Lesson learnt

Through my first week of teaching, I realized that it is not about how fanciful your lesson need to be to engage the students. It is how you make a dull lesson interesting. I was assigned to teach the topic "Matter" for primary 4 students. Initially, I thought: "This is a boring topic, there's nothing interesting about it."

After conducting science lessons on Wednesday and Thursday, I realized that simple things can make students happy.

1. By bringing them to the Science lab (They are exhilarated with the idea of having lessons in the science lab.)
2. Getting each groups of students to challenge one another in estimating how many marbles will equal to the weight of the sand bag they received.
3. Getting the students to decide in groups to measure the mass of their personal items (They were so excited to find out that one of the student's pencil case with items inside weighs 550g. I got a shock too!)
4. Science activity in the book to illustrate that air takes up space can be extremely fun! I told them that there's a magic to make the tissue paper inside the cup dry even if I submerge the whole cup into the tub of water. Some of them didn't believe and I got them to come up to the teacher's bench to feel the tissue. They were shocked!

I've poked a hole in the plastic cup and covered the hole with my thumb for the first time round of submerging the cup in water. For the second time, I told them that I will tell the tissue that it is going to get wet. (I even got students praying to the tissue to get wet! That was really an eye-opener for me that kids can be REALLY CUTE!) Then when they saw bubbles coming out of the submerged cup this time round, they were so excited! Then I got them to try out the activity.

It was a crazy week for me and I hope there are more craziness for me in the coming weeks.

Gambatte my fellow colleagues!

-elly-

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.
- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American author, editor and printer.