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The STP is a reference for me for good teaching practices and acts as a guide for me as a beginning teacher

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I think giving students a choice allows them to be more engaged in the activity/lesson. However, the choices they are presented with must be aligned with lesson objectives and the expectations of each choice must be clearly articulated to students. This can be done in the form of clear instructions and rubrics. When giving students choices, there should also be adequate scaffolding and guidance provided to help students make their choices. As students make progress on their work, the teacher should also check in on them to make sure they remain on-task. Subsequently, comprehensive and prompt feedback should be given on their work.

Beyond what was shown in the video, I think the option of giving students choices can extend beyond just giving them a choice on the product of work they would like to submit i.e. the outcome, but can also feature in the process e.g. on the sources they are provided with, etc.

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Like the teacher, questions can be used to ascertain students' prior understandings of a topic and inform the teacher of any misconceptions. During lessons, questions can be used to facilitate students' thoughts by guiding their thinking process and allowing them to come to their own conclusions and realisations on the content.

In History, questions can also be used as scaffolding to help students better understand sources. Questions should be used with knowledge of the students' profiles and varied according to learning ability and difficulty.

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When it comes to designing and assigning differentiated tasks, I must consider grading reliability. The rubrics used to grade students' work (which might be creative work) must sufficiently consider various types of medium and how it can be fairly (and consistently) assessed. Additionally, the difficulty of tasks must be appropriate for students with different readiness levels.

I must also design assessments that encourage mastery attainment rather than performance completion, especially for formative assessments that provide opportunities for students to see testing as a more human (and not technical) experience.

Charis

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I will use concept cartoons when I am trying to help my students understand difficult historical concepts by allowing them to explore multiple perspectives and generate various interpretations through source interrogation. If I am introducing a new topic, I will select cartoons that are more relevant to them so that I can link the concept to their everyday experiences before moving on to deal with more complex ideas and subject-specific concept and/or content. With the conclusions that students draw during pair work, I can get them to justify and explain to their class how they derive their stance/answer during the whole group discussion (which also keeps them engaged) and facilitate knowledge co-construction.

Charis

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I would use questioning to scaffold my students' learning and guide them toward formulating responses to the inquiry question. I will have a list of pre-planned questions before the lesson to ensure that I have a few prompts to facilitate class discussion. These pre-planned questions can provide me with entry points to address students' misconceptions during discussions; and serve as checkpoints throughout the lesson. The process of crafting questions also ensures that the lesson objectives, my enactment, and learning materials that I have prepared are congruent.

Charis

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The STP informs me as an educator about what is expected of me in areas like teaching practice and is a reference point for self-assessment whether I am practicing effective teaching in my classrooms.

Charis

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There is a sense that a lot of deeper, more sophisticated historical understandings can be cultivated only when students have a good sense of the facts of history. But how can we avoid getting caught up in the facts in our instruction? Is the "dichotomy" even real? What teaching actions best help us to achieve both conceptual and content mastery at the same time?

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I must definitely consider if the different task options are consistent/similar in grading criteria, difficulty, and relevance to the historical concept(s) being assessed. It will also be good to offer task options that the students are actually interested in, so knowledge of student profiles/interests will be important. I must then offer an opportunity for students to learn from their peers who have chosen different task options - in addition to taking it as a showcase, I can extend student thinking by getting them to consider why did their peers choose differently, and how did it affect the thinking process?

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I liked how the concept cartoons became the frame for the entire lesson. I would definitely use this strategy for topics that feature heavily contested perspectives (ToV, Cold War come to mind) and when the objective is to teach students perspective-taking / about different interpretations in historical accounts. I might only do it when students are comfortable with the core facts/causation links in the topic though. Otherwise the students would likely be lost.

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I like how the key questions were planned with the students' conceptual misconceptions in mind - I would try to apply that in the future, and craft questions that not only challenge, but also elicit the assumptions / thoughts / frameworks behind those misconceptions. This means having a good sense of what students' responses would be. I would also plan out some of the follow-up Socratic questions that I would use to probe students' responses to my chosen sources.

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The STP is a set of best practices distilled from across the school system which I can emulate and strive towards in my instruction. It is not meant as a checklist to be replicated but a standardised guide for effective teaching tailored to/proven to work in local schools.

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Concept cartoons are indeed useful in drawing student’s attention towards different perspectives which they may have not considered before or in the manner demonstrated. This could perhaps be useful to provide differing views of a particular event in history, for example when we discuss on the treaty of Versailles, it could be used to demonstrate the complexity of negotiation by the different parties.

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I think that being purposeful in planning the questions is critical in developing motivation and understanding of the topic. Mr Bala understood his class profile well and understood the gap in his student’s understanding. Hence, his use of purposeful questioning and developing an understanding of the topic through the type of questions asked, for example relying on socratic questioning to develop their thoughts further in the topic.
If I were Mr Bala, I would also use questions to help my students deepen their understanding or help them discover new insights into the topic area. As this is an area where they may have a fixed mindset on, it would also be good to praise and encourage students as they share their perspectives so as to motivate them and other students to develop their thoughts further.

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The STP acts as a guide and a vision for educators on ideal teaching practices and building and sustaining teacher professionalism.

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When students are given a task in which the product is differentiated, it is important for the teacher to consider if the rubrics to grade the different products are consistent with one another.

As far as possible, the teacher has to also ensure that the difficulty level of each task should be similar. For example, the teacher in the video should ensure that the task of writing an article should not be significantly easier than the task of creating a calendar

I can incorporate students' choices in HI. For eg, I can allow students to differentiate their content by giving them the freedom to research on their choice of a famous Singaporean figure in the 19th century (from a list of 10 figures). Again, I must ensure that regardless of whoever the students choose, that each task is similar in difficulty and source availability on the internet.

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While we may harp on how there are many differing perspectives of a particular historical event, utilising cartoons is a good way to show students how these perspectives may manifest. Additionally, cartoons will be able to pique the students' interest in the topic.
I can use this teaching action to allow students to explore how differing points of view are captured through sources (may not need to be cartoons, may give students diary entries/letters too when dealing with social impacts).
Furthermore, it is useful for students to also engage in small-group investigations to allow them to convince their peers of their perspective. This will help foster a positive classroom culture.

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It is good that Mr Bala is using socratic questioning to build on the responses to the main 'inquiry question' as this will bring out the student voices more and may even encourage more class participation from his students.
Like Mr Bala I believe that good questioning techniques can maximise students' learning. To that end, I must use a combination of techniques to guide our students. First, I must consider questioning according to Bloom's taxonomy in order to help my students scaffold the main inquiry question. Thereafter, I can also build on their responses using socratic questioning. Socratic questioning is useful as it can be used for a number of different purposes such as questioning assumptions, drawing out implications, getting students to qualify their answers, and even to get students to think of a different perspective.

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The STP is a very useful structure for me to use in order to practice effective teaching and to maximise learning for my students.

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Teaching Consideration: Planning Key Questions (lesson example)

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Teaching Consideration: Planning Key Questions (lesson example)

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Please read this lesson example and put down your response in the next section. Do sign in to OPAL2.0 in order to access the lesson example.
https://tinyurl.com/vthyr98s

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Please watch this video and put down your response in the next section. Do sign in to OPAL2.0 in order to access the video.
https://tinyurl.com/5n7w6ua8

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Teaching Action: Concept Cartoons (video)

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Teaching Action: Concept Cartoons (video)

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Please watch this video and put down your response in the next section. Do sign in to OPAL2.0 in order to access the video.
https://tinyurl.com/5hdwe98m