Monday, 3 June 2019
Today, our university mentor Carola came over to observe our 6th grade English lesson. We were slightly nervous as it was our first formal observation by her although we had been teaching for the past weeks and were observed by our CT, Melanie during those lessons. Nevertheless, we prepared as much as we could for the lesson and did our very best! For our 6th grade lesson, we started on a new unit, 'The story of chocolate'. We began the lesson with a short Kahoot quiz on chocolates. After which, the students watched a video on how the cacao beans were processed in Africa and made into chocolate. We then conducted a vocabulary matching activity where students had to match the pictures of the challenging vocabulary appropriately. Then students got into their assigned groups and discussed how they were going to re-tell the process of processing the cacao beans based on the snippets given to them from the video. Lastly, we introduced the new vocabulary words of that unit and ended off the lesson with an exit pass.
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| Our Kahoot quiz on chocolates |
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| Our Kahoot quiz on chocolates |
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| Snippets from the video on chocolates |
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| Snippets from the video on chocolates |
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| Snippets from the video on chocolates |
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| Snippets from the video on chocolates |
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After our 6th grade class, we had another English lesson with our 5th graders. We started off with a new unit on Festivals. After introducing a variety of festivals and asking them to share their experience while celebrating these festivals, we went through the new vocabulary words for this unit.
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| Snippets from the 5th grade textbook on unit 'Festivals' |
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| Snippets from the 5th grade textbook on unit 'Festivals' |
Tuesday, 4 June 2019
Today we had our final English lesson with our 3rd graders. We conducted another 'Sketch' (skit) titled secret box. We used the 'Sketch' as a way to introduce new vocabulary and emphasise on pronunciation as well as clarity in reading. The 'Sketch' was also an interactive way for the students to share how they wish to enact the skit and present it to their peers. At the end of the lesson, we gave the students some farewell gifts which were mostly their favourite sweets :) We were really sad to end off the lesson as it was our last time teaching them and we missed this bunch of cute and curious kids. Nevertheless, we were glad to see the smiles on their faces when we gave them the gifts.
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| 'Sketch' on the secret box |
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| Our cute 3rd graders ;) |
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| Our colleague Vreni and her 3rd-grade class |
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| Our final lesson class photo |
After the lesson, we had the 'Healthy eating day' preparation during recess. 'Healthy eating day' refers is a day where a particular class is assigned to create healthy drinks and snacks for the entire school. This time, our form class was assigned to create healthy snacks for the rest of the school. It was good to see how the 5th and 6th graders worked together to create the sandwiches and drinks and then promoted them to the kindergarteners as well. We even helped to toast the bread for the students while they prepared the drinks!
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| Our form class preparing the snacks |
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| Our form class trying out the drinks they made! |
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| Our tasty vitamin c cordials |
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| Cute kindergarteners trying out our drinks |
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| Kindergarteners queuing up for the yummy sandwiches! |
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| Our 5th grader serving the drinks to the school |
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| Our 6th grader serving the fruit sticks! |
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| Yay Felicia finally got a picture with her favourite 5th grader! ;) |
Wednesday, 5 June 2019
Today we had our final 5th and 6th grade English lesson. For the 6th grade, we continued on the unit 'The story of chocolate'. We started off the lesson by asking the students to do a taste test and identify the chocolate we had given them by tasting them while they are blindfolded. The students enjoyed tasting the chocolates and shared their favourite flavour. Then, we gave them a crossword puzzle on chocolates and labelling activity. For this, students had to identify and label the parts of the cacao tree. This was so that students will be able to recall the new vocabulary words we introduced on Monday. After which we taught the class on the use of present continuous tense. We then gave a handful of students some picture cards which showed a particular verb. One student would be picked at a time to act out the verb while the rest of the class had to guess and name the action by saying it out in present continuous tense. Lastly, we ended off with a charades game where we wrote the newly learnt vocab words on the blackboard and the entire class had to try to give clues to the students seated on the hot seat what the word was.
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| Our slides on present continuous tense |
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| Our slides on present continuous tense |
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For the 5th grade lesson, we continued on food and festivals. We introduced some of the question forms as well as how to answer these questions using the correct structure and words. After which we gave them an activity whereby they had to form questions for their peers about the different festivals. Once they had come up with these questions, they exchange them with their peers and tried to answer each other's questions. Then, we went through a passage on the festival Holi. They had to then come up with questions on Holi as a class and answer them using the appropriate structure.
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| Our slides on question forms |
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| Our slides on question forms |
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| Our slides on question forms |
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| Our slides on question forms |
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| Our slides on question forms |
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Lastly, we finished off our day by giving out our farewell gifts to our 4th grade English class. We baked cornflakes cookies for all of them and we were so happy to see that they loved it. One of our 4th graders even asked us for the recipe!
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| Cornflakes cookies |
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| Our friendly 4th graders on our final lesson |
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| Our colleague Ursi and Sarah with their form class |
After school, we went back to PH Zurich for our final briefing with our university mentor Carola and advisor Christine. It was great sharing our experience with them as they helped us understand why the education system was shaped as such. We also managed to share our observations of the differences between Singapore and Switzerland. Lastly, we got feedback on how to improve our teaching and what kind of teaching strategies we could incorporate into our lessons based on Carola's observation of our Monday class.
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| With Carola and Christine! |
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| At PH Zurich with Christine |
After which, we went over to visit Yu Pin and Wen Xin's host family as they had invited us over for dinner. We made some heart-shaped agar agar fruit jellies. And thankfully they turned out pretty good and they all loved it! We enjoyed the barbeque and the mala meal cooked by our buddies. It was an amazing way to bond over our Swiss experience and wind up our time in Zurich.
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| Our agar agar jellies ;) |
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| They're heart-shaped!! |
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| NIE babes! ;) |
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| With our signature pose! |
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| With Wen Xin and Yu Pin's host family and their neighbour ;p |
Thursday, 6 June 2019
Today we had a class field trip to Thurgau, a neighbouring canton of Zurich. There we had a hike to visit the famous Momo Museum, an apple cider museum. Each class is given a choice to choose where they wish to go for their yearly field trip. This year, the students in our form class came up with many different ideas. Out of which, the class decided to go to Thurgau as it was the most feasible idea and was indeed enriching.
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| The hike to the museum |
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| Our boat ride across the river bank |
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| Lunchtime in the forest! |
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| Momo museum |
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| Our cute 5th graders listening to how the cider is made |
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| Our 6th grader with his complimentary photo ;) |
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| Our 5th grader with his complimentary photo |
Friday, 7 June 2019
Today was our last day of school and we were really sad to round off our IP experience. We definitely miss our form class whom we have grown so close to. It was such a heartening experience getting to know them, playing werewolf with them, talking about their lives, aspirations and being their friend and teacher. We will certainly miss watching them fumble for the right words to speak to us in English, and catching them snooping around our laptop background pictures and secretly listen and watch our feeble attempts at learning German ;) They have been such a warm, friendly, cheerful and loving bunch. We wish we had more time with them where we could have bonded more over their favourite Kong Guan ice gem biscuits and trying to teach them Mandarin and Tamil. But all good things do come to an end. Nevertheless, we were truly grateful and blessed to be given the opportunity to be a part of their lives. These kids have certainly captured a special part of our hearts. We prepared hand-written cards for the kids where we penned a down a personalised message for each and every one of them. We also baked our famous cornflakes cookies seeing that our 4th graders loved them so much. And we gave them a keychain with a picture of the iconic tourists' attractions of Singapore hoping that we could leave a part of Singapore with them.
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| Our hand-written card, keychains and cookies |
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| With our colleagues Vreni and Ursi ;) |
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| With our super supportive CT, Melanie ;p |
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| Our beloved form class ;) |
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| Our final shots in the classroom xp |
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| With our super-sporty 5th and 6th grader |
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| Jump shot! |
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| Our final moments in Punt |
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| We love you, Punt ;) |
We were pleasantly surprised to receive a cute Thank you card and chocolates from our colleagues and our class!
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| Thank you card and chocolates from our colleagues and form class xp |
And with that our practicum experience has come to end and we are so thankful to have chosen Zurich ;) We had a memorable time with our host family as well!
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| Our very interesting host family! |
That's all folks! Till next time ;)
To see more of our adventures visit our Instagram page @adventuresoffellini or our hashtag #adventuresoffellini
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