Week 1

Day 1(9th of October 2016)

About my school and teacher
It is the first day to go to our new school; our school is a "Fatima AL Zahra
school" I was excited to know about how my school looks like? Also, who will
be my teacher, and about my students? I chose a grade two class because it
will be the first time to teach this particular level and I want to know the
differences between this level and other levels such as, how they learn, and
what the best techniques to teach them. During my observations in grade
two, I noticed that the role of the teacher and students is the same either the
schools are government or private. In both schools, the functions of the
teacher are teaching, scaffolding and facilitating the learning. The role of the
students are listening to the teacher and follow her. On the other hand, there
is a simple difference between the private and government schools, in the
private school they have one teacher teaches several subjects such as math,
English, and science, they teach all of them in English. This is a brilliant idea
because it will give the teacher great background about each student, such
as their weak points, their abilities, integrates different skills in various
subjects and different strategies to scaffold them. Also, from my observation,
I realized that the teacher relies on the books more than activities and she
concerns more on finishing the pages of the books. This is a bad way
because the purpose of school and teacher is to teach students various skills
rather than just focusing on fishing the books. As a consequence, I believed
that teachers have to exchange the wrong way to better and more
productive way. For example, instead of using the book, use hands-on
activities because it has a significant role to support students learning. Also,
using hands-on activities will enable students to explore, discover which will
contribute to better understanding because students are doing the work by
themselves rather than give them the explanation by teacher or
adult. According to Piaget, who claimed that perfect learning occurs when
children have a chance to do the work by themselves instead of giving them
the explanation by an adult. "Piaget didnt believe that teachers can teach
young children to understand a concept, he was certain that children build
their own understanding of the world by the things they do" (Moony,
2000).
Day 2(10th of October 2016)
Teaching phonics and no reward system
It was the second day of my teaching practice. During my observation in
English class, I noticed that the teacher used a great technique to help
students in reading, which is teaching them the differences between the two
sound" short a and short u". This follows a bottom-up approach (phonics
instruction). Phonics is an instructional method that teaches students the
connection between sound and letter. It is a powerful way to ensure that

there are no gaps in student knowledge of the English alphabet,

pronunciation, letter formation, and the correspondences between letters
and sounds In addition, it helps students to it help students to develop their
s spelling "teaching reading through phonics will develop strong
spellers" (Davis, 1999). Furthermore, I realized that both teachers did not use
reward system while teaching either to monitor students behavior or their
work. I believe that teacher has to use different techniques to praise
students such as used verbal feedbacks, written feedbacks and reward
systems. Praising students for positive behavior or great work are effective
ways to tell the students that they are valued and appreciate their efforts, for
example, praised the students when they made excellent response such as
listening carefully to the teacher, being quiet and helping your friends. This
technique will make students avoid and change the negative behavior to
positive because they want to get praising. According to Skinner who
believed that environment is the primary element for children's behavior so,
teachers can teach and change the negative behavior to positive. Moreover,
he mentioned that teachers have to reward the students for excellent
conduct. Therefore, students will repeat this behavior because they will link it
with the consequence. "An easy way of giving positive reinforcement in
behavior modification is in providing compliments, approval, encouragement,
and affirmation is most effective in altering behavior in a desired
manner." (McLeod, published 2007, updated 2014) .Finally, praising will
motivate students to learn. As a consequence, I will create my reward system
and apply it while teaching.
Day 3(11th of October 2016)
No differentiation in the classroom
It was the third day in the school. During in my observation in math, English
and science classes, I noticed that teacher didnt differentiate her
classrooms, all students learn the same way. When I asked her about her
students level, she replied that I still don't know about each their levels. This
surprised me because how she did not know that? Knowing students level is
the key to enhancing the learning. I believed that this happened because
teachers just focused on finishing the book rather that meeting each
students needs and that is a very bad technique, because each student
learn in a different way and has different level "The biggest mistake in
teaching is to treat all children as if there were variants of the same
individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects in
the same way" (H. Gardner). As a consequence, my role is to change that as
much as I can. It will be a challenge for me because it is new things for
students, it might effect on the behavioral management. Also, the students
are mixed up in the group, and I have to rearrange that which will contribute
to making the class messy and waste time. Furthermore, differentiation is
one of the hardest things for a teacher to do because I have to create various
activities for different levels as well as monitoring them while doing the
activities which will very hard for a trainer teacher to keep students stay on
task. Anyway I will try to do differentiation, to achieve that I will discover the

level for students, how they learn and apply that while teaching and
preparing the differentiation activities. The differentiation will match the
particular developmental level and skills of each student by providing similar
learning activities that cater to the students' strengths but bring all of the
students to the same learning objective. As a result, applying differentiation
will promote student learning and enable them to construct and incorporate
new knowledge and skills.
Day 4(12th of October 2016)
Helping my MST in monitoring students in the exam and check with
her the exam
It was the fourth day in teaching practice. In this particular day, I helped my
MST to monitor students during their exam. It was a great experience
because I learned various techniques such as, while I am reading for
students the questions I noticed that each student understand different than
their peers. For example, some of them understand the question and answer
it directly without guiding them; others didnt understand the questions until
l present drawing for them. This experience gave me a clear idea about how
some students learn and about their level, but still, the exam will not provide
me a clear and complete information about students because some students
just memorize the math before coming to the exam. Also, in this day, I
helped my MST in checking the exam papers and learned that several things
such as, the common errors that students made, the reasons for these errors
and how can I support them to correct these errors. For instance, most
students have errors in answering the arithmetic, instead of adding they
subtract. When did I ask students why you add her instead of subtracting?
She said I didnt realize the signs. As a consequence, I noticed that I have to
remind students about the steps of adding and subtraction over and over
again to help them to understand better.
It was a great week; I gained new knowledge, and I am waiting for
next week.