Practicum Phase 1- Reflection of My Past Teaching and Learning Experience

I had carried out my first phase of practicum at Sekolah Kebangsaan Bandar

Sri Damansara 1, Kuala Lumpur for one month. I had taught year 3 Azam pupils in
that school. It is a second last class where the pupils English levels of proficiency
are mixed. Based on my experiences during the first practicum, I would like to
highlight some problems that I had faced which enables me to identify my strengths
and weaknesses in the teaching and learning process. In this writing, I will discuss
about the problems that I had faced from my past teaching and learning experiences
and how I tackle those problems.
Based on my past teaching and learning experiences, one of the problems
that I had faced is a group of pupils in the classroom did not pay attention to the
lesson. This problem occurred to pupils who seat at the back of classroom. During
the lesson, they did not listen to the teacher and busy doing their own task. For
instance, one of the pupils was reading book when I was teaching at the front.
Besides, a group of pupils who seat at the back of the classroom also were talking
among themselves when the lesson was conducted. I was been informed by my
cooperating teacher, Miss Yang Suat Biaw regarding on this matter. She mentioned
those pupils are weak in English language.
I had introduced my classroom rules to the pupils in order to make it easy for
me to control them. However, the rules are not effective for me to control their
discipline. In order to overcome that problem, I had tried to integrate the use of ICT
into teaching and learning.
I had used power point to explain to pupils about the input of the lesson. I also
included animations into the power point to captivate pupils attention. I used
video to trigger their interest on the topic. I found that it is very effective for
teacher to integrate ICT into teaching and learning process. I saw the pupils
become very excited and motivated to learn.
(Journal Entry No. 3, 30th April, 2015)
Thus, I found that the lesson objectives can be achieved and also there were less
discipline problem occurred in the lesson. The pupils were focusing and participate in
the lesson.

Next, the other problem that I had faced during my past teaching and learning
experience is the clarity of the instructions that I gave to the pupils. During my first
observation, my supervisor mentioned that my voice projection was slow and it did
not reach to the back of the classroom. The pupils who seat at the back of the class
cannot hear my voice and it had lead towards misbehaviour to occur in the lesson.
Apart from that, my cooperating teacher also commented that I did not explain
clearly to the pupils what they required to do. As a result, pupils were not able to
complete the tasks given and lead towards misunderstanding. For instance, I
instructed the pupils to complete the task in part B but some of the pupils were
completing the part A questions.
In my opinion, it is important for teacher to give clear instructions to the pupils.
It is because a clear instruction enables pupils to complete the task given. Besides,
clear instruction also makes pupils to understand messages conveyed by teacher.
Teacher also can control the classroom well when the instructions given are clear
and understand by the pupils. Thus, it can reduce misbehaviour to occur in the class.
The way that we gives instructions can make or break and activity. Without
clear instructions, students may become confused, may lose confidence, and
may not get the most out of the experience. Without clear instructions, we
may find ourselves ending an exercise with a less-than-warm feeling.
(Clear instructions in the classroom, 2015).
In conclusion, there are a few strengths that I can draw out based on my past
teaching and learning experiences. I managed to explore and used suitable
resources for my lesson. The resources that I used were able to attract pupils
attention. I had used pictures, word cards, sentence strips, audio recording, power
point, video and many more. I found that pupils get excited when I used giant word
search in the lesson. All of them were competing each other to come forward and
complete the giant word search. The use of giant word search is effective because
pupils managed to recognize and learn about the sea creatures. Resources should
be able to facilitate interaction among students and teachers during the learning or
teaching process, as well as to help students to learn, broaden students learning
experiences and meet different learning needs (Senior Secondary Curriculum Guide,
n.d.).