Teaching Practice

As early as our first week in Medan, we already met with our respective supervising teachers based on what level we were assigned to teach. We are divided into 2 groups so that three of us will teach in grade 7 and the rest would teach in grade 8. We were immediately oriented what topics we will be teaching and in what day the instruction will be implemented. They have provided us with the schedule of our classes, topics, and the section we are assigned to teach. It was in Bahasa at first so we had our buddies to translate it for us.

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Proceeding to our teaching, we are to discuss for the whole period with the guidance of our supervising teacher at the back of the room. Ms. Khairani, my supervising teacher, butts in every now and then to translate the discussion when the students can’t keep up to what I’m saying. There was a time that I used English language in problem solving. The moment I flashes that slide, I heard them react. I forgot how we had to compromise talking to each other in English and sentences that long would be difficult for them to understand. Ma’am Rani went in front to translate the problems and I continue to explain how to solve it. Because of this, I lessen presenting problem solving parts and instead, I give them more complicated exercises for them to practice. In my discussion, I usually start with a motivational activity. As I have written in one of my blogs, I started teaching my students an origami as an introduction to teaching Fractions (see blog for elaboration). I explain the definition once, clear misconceptions and then guide them in answering few of the exercises I prepared. Afterwards, I let them answer the exercises on the board on their own for me to know if they really understood it or not. For my concluding activities, I usually incorporate fun twists in simple exercises, such as this one.

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We, then, could return back to our faculty after the period.

Regarding our time management, although I usually give the students certain ample time to finish an activity, we were told that we still had a hard time adjusting our activities to fit in the time properly.  I vocalize specific time range for them to be sensitive with the time by saying, for instance, “last 5 minutes”. Sometimes when they get too hooked up in the activity, they’re starting to get a bit noisy. It’s not that difficult to get their attention and ask them to lower their voice. There are times when I can’t hear my voice anymore over their noise so I simply say “excuse me, please listen” and knock on the board to get their attention nicely. Since we are from different states, I’m not entirely sure how they would respond in a harsh way of classroom management. Besides, it only happens seldom times since their noise are mostly academic. They usually shout their answers in chorus when I ask questions during the discussion. These are the times I wouldn’t want to warn them because it might ruin their energy and hype in interest of the discussion. Overall, they're good students and I'm lucky to have both sections that are girls because they can understand English better.