 13/04/09 (Yr2A)

The pupils were very excited at the prospect of inserting pictures because I had gathered beforehand pictures which I thought would REALLY attract attention. I had copied pictures of "princesses" for the girls and "robots" for the boys. During induction the pupils were so very attentive to what I had to say, hence they were able to do the activity without much hassle. The girls giggled a lot and the boys gave a lot of "Waaahhhh"s... The expressions of their faces showed they really enjoyed the class.

My Year 3,
Lesson Plan 13/04/09 (Yr3A)

I had expected the same feedback from the pupils as I had from the Year 2's. What I noticed was that during the naming of the title for the pictures quite a number of the pupils had made mistakes in the spelling of the words they had used. Some of the girls did not spelled the words "princess", "pretty" and "sleeping". As for the boys almost all of them used the same words for the title of their pictures, which was "Optimus Prime" and "transformers". During closure I told the class that I would have preferred them to create their own titles for the pictures even though I had given them pictures they would generally recognize. The girls were a bit imaginative, giving words that describe their pictures. In overall I was very satisfied with their work which showed they were paying attention during my explanation of the activity.. :)

Last year I had a lesson in doing research on the internet. This flowgram would have been very helpful then. For those that has a lesson whereby the pupils need to do research from the internet, spare a few minutes to look through this:


This is a set of websites that can be used by elementary school library specialists when teaching students research skiils..

This week I expanded my formatting/editing tutorials since last week's was not as expected. For my Year 2 class, I made a simpler tutorial for the pupils to do and for my Year 3 class I prepared a tongue twister passage for them. My main aim here was to attract the pupils' attention with a tutorial which should be fun to do.

My Year 2's lesson plan,

Lesson Plan 06/04/09 (Yr2A)

As for the tutorial, eventhough they were given handouts I repeated to the pupils on what they are supposed to do because some would tend to listen with one ear and out the next straight away. When this happens, they start to call out and ask what they are supposed to do. Time was of essence because the class itself was only for a period. I did not want what happened the previous week to repeat itself whereby the whole did not complete their work.

Tutorial 06/04/09 (Yr2A)

My Year 3 seemed to have fun with the passage because most of them have not been exposed to tongue twisters. Some kept repeating the passage instead of editing so I had to give then a little nudge. In the end, ALL of them finished the tutorial on time. I was very happy because not only were they on time but their work was about 99% correct! Check out the lesson plan which was simplicity itself.

Lesson Plan 06/04/09 (Yr3A)
While going round the class monitoring the pupils do their work I couldn't help but smile when I saw that most of them did collaborative learning. They were actually discussing with each other on how to do their work and there was not much calling out for the teacher!

Tutorial 06/04/09 (Yr3A)

An interesting video about how to set up the first 5 mins of an ICT lesson.

This week was supposed to be where the pupils got started with using Ms Word from the introduction lesson on the 2nd March previously. Because of the term holiday the previous week, I had to recap what was taught earlier on especially my Year 2. I specifically remembered their dazed look so I attempted to create my own notes for them to refer to for the exercise they were about to do. At the same time, killing two birds with one stone, I created my own notes for my Year 3 too. I did not want to rely on my co-operating teacher to supply me with her notes and tutorials. The fact that I needed the experience in creating my own teaching and learning materials were a factor which I was determined to overcome. My co-operating teacher after looking through my handouts gave her approval and even my supervisor who was observing me gave me a thumbs up for my effort..

For my Year 2

Lesson Plan 16/03/09 (Yr2A)

And the notes with the tutorials

Notes and Tutorial 16/03/09 (Yr2A)

The lesson did not run smoothly during the main activity. Judging by the immense cry of help from my pupils I guess my tutorial was overwhelming for my pupils. The contents were too much to be completed within the time designated (the lesson itself was only 30 minutes) Only about two groups managed to type the whole thing out and the others were lost in their typing and finding the letters in the keyboard. I guess I was over anxious with my expectation of the lesson. I did not regard my pupils' typing abilities and I totally forgot about the lesson being only 30 minutes. The pupils did not complete the tutorials and I knew then I had to modify my tutorial to meet my pupils; capabilities.

As for my Year 3

Lesson Plan 16/03/09 (Yr3A)

The lesson was smooth and the pupils were very attentive. They were enthralled with the idea of changing the orientation of the page though. At least for this lesson, my pupils completed the tutorial within the time designated. An easy lesson commented some of the pupils! Have a look..

Notes and Tutorial 16/03/09 (Yr3A)

A rather draining day, what with me chasing after my Year 2 inquiries during the tutorial and my Year 3 being rather confident in theirs. Eventful and unforgettable.

This week was the introduction to word processing using Ms Word to both my Year 2A and Year 3A classes. According to my co-operating teacher, for the Year 3 pupils it would be a refresher lesson because they were introduced to Word in year 2. Both my lesson plans more or less covered the same things, only bearing in mind that I had to make my lesson for my Year 2 pupils a bit simpler. My previous experiences in teaching word processing were to adults and teens (staff development and SOAS students), teaching children of ages between 7 and 9 were a daunting experience at first. I didn't know how to make a simple lesson in teaching word processing but the experience taught me a lot about understanding primary pupils' learning abilities.

First, my Year 2

Lesson Plan 020309 (Yr2A)

I realised that what I was explaining seemed alien to the pupils by the dazed look they were giving me! I kept telling myself.. "You have to get their attention! Say something they can relate to.."

I gave the pupils the printed notes provided by my co-operating teacher (who must have visioned what I was going through because she printed notes for my class beforehand!). Even by referring to the notes, some of the pupils were losing interest in what I was presenting on the IWB. When the time came for the pupils to work indepedently i.e. opening word in the computer, then the interest came and shouts of "teacher! teacher!" were heard. Finally I could breathe with the knowledge that they needed actual hands-on activity to understand something with was very new to them.


After break came my Year 3

The reaction was just the opposite! The Year 3 pupils were always excited when it comes to having their ICT lesson. They would actually line up outside the computer lab 5-8 minutes before class starts.

Lesson Plan 020309 (Yr3A)

Even while I was explaining about the day's lesson some of the pupils would remark "I know that.. Ohh, that's easy!.. I've done that.." They were so eager to do work on the computer before I could instruct them to do so. Whenever I asked a question, hands would raise and the funny things is.. they forgot the answer when told to speak! Most of them remembered the basic formatting tools in Word. And when I showed the the paragraph they were to type out, they eagerly read it out loud. When told to save, they automatically gave me the designated folder's name and that made me smile more. They were reading my mind. The lesson went smoothly and I was quite happy with the day's lessons in overall.

Year 3A Week 5 (02/02/2009)

Topic of the lesson was about web cam. After explaining about the function of a web cam, I proceeded to show the pupils on how to operate a web cam using my Toshiba notebook. I divided the class into two groups i.e. boys and girls. There was a lot of shoving and pushing during the demonstration on how to work a web cam. The pupils were excited to see their faces on screen. All the pupils managed to take a picture each during the session.

Year 3A Week 6 (09/02/2009)

Topic of the lesson was about storage devices. The pupils were introduced to a diskette, CD and a pen drive. After the introduction, I explained to the pupils about the function and difference between the three storage devices. As practical I showed the pupils on how a pen drive was used and how to transfer and save data from an existing folder in a notebook to a pen drive. In this instance, I showed the pupils the folder where their pictures were (Week 5 lesson), rename the picture and save it to the pen drive. This practical took time and only the girls were able to finish. I then informed the pupils that the practical would be continued the next week for the boys to complete their practical.

Year 3A Week 7 (16/02/2009)

The lesson was a continuation of the practical exercise done in week 6. While the boys were completing their practical (renaming their picture file and saving in the pen drive), I revised with the girls about what they had learned the week before. Most of the girls were able to answer my questions about the functions of the three storage devices that they have learned. They were even able to distinguish which storage device had the bigger capacity to store data. When the boys had completed their work, I then proceeded to give a slideshow of the pictures they had taken. There was a lot of giggles and smiles from the pupils and they in turn cried out the name of the pupil whose picture was shown. The slideshow can be seen at the side of the blog.