Tuesday 29 September 2015

PGCEi induction event at Shanghai Sept 2015

Reflecting on my takeaways




The last four days seemed to be the beginning of a transformation in my journey through the IB world. I am a very passionate IB educator and in my opinion IB is a very challenging academic programme whose success lies in its dynamism and mission.

As I got engaged with the modules , assignments and research ideas in the PGCEi induction at Shanghai, what came out to me more relevant was that how the course I had enrolled to from a top university and the IB programme I work with were both informed by the modern theories and practices of educationists. Being a physics teacher I always hold strong the values of rationalism, logical and augmented thinking and a justified conclusion supporting the predictions in a hypothesis. Hence going by  the discoveries of social scientists on how the mind works and devising the educational programme around it seems to be very scientific to me.

I came across learning theories, importance of language in international schools, plagiarism and academic honesty , methodology of academic writing by being critical at the same time, incorporating values in education and developing strong research and persuasive skills. All these areas had been known and covered to me to some extent as I took two IB schools in the last academic year through evaluation and authorisation. But the PGCEi course will give a new meaning of reflecting , analysing and researching all the above to my own teaching context within the IB programme.


I look forward to a more knowledgeable and confident educator to be coming out of the whole process who can benefit and contribute to the cause of shaping the future of students in a far more efficient manner.

PGCEi face to face day 2

Exploring learning theories

Day 2 of PGCEi was well spent in exploring the various learning theories. Though I had read some of them as a part of the IB documents , but had really never connected them to my own teaching practices to justify them. For the first time the IB documents and programme felt to be so dynamic as it was informed by what modern theorists had to say about learning. I could see so many paradigm shifts happening of other educators in the room as they kept on questioning and reflecting on their own practices. 

My takeaway from the day were many :
  1. How the zone of proximal development was further refined by Bruner and later by Woods and the concept of Contingent control in the classroom introduced.
  2. Also the Howard Gardener's multiple intelligence theory kind of challenged my prior understanding of the visual, audiometric and kinaesthetic learning , saying that all the intelligences need to be developed.
My own definition of learning

Behaviourism- 

Stimuli can be linked to produce response -- Pavlov

 

Language and Learning in International Contexts

In the second half what we were introduced was even more interesting as I had read all of that while framing and developing language policy of the IB schools in which I was a part from evaluation and authorization over the two years.However the contexts of all of that were made so relevant now.We were introduced to BICS and CALP (The acronyms BICS and CALP refer to a distinction introduced by Cummins (1979) between basic interpersonal communicative skills and cognitive academic language proficiency.)

My takeaway of the day:

Cummins quadrant -I kind of struggled to place my practices in the various quadrants. To achieve CALP it was mentioned that we had to have practices linked to quadrant C. 

ACTIVITY TIME:

We did some case study analysis and answered in group the following questions?
  1. What strategies you could use to support EAL in your class?
  2. What is the value of the home language?
  3. How can literacy skills of CALP be developed?
In the context of China and our school these questions are so valid and relevant and needed reflection and connection. I answered them to my own context.
 The day ended by learning how to write a piece of critical writing under crilical literacy.. It was a big insight to academic writing.



Friday 25 September 2015

PGCEi face to face - Day 1: An Ideal Classroom

What kind of Education do you believe in?

All these days, being an educator for 15 years , I developed my own understanding of what it means to design a good education system and be a good educator. My beliefs and implementation have always been influenced majorly by IB programme and some educators who challenge the existing knowledge and  education system. But as a part of my PGCEi programme from the University of Nottingham, I am being introduced to theories about philosophies of education and how mine compares to them.

As a part of the ongoing activities of Day 1, we have been asked to think and create an assignment task " An Ideal Classroom in an Ideal school"


What challenged my thought process was a TED talk shown that talked about woman in Afghanistan , deprived of being in a school....Would'nt then an ideal school in that scenario  have values about the right to education.
So here in China , when I reflect sometimes how far I have drifted sometimes due to the firewall and lack of understanding on the benefits of technology integration, what could be retained and carried forward is what values do  I want to instill in the classroom?

Giving an access to International IB programme to our chinese students and then giving them opportunities to study abroad , in itself my first step to design the ideal classroom in the context of China. At the same time if I can empower them more with language capabilities and skills to be a part of the global classroom then I guess my further pathway to a dream classroom would be fulfilled.

More coming up...

Monday 14 September 2015

Teaching Physics to ESL learners

All subject teachers are language teachers!


I had always heard and read about this in the IB documents , but implementing it to the core in the context of China. My recent experience of taking WUIS , China through their IB DP Authorization had suddenly thrown a different insight into unpacking the IB documents as compared to my stint with the evaluation phase in India. The Language policy and its implementation seems to be the prime focus in the school in relevance to China. Being a new school, it caters to chinese students from the national board who have very limited grasp over English as a language of instruction as compared to my previous students in India. Here what is suprising is that both Indians and Chinese are ESL students.

The manner in which teaching and learning is happening in the DP physics classroom here is so different from  the classrooms in India where I had native or near native english speakers. Just reflecting on how my first unit is being taught here , where the development of language is so very imortant.

Integration of language in Physics, is a four-step process:
1)    activating background knowledge
2)    scaffolding for new learning input
3)    acquisition of new learning through practice
4)    demonstrating proficiency.

Today's lesson was hinted on identifying , reading and analyzing graphs- a basic introduction. I used desmos platform, my all time favourite to act as a platform and tool to nurture critical thinking. 
Activity 1: Students where given a function , y=2x and ask to generate a graph and describe the same in groups. What came out from the oral exercise was that the student cohort was weak in basic science vocabalary and the same was identified and posted on the wall..
Words like origin, intersection, gradient, y-intercept were not known or used by the students in English. This activity helped in activating background knowledge.
Activity 2
Next more equations where given on desmos and students where asked to compare and contrast between: y=2x. y=5x, y=-5x and so on. As they compared and elaborated their descriptions in sets of five sentences, they started using the identified and highlighted vocabalary with use.This activity helped students to scaffold for new learning input.